The West’s defining critique of Islam centered on a contrast of indulgence versus asceticism.

Evidence

Yet, in its near-obsession with sordid detail, the West had not lost the capacity to generalise. The comprehensive contrast between the religion of indulgence and that of asceticism and sacrifice was crucial. It had wide application. Among Christians living under Muslim rule apostasy, both for fleshly and for worldly reasons, must have been a considerable temptation, and presumably contributed to the gradual Islamisation of Christian provinces. The criticism of it as a ‘broad way’ of perdition was bound to develop almost as soon as the Islamic state was first founded, and to have flourished wherever Islamic government obtained. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 849

Categorization

• XREF: The West/Islam constitutive-opposition construction—here indulgence-vs-asceticism—is exactly the enemy-genealogy move Anidjar traces; corroborates how Islam is made the West’s defining antithesis.
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘Islam’ as a category was constituted not by positive content but by structural inversion of Christian self-image (indulgence/asceticism).