Even ‘moderate’ medieval biographers of Muhammad selected only polemic-serving facts

Evidence

The establishment of Islamic power by violence and fraud, by battle, banditry and assassination and by the authority of pretended visions; the intimate and often sordid details of the Prophet’s personal relations with his family; in these cases also the picture was delineated by selecting just those facts that suited it, and ignoring all others. In war, unprotected by angels, Muhammad suffered the ordinary vicissitudes to which soldiers and highwaymen, but not prophets, are liable, and he paid the final debt of humanity more cheaply than he deserved. This is the verdict of the more moderate writers; unfair though it is, it is closer to reality than Muhammad, Cardinal or Mage, or Muhammad devoured by swine. At the worst there was the assertion of the fantastic, and its repetition without discrimination; at the best there was the selection of only those facts that served the purpose of controversy. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1354

Categorization

• XREF: The two-tier picture (fantastic fabrications at the crude pole, selective ‘moderate’ readings at the respectable pole) parallels modern Islamophobia scholarship distinguishing outright hate speech from respectable-seeming but equally constructed critiques.