Long-running Christian polemics congealed into one fixed hostile portrait of Muhammad

Evidence

Christians constructed one single picture of the life of Muhammad. Details invented or taken over at widely different periods were much alike in their character and drift. They varied only in their approximation to reality; some might be absurdly fabulous, others only a biased interpretation of what was authentic; but the result was always the same. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 620

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the construction of a unified ‘other’ across disparate sources; also to the book’s own thesis about how fabricated details circulate.