Christian polemicists omitted Muhammad’s peaceful conquests to portray him as a robber

Evidence

It is also important to remember how much was left out even of the most sober mediaeval account of Muhammad’s life. Although the pagan state of Medina was asserted there was never recognition of Muhammad’s social legislation for Arabian society; the victory at Badr which Muhammad believed to be specially providential was not simply discounted, but ignored; acts of the Prophet - for example, the appointment of the new qiblah —- which had no polemic value, were very rarely mentioned; there was no reference to the alliances and other peaceful means used to unite the tribes; and the omission of all mention of Hudaybiyah, of the bloodless conquest of Mecca, of the final victories over paganism and the establishment of Islamic rule and religion leaves Muhammad’s story ridiculously incomplete. Readers must often have been left with the idea of a countryside dominated by terror of a robber band, or of a town populace deceived by a confidence trickster. Mediaeval authors were concerned above all with Muhammad’s personal qualities, and not with the sequence of events. Not everyone who repeated fables deliberately preferred them to sober truth or something like it; but so much was known that was accurate that there must very often have been a deliberate choice of the worst.” — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1355

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how enemies selectively narrate a religious founder’s life — parallels the deliberate omission in modern political smear campaigns.
• SEED: Angle: how the systematic omission of peaceful acts (not fabrication) shapes a demonized historical reputation — a rhetorical technique of selection rather than invention.