Llull imagined learned Muslims already doubted Muhammad’s prophethood, ripe for conversion.

Evidence

For Llull, the superiority of Christianity to Islam can be demonstrated rationally, if through the rather abstruse and idiosyncratic tool of Llull’s Art. For Llull (as for many earlier authors) Muhammad lacks the signs of prophecy, and the Koran is full of contradictions. He asserts that learned Muslims themselves are aware of this and do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet. They are (like Peter the Venerable’s imagined Muslim audience a century and a half earlier) an audience ripe for conversion, if only Christians can properly attend to the task. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1279

Categorization

• XREF: The imagined ‘ripe audience’ trope — projecting doubt onto the other to justify mission — connects to how projections structure polemical encounters in the vault claims.