Medieval Franciscan missionaries deliberately provoked martyrdom by insulting Islam

Evidence

For many thirteenth-century Latin writers, one of the bright lights of their age was Francis of Assisi. Francis and his followers, the Friars Minor, or Franciscans, sought to rekindle the “apostolic life,” a life of poverty, ascesis, and preaching modeled on that of the apostles. Mission to the infidel (in particular, to Muslims) played a significant role in this apostolic life; Francis himself preached to the Egyptian Sultan al-Kâmil in 1219 … Their goal (the topic of chapter 9) was not merely to live the apostolic life but to die the apostolic death: the apostles, after all, found martyrdom at the hands of infidels, and thirteenth-century Franciscans found that when sufficiently provoked (through public insults to Muhammad and the Koran, for example), many Muslim rulers obligingly conferred the crown of martyrdom upon them. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 73

Categorization

• QUESTION: Were the Franciscan mission-martyrdom provocations aimed at Muslims only? Interesting parallel to how later colonial-era polemic instrumentalized saintly martyrdom.
• XREF: Direct parallel to addendum piece on ritual sacrifice/martyrdom as sanctification via death at infidel hands.