Islam’s early religious rivals sometimes praised its monotheism

Evidence

Sebeos, an Armenian Monophysite, wrote in 661 that Muhammad was learned in the law of Moses, taught the knowledge of God of Abraham to Arabs, who “abandoning the reverence of vain things, … turned toward the living God, who had appeared to their father Abraham.” God granted to Arabs the lands he had promised to Abraham, and gave them victory over the impious Byzantines. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 309

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the assumption in the vault’s existing Anidjar/Aziz/Razack material that Christian responses to Islam were uniformly hostile from the start — Sebeos shows confessional rivalry (Monophysite resentment of Constantinople) could produce a positive reading of Islam.
• QUESTION: Does the modern Islam-West master narrative erase these 7th-century positive Christian assessments? The reader’s genealogy may need this complication.