Christian polemicists read the Qur’an against its own interpretive tradition

Evidence

Ricoldo was apparently satisfied that this would have a polemic value against Muslims who, if they had ever really heard it, would have ridiculed it. … The extraction of verses from their context in the Qur’an, and their dissociation from the traditional Islamic interpretation, is typical of this class of polemic. Peter the Venerable, San Pedro and Ricoldo in particular, but in some degree all the Latins, assumed the freedom to understand a Qur’anic authority in whatever sense pleased them; they would always prefer their own reading to that which is traditional in Islam. In Marti’s own phrase, the doctor was too often anxious to offer advice on agriculture, the farmer to teach medicine. Christian polemists would never allow their opponents to speak for themselves; yet their arguments, often ingenious to the point of brilliance, could never have been convincing to Muslims; and ostensibly they were not intended for Christians. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault cluster on how ‘Islam’ gets constructed — the tactic of reading the Other’s scripture against its own tradition echoes Aziz and Razack on how the racial Muslim is defined externally rather than allowed self-definition. Also resonates with Edward Said’s Orientalism on the Western refusal to let the Orient speak. — connects to: Reading scripture openly requires suppressing traditional presuppositions. — Chuck Missler, The Kingdom, Power and Glory: The…, 85
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: if these polemics ‘ostensibly were not intended for Christians,’ who was their actual internal audience — what function did they serve within Christendom?