Real Muslim folk practices got treated as proof of Islam’s inherent error by polemicists

Evidence

The seta (1.vili.94) describes one brush with Muslims that actually did take place; it does not, however, deal with the central issue and involved superstitious and unlearned Muslims, as is apparent from all the internal evidence. He says there were popular ceremonies intended to influence the angelic fates who visited every child on its seventh night, in order to establish his or her future life. This was a wrong opinion (heregia), silly, and something to be ashamed of. San Pedro had challenged the more learned and the elders about this, asking if these fates had ever been seen, or had ever left signs of their coming behind them; and how it was known what fate had been accorded to the child. His interlocutors could not answer and he told them that they knew nothing about it because there was nothing to know about. It is not clear whether the more learned elders thus confounded were ‘ulama’ or just the better educated men of the village or quarter where the ceremonies (or some particular ceremony noted by San Pedro) took place. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2226

Categorization

• XREF: The polemicist resolves a genuine cross-cultural encounter (popular folk ritual over angelic fates) by declaring his interlocutors ignorant and the practice ‘heresy’ — an early instance of the pattern where actual Muslim lived practice is read through a frame that converts social difference into doctrinal error, similar to Razack’s ‘casting out’ and Anidjar’s construction of the enemy-figure.
• QUESTION: The footnote ends mid-sentence about whether San Pedro’s confounded elders were ‘ulama’ or simply better-educated laymen — worth chasing how a real encounter’s social texture survives inside polemical texts.