Medieval polemicists deemed Muslims rational while branding Jews unreasoning beasts

Evidence

Peter has emphasized the rationality and learning of his Muslim audience; this is all the more striking when contrasted with his descriptions of the enemies in his Against the Inveterate Stubbornness of the Jews, whom he brands as beasts without reason, since they stubbornly refuse to accept the rational truth of Christianity. There he contents himself with lambasting irrational Jewish beliefs for a Christian audience, showing no hope of converting Jews. Here, on the contrary, he pleads with his learned Muslim readers to hear him out, invoking the pagan king Ethelbert. Muslims, it seems, should be predisposed to recognize Christian reason; in order to prevent this, Muhammad had forbidden them under pain of death from debating matters of the faith. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 859

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the vault claim about genealogical roots of the Islam-West opposition — this is a medieval origin point where Muslims are granted reason (to be converted) while Jews are condemned as irrational beasts, an asymmetry the existing Anidjar/Aziz sources build on.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 859