Europeans adopted distorted images of Islam even when accurate information existed

Evidence

At a time when the Byzantine Empire was politically and militarily infirm, and was itself the object of Western aggression and Western polemic, when the Muslims were at many points upon the frontiers of Latin Christendom, and shared with Christendom the inland sea, the deformed image of Islam was established in the conscious European mind. It is this deformed image that I hope to delineate, in the process of becoming one of the dogmas of Christian society; not, of course, of the Christian Church as such, but (in variant forms) of most of its members. I wish also to examine some of the reasons that caused this image of Islam to be deformed, rather than reasonably accurate, as it might equally well have been; that led men to prefer, sometimes nonsensical, and often unpleasant and untrue versions of the history of Muhammad and of the tenets and practices of Islam; and that did so even when sound information was available and when better might easily have been obtained. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 78

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did men prefer false versions of Islam even when sound information was available? What psychic or political function did the deformed image serve?
• CANDY: A distorted image of Islam became a Christian dogma even when accurate accounts were at hand - a compact, surprising historical fact.
• XREF: connects to: People chose distorted versions of Islam even when accurate information was at hand