People chose distorted versions of Islam even when accurate information was at hand

Evidence

At a time when the Byzantine Empire was politically and militarily infirm, and was itself the object of Western aggression and Western polemic, when the Muslims were at many points upon the frontiers of Latin Christendom, and shared with Christendom the inland sea, the deformed image of Islam was established in the conscious European mind. It is this deformed image that I hope to delineate, in the process of becoming one of the dogmas of Christian society; not, of course, of the Christian Church as such, but (in variant forms) of most of its members. I wish also to examine some of the reasons that caused this image of Islam to be deformed, rather than reasonably accurate, as it might equally well have been; that led men to prefer, sometimes nonsensical, and often unpleasant and untrue versions of the history of Muhammad and of the tenets and practices of Islam; and that did so even when sound information was available and when better might easily have been obtained. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 78 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europeans adopted distorted images of Islam even when accurate information existed — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 78; Vincent’s anti-Islamic method was data-driven rather than argumentative; A fixed polemical image of Islam served Western needs better than firsthand observation did.

Related

• Europeans adopted distorted images of Islam even when accurate information existed (similarity 0.97)
• Medieval Christians chose distorted Islam stories even when accurate sources existed (similarity 0.90)
• Factual corrections to Christian anti-Islamic polemic only patched a weakened doctrinal structure (similarity 0.85)
• A deformed image of Islam hardened in the medieval Christian mind as dogma (similarity 0.84)
• Even factually accurate Christian accounts distorted Islam through selective emphasis (similarity 0.83)
• A fixed polemical image of Islam served Western needs better than firsthand observation did. (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christian writers distorted Islam where accuracy served polemic (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.82)
• Mediaeval authors often deliberately chose the worst accounts of Muhammad. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval audiences preferred Islam accounts easier to ridicule over accurate ones (similarity 0.81)
• Hostile Christian descriptions of Islam repeated themselves virtually unchanged across centuries (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians preferred entertaining, ridiculable portraits of Islam over accurate information about it (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian polemicists attacked Islam with knowingly false evidence (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian deformation of Islam coexisted with accurate knowledge (similarity 0.81)
• Long-running Christian polemics congealed into one fixed hostile portrait of Muhammad (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Europeans adopted distorted images of Islam even when accurate information existed #corroborates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 78