Some medieval polemicists acknowledged Christians exceeded Muslims in actual violence

Evidence

Ricoldo recalled that the Gospel does not permit any violence at all: ‘if one strike thee …’ - ‘him that taketh away from thee thy cloak … He added the pertinent rider: ‘Nor is it an objection if certain bad Christians do not observe these things.’ In saying this he at least showed awareness of a problem that many Christians ignored. It was even possible to strengthen the contrast between the two religions by reversing the comment, when it was applied to practice; there was more fraternal love between the Muslims whose religion was the religion of killing, than between Christians, who followed the religion of love. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 712

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the vault claim that Islam was simply constructed as the violent Other: here a polemicist concedes Christians were the more violent in practice, complicating Aziz/Razack’s exclusive-culprit framing. — connects to: Crusader violence against civilians exceeded Saladin’s conduct in Jerusalem — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 364