The Christian image of Islam served Christian self-understanding, not Islam itself

Evidence

Out of such and many other misconceptions “there formed a circle which was never broken by imaginative exteriorisation.… The Christian concept of Islam was integral and self-sufficient.” Islam became an image—the word is Daniel’s but it seems to me to have remarkable implications for Orientalism in general—whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 165

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘image’ function: representation of the Other serves the representer’s own needs, not the represented.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 165
• XREF: connects to: Christian polemists preferred their own readings over traditional Islamic interpretation; The claim that Muslims refuse to dispute became Christian dogma; Lull saw Muslim and Christian fears of misbelief as mirror images (+1 more)