Medieval Christians read the Qur’an as inadvertent testimony to Christian truth

Evidence

The greatest and the characteristic contribution of mediaeval thought to the study of Islam was the persistent sense of how that religion witnesses to Christ. This was often, as when the Qur’an was said involuntarily to teach the Trinity, wholly unintelligible to Muslims; it came a little closer to Muslim interpretation when it developed the Qur’anic ‘corroboration’ of the Christians, and really close when it stressed God’s election of Jesus and Mary. We shall see that in practice there was also some perception of Islamic works of religion and an appreciation of … Islamic virtues. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1079

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mediaeval ‘witness to Christ’ hermeneutic — reading an alien scripture as involuntary corroboration of one’s own doctrine.
• XREF: Analogous to the ‘two religions seeing each other as incomplete versions of themselves’ pattern in religious contact; connects to reading about mutual mirroring between Islam and Christianity. — connects to: Medieval Christian polemic interpreted Qur’anic texts as nastily as possible; Ketton’s medieval Qur’an mistranslated but did not deliberately distort Islam; Medieval Christians valued Qur’anic Christ references over Islamic monotheism — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 920 (+4 more)