Devotional critics dismissed documented Muslim slave trading as un-Islamic

Evidence

Not all the pleas for the defence were wholly convincing. Lewis had produced clear documentary evidence that Muslims traded in slaves in the Mediterranean (and on quite a considerable scale), but, according to Abed-Rabbo, the ignorant Lewis had failed to realize that ‘a person who acts contrary to the teachings of Islam by acting as a slave trader cannot be called a Muslim’. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 591

Categorization

• QUESTION: This logic — defining away counter-evidence as not truly ‘of the faith’ — recurs across religious historiography and is worth probing as a general apologetic move.