Medieval polemic distorted Islam by omitting its tributary alternative to jihad.

Evidence

What, asked San Pedro, had Muhammad commanded, but fornications and robberies? The Qur’an inconsistently recommended both reason and war, and the hadith confirmed this. Muslims were promised a heavenly reward for death in battle, that their wounds would be beautiful on the Day of Resurrection. He was confident that Islam would end, as it began, by the sword; he understood that Muhammad’s teaching was that men who were not Muslims might be killed in jihad, their women dishonoured and taken prisoner with the children, their goods seized, their kingdoms occupied. This summary puts the position in extreme terms and omits the offer of tributary status (as alternative to jihad), but is otherwise not really inaccurate. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 709

Categorization

• XREF: Author’s own concession of relative accuracy complicates the Christian distortion narrative threaded through Anidjar’s genealogy of Jew-Arab enmity.