The medieval Christian canon about Islam survived even the breakup of European ideological unity

Evidence

SUMMARISING the conclusions of the last two chapters, we can say that the Western view of Islam, which was formed during the period with which this book is primarily concerned, was based on a good deal of sound knowledge, but that it also accepted much that now seems nonsense, because what seemed useful to faith was thought likely to be true; that there developed and was established a communal mode of thought which had great internal coherence, and which represented the doctrinal unity of Christendom in its political opposition to Islamic society. The strength of this integral group, or series, of opinions, what we may call this established canon, proved to be so great as to survive the break-up of European ideological unity, both the division into Catholic and Protestant, and the growth of agnosticism and atheism. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1509

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the vault’s core thread on how ‘Islam’ is constructed as the West’s constitutive outside — this canon-survival claim parallels Anidjar’s argument about the persisting Jew/Arab enemy structure.
• QUESTION: What exactly is the mechanism that let a religiously-rooted polemic canon survive into secular/atheist Europe? That continuity claim is the spine of the book and worth chasing.