Polemical insistence on Islam’s demonic alliance intensified where resemblance was obvious

Evidence

Anastasius attempts to erect a wall of difference between Islam and Christianity. He is not ignorant of the similarities between the two faiths; he is painfully aware of them. This is why he stresses the differences, the quasi-magical powers of the sacraments, as the most effective way to repel the demonic forces. Anastasius tells that “thirty years ago” he had been in Jerusalem and had seen the Egyptians clearing away rubble from the Temple Esplanade; at night, he claims, he saw demons helping them. He felt it necessary to write this down, he says, because some people say that what is being built there now (i.e., the Dome of the Rock mosque) is the Temple of God. In Jerusalem, as at Mecca, only the nighttime appearance of demons alerts the cautious Christian that the Saracens are really (if perhaps unwittingly) in alliance with the devil, not God. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the existing vault claim (Anidjar/Aziz) that anti-Islam polemic performs a boundary-marking function precisely at points of perceived resemblance - here Exodus-to-Temple-rebuilding typology is the dangerous similarity being walled off.
• DEEPTHINKING: Correlation between perceived closeness and polemical estrangement - striking structural insight.