Christian polemic framed Islam as this-worldly and Christianity as otherworldly

Evidence

The choice given to Anthony by the caliph—wealth and worldly honor on the one hand, martyrdom on the other—carries a polemical message: Islam is the religion of this world; Christianity, the religion of the next. The Christian reader is reassured that he is right after all and his encouraged to endure the rather minor “martyrdom” of life as one of the dhimmi in return for the celestial rewards Christ is saving for him. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 366

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the modern reversed trope where Islam is stereotyped as otherworldly/fatalistic and the West as this-worldly/rational — Tolan shows the earliest Christian polemic claimed exactly the opposite polarity.