Christians dismissed Muhammad as a false prophet of violence

Evidence

Justus, one of the interlocutors in this fictive dialogue, tells of a letter he received from his brother, Abraham of Caesarea, about “a deceiving prophet [who] appeared amidst the Saracens.” Abraham heard from an old scribe that this prophet “is deceiving. For do prophets come with swords and chariot? Verily, the events of today are works of confusion.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 308

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that Muhammad’s religion is invalid because it spread by ‘swords and chariot’ is precisely the medieval root of the modern trope that Islam is a religion of the sword, which Razack and Anidjar identify as foundational to anti-Muslim discourse.