Polemical anthologies of Qur’anic verses could praise Christ while concealing their real aim

Evidence

This was an effective display of those borrowed plumes, ‘beautiful and luminous’, which concealed the dark deformity of the crow beneath; it amounted to an anthology in praise of Christ, His Mother and Apostles, to contrast with the absence of praise of Muhammad or Muslims. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 937

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘borrowed plumes’ metaphor names the rhetorical device of deploying an opponent’s own sacred text as a weapon against them.
• ADDENDUM: This selective redeployment of scripture as attack connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ insofar as both trace how texts/vestments get re-signified as political weapons.