Medieval attacks on the Qur’an obscured its evident piety to unlearned readers

Evidence

The greatest and the characteristic contribution of mediaeval thought to the study of Islam was the persistent sense of how that religion witnesses to Christ. This was often, as when the Qur’an was said involuntarily to teach the Trinity, wholly unintelligible to Muslims; it came a little closer to Muslim interpretation when it developed the Qur’anic ‘corroboration’ of the Christians, and really close when it stressed God’s election of Jesus and Mary. We shall see that in practice there was also some perception of Islamic works of religion and an appreciation of … Islamic virtues. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1079 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

His criticism that the Qur’anic story of Christ was as hard to believe as the Christian one was fair; but he would also use Qur’anic passages to make points of startling pedantry. For example, he pointed out that when the Qur’an said that the Jews claimed to have killed the Messias, Jesus, it was quite in error, because the Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Messias. It was the heart of his argument that Muhammad did not understand the truths that he sometimes enunciated; he ‘spoke the truth… but he did not understand’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 953 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mediaeval critics mocked the Qur’an’s chapter names as irrational; Ketton’s medieval Qur’an mistranslated but did not deliberately distort Islam; Medieval Christians read the Qur’an as inadvertent testimony to Christian truth — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1079 (+8 more)

Related

• Medieval polemicists attacked the Qur’an with pedantic misreadings to prove Muhammad misunderstood truths (similarity 0.91)
• Medieval Christians polemicists routinely conflated the Qur’an with reported sayings of Muhammad (similarity 0.91)
• Medieval Christian readers judged the Qur’an by its Christology (similarity 0.90)
• Ketton’s medieval Qur’an mistranslated but did not deliberately distort Islam (similarity 0.89)
• Mediaeval Christian polemicists dismissed Quranic metaphors by misreading them as literal physics (similarity 0.89)
• Medieval Christian polemic interpreted Qur’anic texts as nastily as possible (similarity 0.88)
• Medieval Christians read the Qur’an as inadvertent testimony to Christian truth (similarity 0.88)
• Medieval polemicists quoted the Qur’an inaccurately without scruple (similarity 0.87)
• Mediaeval critics mocked the Qur’an’s chapter names as irrational (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval Christians valued Qur’anic Christ references over Islamic monotheism (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval European conflation of Qur’an and Traditions may have been a deliberate polemic tactic (similarity 0.86)
• Some medieval Christians grasped the Qur’anic Christ accurately (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval writers ignored Islamic ritual because praising it served no polemic purpose (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Christian distaste, not ignorance, distorted portrayals of Islam (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Medieval Christian polemic interpreted Qur’anic texts as nastily as possible #expands (0.82)
• Medieval Christians read the Qur’an as inadvertent testimony to Christian truth #contradicts (0.78) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1079
• Medieval polemicists attacked the Qur’an with pedantic misreadings to prove Muhammad misunderstood truths #expands (0.78) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 953
• Medieval Christians dismissed Quranic revelation as a literary fiction #contradicts (0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 215
• Medieval Western scholars judged the Qur’an human because its style failed scholastic standards #expands (0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 330
• Medieval European conflation of Qur’an and Traditions may have been a deliberate polemic tactic #expands (0.72)
• Medieval polemicists quoted the Qur’an inaccurately without scruple #expands (0.72) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1410
• Medieval Christian observers overlooked the central role of Qur’an recitation in Muslim cities #contradicts (0.70) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1196
• Early medieval European knowledge of Islam was thin and unverifiable #qualifies (0.70)