Isolation from one’s own society enables more accurate observation of foreign rituals.
Evidence
Despite its mistakes, this is an intelligent description; the detail of the hands to the ears is misinterpreted but well observed. It is evident that the observer had some feeling for the Muslim ritual; living in isolation from Christian society he had a greater mental freedom to help him observe accurately. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1159
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Echoes the observer-participant tension also found in anthropology and in studies of ethnographic distance.
Related
- Social distance from Christian society enabled more accurate observation of Islam (similarity 0.93)
- Christians interpreted Islamic worship through Christian models, not direct observation. (similarity 0.80)
- Christian observers were structurally excluded from mosques and so misread Islamic worship (similarity 0.80)