Europe’s universalist mission concealed an ideology of cultural superiority over non-Christians.

Evidence

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the two visions—universalist and exclusivist— coexisted in European culture throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Through mission and crusade, Europeans sought to bring their universal religion (and their culture, which for them was inseparable from it) to the wayward Saracens, Tartars, and others. Yet the religious and social order that (for them) would invariably accompany adhesion to Christianity was a European one, with the Pope at Rome as leader. The portrayal of Islam as a debauched heresy, the defensive ideology of “colonized” dhimmis, had been transformed into an aggressive ideology of cultural superiority justifying European conquest and hegemony over the benighted other. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1380

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the Anidjar/Aziz claims about the constructed ‘Islam-West’ opposition — shows that universalism itself carried the exclusivist seed that Anidjar traces.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ thread’s method of reading moral panic as identity signaling, here at the civilizational scale.