Deliberate isolation policies made medieval Christian-Muslim mutual ignorance structurally guaranteed.

Evidence

This suspicion was natural enough, in fact, inevitable, in the circumstances in which Christians lived. Since the authorities put so much pressure upon Muslims within Christendom to convert them, upon Christians within Islam to isolate them, and upon merchants and others to prevent any communication of intelligence at all, the two societies lived side by side as ignorantly of each other as possible. The way was nowhere open to an ordinary Christian to get to know Islam better, because he was prevented from knowing Muslims, from communicating freely and usefully with them. He was brought up to expect to be in a relationship of force and violence with them. It is difficult to erect learning upon a foundation of ignorance, to establish understanding in minds formed amid inherited prejudice and suspicion. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1479

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the imposed-ignorance theme in the reader’s notes on communication systems and how institutions shape what populations can know about each other.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that suspicion was ‘inevitable’ because each side engineered the other’s ignorance is a dense, counterintuitive structural argument about how prejudice is institutionally manufactured rather than naturally arising.