Medieval Islamic studies were driven by political motives, not ignorance

Evidence

We should grossly simplify if we called this an emancipation from mediaeval modes of thought. In the Middle Ages, as we have seen, there was a serious attempt to establish sound knowledge that might, ostensibly at least, be undeniable by Muslims in the event of controversy. … The point was rather that in the Middle Ages there were political, perhaps sociological, reasons why Islam should be suspect, and untrue things should seem more probable than true ones, and be believed. It is quite often apparent that in the Middle Ages there was no interest in Islam itself, but only in inducing some particular state of mind about it in Christians; or, in Lull’s case, in proving some particular point to Muslims. As these reasons ceased to exist, a scientific attitude — that is, an attitude of pure science, interested in the thing in itself - was free to develop. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1709

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the sociology of knowledge argument in Communication as Culture and the general claim that belief distortion follows political interest rather than mere lack of facts.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that falsehood was believed not because of ignorance but because political conditions made untruths seem more probable than truths is a genuinely counterintuitive, dense claim about the sociology of knowledge worth sitting with.
• SEED: Article angle: “Truth isn’t hard to find, it’s hard to afford” — the idea that scientific attitudes develop only once political stakes stop rewarding falsehood, applicable to modern misinformation debates.