Medieval polemicists portrayed Islam as surviving only through deliberate fraud

Evidence

After Muhammad’s death, everyone wished to abandon his Law. He himself had said that on the third day his body would be borne up to heaven. When they realized that this was a lie and saw his corpse rotting, he was buried and the greater part [of his followers] abandoned [Islam]. ‘Alî, the son of Abû Tâlib, one of Muhammad’s ten associates, took over the kingdom at Muhammad’s death. He coolly predicted and hotly admonished the people to believe, and said that they had not properly understood Muhammad’s words. “Muhammad,” he said, “did not say that he would be resurrected before his burial or while men watched. He said rather, that after the burial of his body the angels would, with no one knowing, bear him up to heaven. Therefore, when they did not immediately bury him, he began to decompose, so that they might bury him immediately.” By means of this argument [‘Alî] kept the people for a while in their original error. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 809

Categorization

• XREF: Genealogical root-source for the vault’s claim that medieval anti-Islam polemic framed the religion as deceit and error — connects to Anidjar/Aziz on how Islam is constructed as the false Other of the West.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the genealogical claim about how Islam was framed as fraud sustained by conscious lying leaders, relevant to existing vault claims on Islamophobia’s medieval origins.