Medieval Christian polemics reinterpreted Islamic miracles as fraudulent tricks

Evidence

Similarly San Pedro identified the angel who was the vehicle of revelation in Islamic eyes with the dove, trained by Muhammad, of which Christian legend spoke; he identified the Muslim story of ox or bull that spoke miraculously for Muhammad with the Christian tale of a bull bearing the bogus book of the Law on his horns. … In practice he did not treat either series as certainly true; he treated them as being to an unknown extent mutually confirmatory. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1314

Categorization

• XREF: This rationalizing of miracles as trickery echoes how modern scholarship debunks religious claims — the same skeptical move across centuries. — connects to: Christian polemicists read Muslim sources as unwittingly confirming Christian legends — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1314; Medieval Christians equated automata and machinery with Muslim sorcery — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 947
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone interested in medieval Christian-Muslim polemics or the history of religious skepticism — the dove and bull trick stories are wonderfully specific.