Early Muslims read Christian and Jewish submission as divine sanction of Islam’s superiority.

Evidence

For the Muslim, this was the rational, normal order of things. God had rewarded his faithful with dominion over the richest lands of the earth. He had shown Islam’s superiority to Christianity (and Judaism) twice: first through the Koran, then by making Jews and Christians submit, as dhimmi, to the Muslim yoke. Their weakness and submission were appropriate to their inferior, secondary status in the eyes of God. More and more of them, moreover, were seeing the light and converting to Islam. There was still, of course, the weakened but still important Christian power of Rûm (Rome), with its capital, Constantinople, that resisted repeated Muslim attacks. Muslims prayed to have it delivered to Islam, and some day it would be. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the dhimmi-inferiority construction that vault claims about Anidjar and Rahman map; shows the Muslim self-understanding that provoked the Christian polemical response Tolan then documents.