Polemical intent can coexist with rigorous textual scholarship

Evidence

Maracci provides a prefatory life of Muhammad, followed by an academic introduction to the Qur’an, both in the modern manner. In his prefatory note, he explains that he utilises Muslim authors, not because he thinks them sincere, but because ‘when we act against the enemies of religion, we attack them more happily with their own arms than with ours, and (thus) more happily overcome them’. In fact, Maracci’s scholarship is not disinterested; his purpose is polemic, but he has mastered the new technique. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1700

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to modern debates about the weaponization of scholarly neutrality — reading opponents’ sources to defeat them, a tactic echoed in contemporary adversarial bibliographies. — connects to: Curating facts functions as polemic more effectively than explicit argumentation; Reading against the grain must stay strategic, never orthodox — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1816; Citational techniques can simultaneously be serious argument and deliberate play — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 783 (+1 more)