Medieval Christians missed Islam’s consciously unpriestly religious structure.

Evidence

It was certainly not widely understood that the Islamic attitude was consciously unpriestly, in spite of Mark’s reference to the king’s functioning for the priest. Ricoldo, duly followed by Pennis, referred with clarity to the Qur’anic condemnation of Christians for making their clergy ‘lords’; he pointed out that there was a confusion of the Chaldean term suitably used of men, and the Arabic word used only of God. This was to rebut an objection that Christians might see, but not the objection actually levelled by Muslims to whom religious lordships of any kind, other than God’s immediately, is alien. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1264

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A whole epistemology of cross-cultural misunderstanding: even a sophisticated rebuttal addresses the wrong objection because it corrects a confusion Christians might have, not the one Muslims actually level. Dense and worth sitting with.