Sober treatments of Islam distorted it by manipulating real facts, not fantasizing

Evidence

Islamic institutions were treated as selectively as the life of Muhammad. Relatively little was suggested that was competely absurd, like the more fantastic legends about the Prophet; in this category might be classed the idea of sexual promiscuity (including ten husbands for every woman) but such absurdities as this were rare. Yet the more sober accounts of Islam resemble the more sober biographies of the Prophet in that actual facts were manipulated by selection and omission, by exaggeration and invention and misapplication. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1357

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Aziz’s and Razack’s accounts of how putatively factual Western treatments construct the Racial Muslim — the mechanism (selection, omission, exaggeration, misapplication of actual facts) is the same genealogy Anidjar traces back to the enemy-construction being described.