Sophronios treated Muslims as godless scourge, not religious rivals worth understanding

Evidence

The invaders, for Sophronios, present a formidable military threat but a negligible spiritual menace: he does not bother to find out what their religious beliefs and practices are. Rather, the invaders represent the scourge of God so familiar to readers of the Old Testament: God, angry with his people, punishes them by sending godless barbarians to conquer them. The path to victory, as always, is repentance: Therefore I call on and I command and I beg you for the love of Christ the Lord, in so far as it is in our power, let us correct ourselves, let us shine forth with repentance, let us be purified by conversion and let us curb our performance of acts which are hateful to God. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 295

Categorization

• XREF: Lines up with the modern Islamophobic pattern in Aziz/Razack where Muslims are cast as irrational threat rather than interlocutors — showing the template predates actual knowledge of Islam.