Christian polemics argued Jews posed a greater diabolical threat than Muhammad
Evidence
If Muhammad, for instance, who at the outset was all alone, entirely uneducated, utterly impoverished, hated by his own kinsmen and foreigners alike, so far removed from our borders, and so obvious in his falsehood, could introduce so much corruption into the world on behalf of the devil-what do you think the devil can accomplish through the Jews, who are so numerous, almost all educated and most adept at trickery, so well endowed with the good life and the usuries allowed them by Christians, so loved by our princes on account of the services they provide and the flatteries they spew forth, so scattered and dispersed throughout the world, so secretive in their deceptions that they display a remarkable appearance of being truthful?! — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 200
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- SHARE: For someone studying medieval Christian anti-Jewish polemic — this passage’s inversion (Muhammad as the weak competitor, Jews as the far more dangerous enemy precisely because educated and trusted) is a striking rhetorical move.
- CANDY: The rhetorical flip — ‘if the illiterate outsider did this much damage, imagine what the educated insiders will do’ — is a memorably nasty line of argument.