Medieval Christian polemics modeled Muhammad’s life on Christ’s as a deliberate inversion

Evidence

The reprobatio was plain and factual, recounting the deaths in turn of ‘Abdallah and Aminah, the boy’s father and mother. Curiously this work stressed the story which ibn Ishaq tells of the child’s visit to the Ka’bah: … After his mother bore him, she sent to his grandfather ‘Abd al-Muttalib … He came and took Muhammad his (grand)child, and entered his temple with him and adored his God, and gave thanks for such a blessmg given to him, and returned (Muhammad) to his mother. After the death of his mother, however, he stayed with his same grandfather, ‘Abd al-Muttalib, and when he reached the age of eight, that grandfather died. … The reason for telling this episode is obscure; perhaps it was seen as an attempt to emulate the Purification. The contrast between Muhammad and Christ, the thought of Muhammad as a false Christ, were often present in Christian minds. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 496

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern of anti-Islamic polemic treating Muhammad as a false/imitative prophet — parallels the rhetorical tactic of framing rivals as distorted mirrors seen in early Christian heresiography. — connects to: Muslims treated Muhammad’s illiteracy as proof of revelation, which Christians inverted