Mediaeval polemicists explained Islam’s rise through Arab ignorance and Jewish-Christian malice.

Evidence

Moreover, if this were Muhammad, it was necessary to show how he ever came to be accepted at all. The Arabia into which he was born is of crucial importance for any study of his life: this is obvious now, and seemed equally so to mediaeval writers. A convincing explanation of the rise of Islam required, not only that the Prophet should have been cunning, but that the pagan Arabs should have been ignorant, and the Arabian Jews and heretical Christians malicious. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 450

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the current work on how scholarly/cultural narratives explain religious or social movements through the stupidity or malice of followers rather than the merits of the founding figure.

Related

• Explaining Islam’s rise demanded depicting pagan Arabs as ignorant and Jews as malicious (similarity 0.92)
• European anti-Islamic polemic derived Islam from Christian and Jewish heresy (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Christian polemic made the Prophet’s discrediting the keystone of defeating Islam. (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval anti-Islamic polemic could work from accurate hadith rather than fabricated detail (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval interreligious polemics operated without shared evidentiary premises (similarity 0.82)
• Polemical texts selectively omit events that contradict their argument (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians read Islam’s rise as the predicted ferocity of Ismael (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval writers ignored Islamic ritual because praising it served no polemic purpose (similarity 0.82)
• Christian polemics against Islam argued from premises only Christians accepted (similarity 0.82)
• Mediaeval Christian polemics arose in response to real apostasy pressures under Muslim rule. (similarity 0.82)
• Scholarly polemic failed because it never spoke in terms Muslims could recognize (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval polemicists attacked the Qur’an with pedantic misreadings to prove Muhammad misunderstood truths (similarity 0.81)
• Arabic Christian anti-Islamic literature was apocalyptic, polemic, and lurid in its invented tales (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian polemicists investigated Muhammad’s claims carefully rather than dismissing them (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians polemicists routinely conflated the Qur’an with reported sayings of Muhammad (similarity 0.81)