A non-menaced religion can study rivals calmly and for truth alone

Evidence

In its matter, any Christian approach must tend always to be the same as any other. It must treat the same themes as mediaeval and other Christian writers on Islam have always treated. Revelation, prophethood, morals, violence, Trinitarian doctrine, these are necessarily the points at issue between Christians and Muslims, because they are the points of disagreement and divergence. In manner, however, the modern Christian, unlike the mediaevals and the Russians, may be as free as he pleases from any bias to polemics. He remains a Christian with belief in the sole truth of Christianity, but Islamic belief is no menace to him, Islamic society no menace to his civilisation. He has no need to stress differences, and when he does take up the points of divergence he is free to make the most of those aspects that are least different and least liable to arouse mutual irritation. He can take things calmly, and has no reason to seek anything but the truth, irrespective of utility, unless he positively prefers what may bring him closer in sympathy to Islam. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1733

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how security vs. threat shapes intellectual stance toward an ‘other’ — parallels the earlier study of Islamophobia and of rhetorical disdain as class/identity signaling.
• SEED: Angles: an essay on when scholarship of a rival faith becomes possible — security as a precondition for intellectual charity.