Both hostile and accurate accounts converged on Muhammad’s revelation as needing explanation

Evidence

Yet common to these absurd tales, and to accurate renderings of Muslim sources, is the conviction that something out of the ordinary did actually happen to Muhammad, something that needed explaining. There was an intense interest in his revelations, a sense that they were crucial to the controversy between the two religions. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 202

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Anidjar’s genealogy of how the enemy Other is constituted through a distorted but religio-centric mirror of the self.