Medieval Christianity saw Muhammad as a schismatic Christian, not an external infidel.

Evidence

With Christians in Anatolia and Muslims in Iberia, Islam was not yet imagined, either geographically or metaphorically, as completely outside the Western world. The “impostor” Muhammad was not thought of as an outsider with no connection to Christianity but rather as a kind of schismatic who challenged, and therefore articulated with, the Church tradition. In Dante’s Inferno Muhammad is “split,” “ripped open from chin to where we fart.” A savage split also marks the face of Muhammad’s lieutenant, Ali: his face is “cleft from his chin up to the crown.” Clearly we are being shown here two of the many sinners punished for schism, for splitting apart the church—and not, as Said incongruously suggests, with Islam as the “epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 103

Categorization

• XREF: Directly rebuts a central Said thesis, connecting to my existing notes on Orientalism and the construction of the Muslim Other.
• SHARE: Send to anyone who works on Dante — the Inferno’s Muhammad/Ali split as schism punishment, not orientalist marking.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 103