Western polemicists even at peak ignorance converged on Islam as an easier religion

Evidence

At the extreme of ignorance, remote from all authentic information, very much the same comment was made; the Pisan text represents Muhammad speaking to the people like this: ’… you have established me as king that I may furnish you with an easier religion, by which you may both serve God and freely enjoy the delights of the world’. According to Waltherius, the Prophet taught a return from Christianity to the state of fallen nature: Utque loquar breviter, Adam veterem renovabis This might also be conceived as a return to the spiritual aridity and legalistic thought of the Old Dispensation: lert par toi desacoustumee Et cele de char revenra. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 851

Categorization

• QUESTION: The consistency of the ‘easier religion’ trope across levels of knowledge suggests it did real cultural work — worth asking what social need the trope served.
• XREF: connects to: A fixed polemical image of Islam served Western needs better than firsthand observation did.