Guidance To The Uncertain In Reply To The Jews And The Nazarenes

In his book Islam and the west Norman Daniel wrote: People
seem to take it for granted that alien society is dangerous, if not hostile,
and the spasmodic outbreaks of warfare between Islam and Christendom throughout
history has been one manifestation of this. Apparently, under the pressure of
their own sense of danger, whether real or not, beliefs take shape in men's
minds. By misapprehension and misrepresentation, a notion of ideas and beliefs
of one society can pass into the accepted myth of another society in a form so
distorted that its relation to the original facts is sometimes barely
discernible. Doctrines that are the expression of the spiritual outlook of an
enemy are interpreted ungenerously and with prejudice and even the facts are
modified to suit the interpretation. This process began among the Greeks whom
the Arab armies conquered when they occupied Syria ... St John of Damascus,born
fifty years after the Hijrah (precedented) The severe attitude of condemning
whatever Muslims believe in. In this Byzantine polemic, the Anatrope, Niceta of
Byzantium does not even try to understand the Qur'an before refuting it. It
follows that the God of Muhammad is really a devil. Enemies of Islam, whatever
their motives, will always exploit much the same facts, as recently did Salman
Rushdies Satanic Verses. As they (Christians) resented the doctrines of Islam
and saw them in the light of their own misconceptions, they inevitably deformed
them. Anti-Islamic polemic inhibited any possible empathy with Muslims. The
main attack on Islam was already determined in the thirteenth century. Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziah, a contemporary to the outcome of these polemics against
Islam, the Age of Decline, did not restrict himself from delivering tit-for-tat
replies, and sometimes he went overboard in some of his descriptions equally
demeaning the Christians and the Jews.