Medieval appreciation of Islam collapsed into coercion when persuasion failed

Evidence

Islam, for the young Llull, was something positive, and Muslims’ piety and learning would lead them (with the help of Llull’s Art) to abandon their errors and embrace the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. Llull pushes admiration and appreciation of the religious other to its limits. For neither Llull nor any other thirteenth-century author (Muslim, Jew, or Christian) could simply conclude that a rival faith was as valid and salutary as his own. There can be only one true religion. Llull’s genteel philosophical politeness begins to fray as the Jewish and Muslim infidels refuse to be convinced by his arguments. He advocates compulsory Christian education for them, advocates war of conquest to force them to listen to Christian missionaries. The theater of religious debate was no longer a verdant grove, as it had been for the young Llull when he composed the Libre del gentil; it had become a dark prison. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1353

Categorization

• XREF: Genealogically grounds the coercive-tolerance dynamic that Anidjar/Aziz/Razack trace in modern secularism — liberal tolerance for Islam in the reader’s vault claims likewise frays into surveillance and force when persuasion fails.