Aquinas framed Muhammad as spreading his faith through force and sensual promises

Evidence

Nor did he add any signs of supernatural agency, which alone are a fitting witness to divine inspiration, since a visible work that can be from God alone, proves the teacher of truth to be invisibly inspired: but he asserted that he was sent in the power of arms, a sign that is not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. Again, those who believed in him from the outset were not wise men practiced in things divine and human, but beastlike men who dwelt in the wilds, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching; and it was by a multitude of such men and the force of arms that he compelled others to submit to his law. Lastly, no divine oracles or prophets in a previous age bore witness to him; rather did he corrupt almost all the teaching of the Old and New Testaments by a narrative replete with fables, as one may see by a perusal of his law. Hence by a cunning device, he did not commit the reading of the Old and New Testament Books to his followers, lest he should thereby be convicted of falsehood. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1225

Categorization

• XREF: Direct root-source for the ‘Islam spread by the sword’ trope the reader maps in the vault via Anidjar/Aziz/Razack — this is Aquinas generating ex nihilo the claim that Islam’s success rests on compulsion, not truth, echoed in modern polemics.
• ADDENDUM: Pair with ‘On Sacrifice’ article thread: Aquinas rejects Muhammad’s ‘power of arms’ as ‘not lacking even to robbers and tyrants’ — a strike at legitimacy-of-force themes relevant to the sacrifice-violence register.