Lull saw Muslim and Christian fears of misbelief as mirror images

Evidence

These episodes may be exaggerated; but Fidenzio himself followed the victorious army of the sultan as it retired to Damascus, in the hope of helping the Christian prisoners, and some of the Muslims, with the events of the capture of the Christian city fresh in their minds, asked him why Christians adored pictures and images. It was not, Fidenzio of course replied, the images, but the saints in heaven whom they represented, that Christians venerated. “They were silent, not knowing what else to say.’ — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 640 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Llull rejects the Dominican strategy, forging his own approach, an idiosyncratic fusion of Dominican rationalism and thoroughness with Franciscan mysticism and pathos. 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 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Demonizing Islam grew from anxiety over its uncomfortable similarity to Christianity; Christian polemicists imagined educated Muslims as secretly doubting their own faith — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1279; Christian views of Islam reflected their own preconceptions more than actual Muslims (+5 more)

Related

• Christian polemicists imagined educated Muslims as secretly doubting their own faith (similarity 0.90)
• Muslims questioned Christians directly on image veneration (similarity 0.86)
• Christian polemists preferred their own readings over traditional Islamic interpretation (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval Christian missionaries reconceived Muslim doctrines as partial truths to bridge toward conversion (similarity 0.83)
• Llull imagined learned Muslims already doubted Muhammad’s prophethood, ripe for conversion. (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christian polemicists misattributed beliefs to Muslims that Muslims would disown. (similarity 0.82)
• Lull argued Islam was incomplete rather than false, implying the Christian creed (similarity 0.81)
• Christian thinking forced Islam into Christian analogical categories, misrepresenting it (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian distaste, not ignorance, distorted portrayals of Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Scholarly polemic failed because it never spoke in terms Muslims could recognize (similarity 0.81)
• Lull taught lay Christian merchants to prove the Trinity to Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Christian polemicists never consulted Muslims about actual Muslim beliefs (similarity 0.81)
• Christian anti-Islamic polemic targeted Christian readers, not Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Even Lull doubted laypeople could grasp his Trinitarian proofs (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Demonizing Islam grew from anxiety over its uncomfortable similarity to Christianity #expands (0.82)
• Muslims questioned Christians directly on image veneration #exemplifies (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 640
• Christian polemicists imagined educated Muslims as secretly doubting their own faith #exemplifies (0.78) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1279
• Medieval Christian polemicists misattributed beliefs to Muslims that Muslims would disown. #corroborates (0.78) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1435
• Christian views of Islam reflected their own preconceptions more than actual Muslims #complicates (0.75)
• The Christian image of Islam served Christian self-understanding, not Islam itself #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 165
• Christian thinking forced Islam into Christian analogical categories, misrepresenting it #corroborates (0.72)
• Christian anti-Islamic polemic was a defensive reaction to Muslim power and prestige #qualifies (0.72)