Christian polemic demanded Muhammad’s character be shown incompatible with Revelation

Evidence

The polemic purpose was to attack the Islamic claim to be the true revelation of God, and to this end it was essential that the character of Muhammad be shown to be wholly and unquestionably incompatible with Revelation. Equally it was essential that Islamic institutions should appear incompatible with religion; but undoubtedly the greatest deformation of fact occurred in the lives of the Prophet. Thus what modern scholarship shows to be false was thought to be true, apparently because it was useful in a good cause. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1369

Categorization

• XREF: The deformation-of-the-Prophet mechanism parallels how Anidjar/Aziz describe the construction of the racialized Muslim enemy — character-level vilification preceding political exclusion.