Christian polemicists attacked Muhammad’s ordinary humanity as disqualifying him as prophet

Evidence

Part is certainly devoted to proving the humanity of the Prophet; the author will have known that Muslims claimed not otherwise, but he may have felt it useful to insist, against popular Muslim devotion, on Muhammad’s very ordinary humanity. Of the death in the arms of ‘A’ishah he remarked: ‘from this it is clear that the death or end of Muhammad was vile, unclean and abominable, and such a death by no means suits a Prophet or Messenger of God’. The weakness of humanity, even when no sin was involved, was a major offence in a recipient of a divine mission. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1326

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Anidjar’s and Aziz’s work on how Islam is constructed as a degraded mirror of Christian self-conception — here, insisting on Muhammad’s humanness to deny prophetic legitimacy.