Victorian missionary discourse framed Islam as a synthesis of mundane appeal and coercion.

Evidence

In 1892, a publication of the Church of England’s Church Missionary Society (CMS) credited the prophet’s success to a combined strategy of carrot and stick, arguing that Muhammad took a decrepit form of Judaism and Christianity and “added to it elements of worldliness and sensuality which rendered it acceptable to the natural mind, and by establishing the principle of enforcing his tenets by the sword, he ensured their zealous propagation.” — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 89

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to modern debates about describing Islam through force-versus-pleasure binaries; echoes ‘sword versus sensuality’ tropes still circulating. — connects to: Nineteenth-century Americans and Britons attributed Islam’s spread to coercion rather than persuasion.; Anglo-American observers explained Muslim expansion as caused by inherent religious fanaticism. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 85
• DEFINE: Shows the ‘carrot and stick’ interpretive template that shaped colonial and missionary understanding of Islamic expansion.