Anti-Muslim rhetoric served to police the doctrinal boundary of true Christianity.

Evidence

Christians feared Muslims both as a radically other religious competitor and a despoiled fraction of Christians. Deprecating Muslims often served efforts to police the doctrinal boundary circumscribing “true Christianity,” as seen in Roger Williams’ answer to Quaker founder George Fox in G. Fox Digg’d out of His Burrows (1676). — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 96

Categorization

• XREF: A familiar dynamic from other religious boundary-policing literatures — deprecating the near-other to define the in-group. — connects to: Anti-Muslim rhetoric was founded in the Middle Ages and persists into today; Secularists and Christians alike weaponized Islam as a foil despite opposite agendas. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 30; Anglo-American discourse framed Islam as Christianity’s inherent and inexorable nemesis. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 95 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Muslim polemics function to define their authors’ identity rather than describe Islam. #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 124
• Islamophobia scholarship often treats medieval Christianity as a united whole against Muslims #complicates (0.50) — Ali Qureshi, The Fall of Constantinople, 25