Thirteenth-century chroniclers framed Muslim rule as founded on deceit and stolen Christian learning

Evidence

For Lucas de Tuy, Muslim rule in Spain is based on violence and deceit: a deceiving pseudoprophet who urges his faithful to conquest through bogus revelations and fake miracles; shifty characters such as Teodistus and Avicenna who steal Christian Spain’s intellectual property and claim it as their own. But Isidore’s León is on the move, and thanks to the saint and the kings of León Christian victory is imminent. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 943

Categorization

• XREF: Here is a medieval root of the modern trope that Muslim/Arab civilization merely filched Greek knowledge from Europe — the theft-and-deceit framing grounding contemporary anti-Islamic intellectual claims.
• DEFINE: ‘Violence and deceit’ as the dual founding charge against Islam, each later developed into its own modern discourse strand.