Modern Christian reconciliation with Islam began in 1829

Evidence

In the first place, I have not attempted to trace its origins, and have omitted any comprehensive discussion of nineteenth-century trends. The beginnings of a new approach came earlier than we sometimes think. For example, C. Forster in 1829 was writing, “To be unjust to the fair claims of any other system is, in fact, to be guilty of gross injustice to the unrivalled merits of the Gospel.’ He realised that ‘the Christian has no reasonable grounds of doubt or fear to withhold him from doing the fullest justice to the phenomena of Mahometanism’. He saw a ‘twofold instrumentality, acting co-ordinately’; where Christianity operates directly to make the Lord known, Islam ‘shapes the course of things indirectly’ to the same end. It is a preparation for the full truth, ordained in the twofold promise to Abraham: ‘by the convergement, in the fulness of time, of Ishmael to Isaac, of Mahometanism to Christianity, the whole world shall one day be poured into the fold of the true shepherd, our only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2470

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s own earlier treatment of William of Tripoli (chapter IV, section 2, page 122) — the author explicitly draws that parallel, showing the medieval roots of the ‘preparation for the Gospel’ reading of Islam. — connects to: Nineteenth-century Christians already framed Islam as a preparation for Christian truth