Even sympathetic European scholarship ignored Islam’s living devotional spirituality

Evidence

Clergymen in Oxbridge colleges and rural rectories who interested themselves in Arabic texts for scholarly and theological reasons were not at all interested in real live Arabs, but only wanted to know more about the manner of life of Abraham and Moses, to identify the flora and fauna of the Bible and map out the topography of ancient Palestine. Princes, diplomats, soldiers and merchants, however, had a more immediate interest in the Turks and the Ottoman Turkish empire. Until the late seventeenth century the West’s interest in the Turks was mostly driven by fear. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 191 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Very few people, if any, studied Islam for its own sake. Instead, polemical Christians elaborated the outlines of a life of Muhammad and of the rise of Islam that were often intended to be used in intraconfessional polemic. For example, Catholic scholars made use of an exposition of the ‘horrible heresies and perversions’ of Islam in order to attack what they claimed were essentially similar Protestant deviations from the true faith. Was not Protestant denial of the efficacy of intercession by saints and the Protestant adherence to predestination essentially the same as the Muslim position on those matters? The Protestants, for their part, attacked the Pope as a latterday Muhammad and found all sorts of sinister similarities between Islam and Roman Catholicism. The real nature of Islam was not an issue. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 152 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Medieval writers ignored Islamic ritual because praising it served no polemic purpose; Early European Islam scholarship served Christian infighting, not accurate study — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 152; Even firsthand travel experience failed to break Europe’s inherited image of Islam (+3 more)

Related

• Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture (similarity 0.90)
• Early European Islam scholarship served Christian infighting, not accurate study (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval writers ignored Islamic ritual because praising it served no polemic purpose (similarity 0.85)
• European study of Islam originated in fear, not curiosity. (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Europeans modeled Muhammad’s Arabia on their own society (similarity 0.83)
• The social character of Islamic practice went unrecognized by medieval Christian writers (similarity 0.83)
• Theory outweighed direct observation in medieval European writing about Islam (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christian distaste, not ignorance, distorted portrayals of Islam (similarity 0.82)
• Ottoman advances drove European study of Islam through fear (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.82)
• Islam has remained a dominant force in Middle Eastern life (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval European misinformation about Islam came from polemical needs, not ignorance. (similarity 0.81)
• Renaissance scholarship long coexisted with unrevised medieval views of Islam. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Western writers recognized little spiritual life in Islam. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians weaponized accurate Islamic learning for polemics (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture #corroborates (0.90) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 191
• Early European Islam scholarship served Christian infighting, not accurate study #expands (0.85) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 152
• The social character of Islamic practice went unrecognized by medieval Christian writers #corroborates (0.80)
• Even firsthand travel experience failed to break Europe’s inherited image of Islam #corroborates (0.75)
• Europe’s image of Islam tracked its political and military needs, not theology #qualifies (0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1070