Modern cross-cultural misunderstanding still resembles medieval polemical distortion.

Evidence

Yet these are differences within a relatively small society; and the area of mutual understanding between antagonistic societies, and between societies with different histories and backgrounds, is to-day still extremely limited. Modern practice, outside a form of careful scholarship which flourished briefly and already begins to be considered old-fashioned, seems so similar to that of the Middle Ages, as to enable us better to understand and sympathise with what at first looked dishonest or foolish. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1383

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the vault’s through-line that the grammar of ‘Islam vs. West’ mutual incomprehension is not unique to the modern era.