Even fair-minded early Orientalist literature ignored Islam’s living spiritual interiority

Evidence

Moreover, it tended, even when most just, to ignore the living spirituality of Islam. Pére Richard Simon, the Biblical critic, was attacked for saying that ‘when they ask God for something in prayer, they must abandon themselves entirely to his will… There is nothing they so much recommend as trust in God.’ — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1672

Categorization

• XREF: The erasure of Muslims’ interior spiritual life as a precondition for constructing Islam as mere exterior threat echoes Anidjar’s claim about the theological-political construction of the Jew/enemy.