Opponents of Islam studied it tactically to exploit or prepare for it

Evidence

The Russian has to take into account the use to which he can put Islam temporarily, while it is ‘fused’ with nationalist sentiment which he expects to be able effectively to exploit. Mediaeval Christians did not take this sort of thing into account, even mutatis mutandis; but they did do this much, which is as much as the commercial companies do to-day: they tried to prepare missionaries for the ideological opposition they would actually encounter. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1729

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Aziz’s point about modern security states treating Muslim communities through a tactical lens of countering violent extremism rather than engaging them as citizens.