Muslims requested baptism seeking magical cure, not religious conversion

Evidence

Vitry understood what was happening; Muslims, he said, had their children baptised, not from faith, but in superstitious hope of longer life or of cure from illness. Caesarius, in contrast, tells the story of how the Bishop of Beauvais, in his captivity after Damietta, baptised a young man, a sick Muslim, who had dreamed that baptism would cure him. He was cured, and the smiles of the Muslims standing around turned to wonder. The author piously, and rather pathetically, hoped that the youth persevered in his new faith. The purely superstitious significance which, without intending any sacrilege, a Muslim would see in the ceremony can never have occurred to him. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1134

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the theme that religious rites often carried functional/magical rather than doctrinal meaning — echoes the framework used in the sacrifice book about ritual functions. — connects to: Muslims could seek baptism as magic rather than as conversion