Christians and Muslims assigned opposite moral meanings to poisoning and martyrdom

Evidence

Where better information made it difficult to believe the death from swine, the notion that he was poisoned was the best credible and authenticated substitute; poison is not, among Christians, the hall-mark of martyrdom, as it sometimes seems to be among Muslims. Such stories as the Prophet’s death in the arms of ‘A’ishah were thought valuable, because from the Christian point of view they were unedifying, though only from the Christian point of view. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 619

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that martyrdom carries different connotations across the two religious traditions, so a death that signals sanctity in one reads as unedifying in the other.
• XREF: connects to: The poisoned lamb story originates in Islamic sources, not Christian polemic; Christians and Muslims historically rejected each other’s fasting as not genuine fasting — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1226