Christian thinking forced Islam into Christian analogical categories, misrepresenting it

Evidence

Voltaire’s play Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophete, despite its title, represents Muhammad as a rational thinker and a romantic figure. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire was strongly critical of the stereotypes surrounding Islam as a sensual religion, “I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so many others.” He also charged that Christians have projected their own idolatrous practices on Muslims: “I conclude by noting that in the times we named the Middle Ages, we called the country of the Mohammedans heathendom. We qualified as idolaters, image-worshippers, a people who have a horror of images. We must admit once more that the Turks would be more pardonable to take us for idolaters when they see our altars loaded with images and statues.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 366 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

In the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims, the lack of awareness about Islam is easily explained. Christians simply did not show much curiosity in learning about Islam because most Christian authors initially viewed Muslims as a scourge sent from God to punish Christians for their sins. Dionysus of Tel-Mahre, a ninth-century Syrian patriarch, viewed the Muslim invasions of Syria as God’s punishment of the Byzantine church for embracing Dyophysite theology—that is, the belief put forth by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 that Jesus consists of two distinct natures, divine and human, united in one person. There was no shortage of Byzantine theologians to adopt the flip side of the coin and maintain that God was punishing the Monophysites, those who rejected the Chalcedonian position and insisted on the divine and human natures merging into one nature in the person of Jesus. Both sides shared in common the hope that God might lift the scourge if genuine repentance ensued. Few thought it worth the trouble to study the religious beliefs of Muslims in order to find relief from divine chastisement. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 123 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European understanding of Islam was ignorant but complex until the early eighteenth century; Encyclopedists used Islam as a disguised symbol for criticizing Christianity; Christians ignored Islam’s actual beliefs because they read Muslim conquests as divine punishment — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 123 (+15 more)

Related

• Voltaire attacked Christian stereotypes of Islam as projections of Christian idolatry (similarity 0.92)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.83)
• Christians ignored Islam’s actual beliefs because they read Muslim conquests as divine punishment (similarity 0.82)
• Encyclopedists used Islam as a disguised symbol for criticizing Christianity (similarity 0.82)
• Voltaire’s anti-Islam attacks served his campaigns against religion itself (similarity 0.82)
• Lull saw Muslim and Christian fears of misbelief as mirror images (similarity 0.81)
• Voltaire attacked Muhammad as a mask for criticizing Christianity itself (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian distaste, not ignorance, distorted portrayals of Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Theological explanations blamed Christian corruption and cast Muslims as God’s punishing instrument (similarity 0.81)
• Christians misread Islamic ritual by assuming it mirrored their own (similarity 0.80)
• Enlightenment praise of Islam extended the mediaeval attack on infidels to Christianity itself (similarity 0.80)
• Christian polemists preferred their own readings over traditional Islamic interpretation (similarity 0.80)
• Christians understood Islam only through the distorting analogy of Christ (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christian portrayals of Islam grew from conquered dhimmi anxieties about apostasy (similarity 0.80)
• Enlightenment thinkers produced contradictory, instrumentally motivated views of Islam (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Christians ignored Islam’s actual beliefs because they read Muslim conquests as divine punishment #complicates (0.75) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 123
• Voltaire attacked Christian stereotypes of Islam as projections of Christian idolatry #responds-to (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 366
• Encyclopedists used Islam as a disguised symbol for criticizing Christianity #responds-to (0.72)