Medieval Christian critics of Islam derived claims from literary sources, not observation

Evidence

It is curious that so much stress should have been put upon aspects of which the critics could have had no certain knowledge whatever. From the point of view of believers in a natural law, it was with reason that Christians complained of defects in Islamic moral law, but their assumptions about the actual commission of offences were gratuitous. Theory can never have been confirmed by direct access to educated Muslims, even in the rare case of writers who claimed to have taken part in active discussion, for example, Ricoldo and Lull; or where there was a close knowledge of written sources and some personal contact with Islamic society, for example, with the Cluniac translators, with Mark of Toledo, Ramon Marti or San Pedro. It is the same with those who lived among or near to Muslims, Vitry, Tripoli or Fidenzio; and, more obviously, with the pilgrims, who often, however, exercised a more lively curiosity than Latins resident in the East, with somewhat unreliable results. Vitry’s acceptance of the Malikite scandal about the abuse of wives, which could only have relevance in Malikite Spain, although his own experience was confined to Syria and Egypt, is an example of the influence of literary, at the expense of direct, sources of knowledge; and in Spain itself it was surely the literary perpetuation of an oral Christian tradition that was the usual source of such unsavoury information. In any case, it was obviously impossible to observe much of Islamic sexual practice at first hand. Even Christian girls married to Muslims will have been largely cut off from their old friends; the life of the harim precluded any personal acquaintance with family life, and it is extremely difficult to imagine any reliable, serious and confi- dential discussion of such things between a pious Christian and a pious Muslim of the Middle Ages.” — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1359

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the fatwas/travel narratives discussion in the Immodesty article — travelers’ unreliable reporting and literary transmission of moral claims. — connects to: Medieval writers ignored Islamic ritual because praising it served no polemic purpose; Even well-informed medieval authors chose implausible stories when framing Muslims