Medieval polemicists scripted Muslims’ imagined rebuttals fairly

Evidence

Addressing an imaginary Muslim public, he was compelled to conceive their replies on their behalf. He very fairly allowed them to rebut the charge that they were deluded about God and the worship that He requires: We have imagined nothing about God, and invented absolutely nothing. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 110

Categorization

• QUESTION: How fair is ‘fairly,’ really — is ventriloquizing the opponent’s reply a genuine engagement or a rhetorical construction of what the Other must think? Worth checking whether Peter’s framing is doing subtle interpretive work.