Saracens were racialized as subrational only after rational polemics failed to convert them.

Evidence

Perhaps indeed European denigration of the other is the back side of Christian universalism. As European Christian ideology crystalized and hardened in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was less and less room for dissent. The increasing use of reason to justify this ideology aggravated the situation: those who refused to listen to Christian reason must be irrational: the blind Jew, the stubborn heretic, the fleshbound Saracen. Well into the thirteenth century, the Saracen indeed had a better reputation than the non-Christians closer to home. The Saracen was reputed for his learning, seen as eminently rational; he (like the Jew) became the object of philosophical polemics and impassioned preaching. When, toward the end of the thirteenth century, it became clear that the Saracen was (like the Jew) impermeable to such “rational” argument, he was relegated to the subrational world of carnal, semibeastly humans. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1381

Categorization

• XREF: Directly sharpens Anidjar’s and Razack’s claims that medieval-Muslim inferiority was a rationalized, interest-serving construction — here showing the exact trigger: failed evangelism.
• DEEPTHINKING: The shift from ‘eminently rational adversary worth arguing with’ to ‘subrational animal’ once dialogue fails is a dense paradigm about how civilizational hierarchies harden — with obvious resonance for contemporary Islamophobia.
• SEED: Angle: modern Islamophobia mirrors the medieval logic where ‘the other is degraded because he refuses one’s rational universalism’ — the template for ‘they reject our values’ discourse.