Christian writers imagined Muslim theology granting lesser guilt for sins committed in ignorance.

Evidence

Rather different is the story of Joinville’s where John the Armenian falls into argument with an old Muslim in the Damascus suq. John resents a suggestion that the sins of the Christians are more than the sins of the Muslims; then the old man asks if he has any children, and, finally, whether it would upset him more if his son hit him, or the Muslim speaker did so. God was more angry with the small sins of the Christians than with the great sins committed by the Muslims in ignorance. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1100

Categorization

• QUESTION: The old man’s argument climbs from a personal parallel (your child hitting you) to a theological point about ignorance mitigating sin — is this a real Islamic jurisprudential position being gestured at, or a Christian invention?