Scholarly neutrality toward Islam is a historically recent Christian possibility.

Evidence

Islam have always treated. Revelation, prophethood, morals, violence, Trinitarian doctrine, these are necessarily the points at issue between Christians and Muslims, because they are the points of disagreement and divergence. In manner, however, the modern Christian, unlike the mediaevals and the Russians, may be as free as he pleases from any bias to polemics. He remains a Christian with belief in the sole truth of Christianity, but Islamic belief is no menace to him, Islamic society no menace to his civilisation. He has no need to stress differences, and when he does take up the points of divergence he is free to make the most of those aspects that are least different and least liable to arouse mutual irritation. He can take things calmly, and has no reason to seek anything but the truth, irrespective of utility, unless he positively prefers what may bring him closer in sympathy to Islam. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1733

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the vault’s construction-of-‘Islam’ thread: this frames the ‘pure’ uncommitted scholar position as itself a contingent historical stance set against mediaeval polemic, paralleling how Aziz/Razack treat the ‘objective’ Western observer as historically produced.