Churchmen’s ties to Muslim rulers suppressed anti-Islamic polemics

Evidence

These churchmen can’t “bark,” according to Alvarus, because their worldly interests are closely tied to those of their Muslim rulers. Indeed, the prominent role played by leading churchmen in the Umayyad administration may explain the lack of polemics against Islam. (John of Damascus wrote his apologetical works only after quitting the government of Umayyad Damascus and retiring to the monastery of Mar Sabbas.) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 515

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the reader’s existing Anidjar/Aziz claims that Christian polemic against Islam is shaped by political accommodation—here showing the causal inverse: collaboration suppressed polemic, and withdrawal (John of Damascus) enabled it.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the sacrifice/religious-political accommodation thread: clerics’ entanglement with temporal power as the thing that neutralized prophetic critique of the established order.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 515