Anti-Quran polemics were crafted for Christian audiences rather than actual Muslims
Evidence
This is another argument we cannot imagine Ricoldo’s ever having tried on a live Muslim, or he would never have recommended it (in effect) to future missionaries. His more sober view was that what mattered was less the ‘adultery’ than its justification in the name of God. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2089
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
Related
- Mediaeval anti-Islamic polemics convinced neither Muslims nor Christians (similarity 0.87)
- Christian anti-Islamic polemic targeted Christian readers, not Muslims (similarity 0.85)
- Christian polemics against Islam argued from premises only Christians accepted (similarity 0.84)
- Christian polemicists read the Qur’an against its own interpretive tradition (similarity 0.84)
- Medieval polemicists distorted Quranic verses to serve anti-Muslim arguments (similarity 0.84)
- Mediaeval Christian polemicists dismissed Quranic metaphors by misreading them as literal physics (similarity 0.84)
- Medieval anti-Islamic polemic resembles modern rationalist critiques of religion (similarity 0.83)
- Christian scholars read the Qur’an to argue it leans toward Christian orthodoxy (similarity 0.83)
- Medieval Christian polemicists attributed hostile origin myths to the Qur’an (similarity 0.83)
- Medieval Christian polemics could only read Islam as affirming or negating Christianity (similarity 0.83)
- Christian annotators charged the Quran with self-contradiction on points later seen as mere nuance (similarity 0.83)
- Ricoldo’s public polemic masked a privately favorable view of Islam (similarity 0.83)
- Christian polemicists charged the Qur’an with asserting and denying the same doctrines. (similarity 0.83)
- Medieval Christian polemicists attributed to Muslims arguments the Muslims did not hold. (similarity 0.83)
- Medieval polemicists distinguished offenses from their justification in God’s name (similarity 0.83)