Medieval Christian polemicists understood Islam’s Trinity objection despite lacking sympathy

Evidence

Vitry complained that Muslims ‘laugh at us for adoring three gods’ and cannot accept the ineffable generation of the Son, which they understand carnally, because (he added with ecclesiastical wit) ‘flesh and blood hath revealed it to them, and not our Father who is in Heaven’.?® Thus the real problem was understood even when there was a complete lack of sympathy with what prompted the Islamic attitude. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 973

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ style cross-cultural misreading theme — here it’s doctrinal misreading rather than dress, but the pattern of one tradition caricaturing another’s core belief matches.
• XREF: connects to: Medieval polemicists distinguished what Muslims believed from what they only thought they believed.; Muslims rejected the Trinity as polytheism and carnal generation; Lull never sincerely engaged actual Muslim objections to the Trinity