Medieval polemics fused attacks on Islam and Judaism as twin irrational faiths.

Evidence

Both Talmud and Koran, for Alfonsi, could be attacked through scriptural and rational-scientific argumentation, and key elements of Christian doctrine (the Creation and the Trinity) could be proven. The Muslim or Jew, since he is rational, could be brought to the Christian truth, as Moses is in Alfonsi’s Dialogues. This linkage of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim argumentation and this insistence on the irrationality of both rival faiths represents a crucial turning point in the portrayal of both Islam and Judaism in medieval Europe. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 833

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the vault’s existing Islam-West opposition claims: the twinning of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemic and the ‘irrationality’ charge are genealogical ancestors of the parallel structures Anidjar/Aziz/Razack trace.
• DEEPTHINKING: The fused construction of Islam and Judaism as twin ‘irrational pseudorevelations’ is the seed structure for later European racialization of both — dense enough to sit with.