Melanchthon condemned Islam chiefly for denying Christ’s atoning mediation.

Evidence

Melanchthon explicitly stated that the name of Antichrist was suitably applied to Muhammad, as devastator and tyrant of the Christian religion. In the mediaeval tradition, he pointed out that the unity of God needed no special revelation: ‘this wisdom of theirs is nothing but a certain philosophy of the common human reason’. For Melanchthon the essential was the denial of the mediation and ‘placation’ worked by Christ, that He is ‘born of the substance of the Eternal Father … (and) was the Victim of the human race’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1562

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the precise theological objection fueling Reformation anti-Islamic polemic: denial of substitutionary atonement, not merely monotheism.
• XREF: Parallels early Christian critiques of Judaism as rejecting the Messiah, and modern analyses of how theological categories drive political conflict.