Forced conversion created a spiritual vacuum that underground leaders filled with fabrications.

Evidence

There is no more poignant demonstration of the insistent demand of the crypto-Muslims of Spain to be Muslims than these fictions. The policies of the Spanish authorities had been to cut off from their religious roots those they had forcibly converted. An educational and a spiritual vacuum had been created, and so from those religious leaders such as the Young Man, such as Nuzaya, were constantly being asked by those who wanted to believe—but no longer knew exactly what that belief should be—detailed teachings that were positively “Islamic,” to replace the Christian material that was being rejected. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 833

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense structural insight: a community whose religious knowledge was cut off will generate invented doctrine to satisfy its own believers’ demand—deception as an organic response to a vacuum, not merely bad faith.