A medieval polemicist could know Muslim doctrine details yet grasp no coherent Islam

Evidence

Yet he seems to have read neither Robert of Ketton’s Koran, nor Petrus Alfonsi, nor any of the other authors I have discussed. Alan was in Catalan Montpelier and may have received this accurate (though random) information either from a Muslim or from someone who had direct contact with Muslims. Yet Alan has no coherent idea as to what Islam is; he attributes to his Muslim adversaries arguments based on the Old Testament. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 879

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Accurate random doctrinal fragments coexist with total conceptual incoherence about Islam — a template for how decontextualized ‘knowledge’ of an out-group can be simultaneously factually correct and structurally useless.
• XREF: connects to: Self-styled anti-sharia experts lacked even basic knowledge of Islamic law — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 409