A Brief Account on the History of the Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Muslim Polemic
A Brief Account on the History of the Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Muslim Polemic

Summary/Abstract: The millennium-long history of the Christian-Muslim polemic originates, in a certain sense, in the sacred book of the Muslims, the Koran, itself. The attitude towards Christians, their teaching and their manners found in the Koran is complex and to some degree ambivalent. It does not necessarily disapprove of Christianity or mock Christian practices. Nevertheless, the Koran explicitly and unequivocally rebuts two principal teachings of Christianity: the doctrine of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation. In fact, the doctrine of the Incarnation is rarely attacked directly. For instance, in sūra 3 the central issue is the Jewish refusal to recognize Muhammad as a Prophet, and it is only in this context that the story of Jesus’ birth from Mary and his life as God’s messenger is told, so that this story works as a kind of precedent for Jewish unbelief in God’s prophets. Similar references are present in sūras 4 and 61. Jesus, son of the righteous virgin Mary, is described in the Koran as one in the long sequence of prophets like Noah, Abraham, Moses and others; this sequence is completed and finalized by Muhammad and the revelation of the Koran, which stands in continuity with, and is the culmination and the finalization of, all earlier revelations.

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