Missionary failure was blamed on the irrationality of the infidels themselves.

Evidence

The widespread failure of the missionary movements had become clear by the early fourteenth century, as the fall of Acre and the conversion of the Mongols to Islam made manifest. If the infidels were impervious to the subtle reasoning and clear arguments of the missionaries, the fault must lie with the infidels themselves: the obstinate Jews, lascivious Saracens, and barbarous Mongols, all too obsessed with the literal and carnal to understand the intellectual or the spiritual. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1362

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Parallels modern blame-the-victim dynamics and cognitive dissonance: when persuasion fails, the audience is reframed as inherently defective. Also connects to patterns in colonial/postcolonial theory.

Related

• Failed missions were blamed on infidels’ irrationality (similarity 0.96)
• Failed conversion attempts led to labeling Muslims irrational rather than questioning Christianity (similarity 0.85)
• Missionary failure gave birth to the admirable-yet-unconvertible Muslim stereotype (similarity 0.84)
• Christian missionaries branded Muslims irrational when rational arguments failed to convert them. (similarity 0.83)
• Failed missionary efforts produced blame of Muslim irrationality rather than self-criticism (similarity 0.83)
• Missionary failure stemmed from missing language training and disputation skill. (similarity 0.81)
• The conversion of Spanish Muslims failed partly from under-resourced evangelization (similarity 0.79)
• Christian disunity directly blocked infidel conversions (similarity 0.79)
• Missionary failure led Riccoldo to blame Muslim irrationality despite admiring them (similarity 0.79)
• Arabic-trained missionaries failed to convert many Muslims in the thirteenth century (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval scholastic missionary polemics produced almost no conversions (similarity 0.78)
• Late medieval theologians concluded reason could defend but never prove the Christian faith. (similarity 0.78)
• Medieval missions to Islam targeted Christians, not Muslim converts (similarity 0.78)