Anti-Islamic polemic was shaped to repel Christians, not Muslims

Evidence

Hostile communities can easily maintain opinions and arguments, which are available for the use of individuals at need, which are controversial in form, but which are not in fact shaped by actual controversy. This is as apparent in our own day as it was in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were like other ages in inventing and rearranging the facts of history and the beliefs of opponents in order to suit some noble purpose. It is important to realise that the facts and the Islamic doctrines thus rearranged were put into a form which primarily repelled, and must have been intended to repel, Christians; Islam was, in fact, not always described in terms necessarily repellent to Muslims. No doubt there was much that a Muslim would have had to resent; but the unpleasant image of Islam that the Christians drew was drawn to seem unpleasant to the Christian eye. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1471

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting insight about how hostile images of an out-group are constructed for internal consumption, not against the actual opponent — this inverts the natural assumption about polemic.
• SEED: An essay angle: enemy images as mirror — how societies build portraits of adversaries that primarily flatter the builders’ own sensitivities. Modern applications in political caricature.
• XREF: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s insight that moral panics are really class/identity signaling within a community, not reactions to actual outsiders. — connects to: Mediaeval anti-Islamic polemics convinced neither Muslims nor Christians; The claim that Muslims refuse to dispute became Christian dogma; Medieval anti-Islamic polemics aimed to fortify Christians rather than convert Muslims (+2 more)