Medieval interreligious polemics operated without shared evidentiary premises

Evidence

We may say that it was absurd to insist on the absence of miracles in Islam, and yet to refuse to take seriously the Qur’anic argument that they were not needed, or that the Qur’an’s own inspiration was self-evident. If we say this we criticise anachronistically; our circumstances, which make this possible, are different. At that time in Europe too great an effort was required to understand the unfamiliar; and in Asia and Africa the same was true of Muslims. Common ground between Christian and Muslim, either to understand each other or to find mutually acceptable premises to justify rejection, was rarely sought, and, when sought, was sought half-heartedly and generally without success. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 448

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the vault thread’s point that ‘Islam’ discourse is constructed within a Christian economy of truth rather than in dialogue with actual Muslim claims — parallel to Razack’s ‘casting out’ logic.