Closer contact with Islam quickly dispelled the idolatry image

Evidence

While the image of the pagan Saracen lives on in the Chansons de geste, liturgical drama, and saints lives until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries (and in village fiestas until the twentieth), assuring the Christian readers of the truth of their own religion, it dies quickly among those who have closer contact with Islam. Among the chronicles of the Crusades, only those dealing with the first Crusade portray Saracens as idolaters. Spanish Christians from the eighth century on had known enough of Islam not to present it as idolatry; other Western writers, using knowledge of Islam gleaned from Spanish and Eastern sources, will increasingly portray it as a variant, heretical version of Christianity. These Latin authors, like their earlier Eastern and Spanish counterparts, will make sense of Islam by painting its prophet in the familiar hues of a diabolically inspired heresiarch. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 726 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A fixed polemical image of Islam served Western needs better than firsthand observation did.; Proximity to Islam led Christians to abandon the idolatrous image of Saracens — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 726; Hostile biographies grew more distorted as real Muslim contact receded (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Proximity to Islam led Christians to abandon the idolatrous image of Saracens #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 726
• Hostile biographies grew more distorted as real Muslim contact receded #complicates (0.90)
• Failed missionary arguments turned Muslim image from rational to irrational in Christian Europe. #complicates (0.90)
• Casting hostility to Muslims as perennial misattributes contemporary causes to religion. #complicates (0.85) — Fred Halliday, ‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered, 48