Norman Daniel has conducted one of the most authoritative studies on the image of Islam generated by the intellectual elite in the West from the early twelfth century to the middle of the fourteenth. His book Islam and the West shows that key among their various lines of attack was the argument that Islam’s revelations were “pseudo-prophecies,” based not only on the authority of Christian scriptures but also on the notion that Muhammad could not be a prophet. Instead, Muhammad was cast as “a low-born and pagan upstart, who schemed himself into power, who maintained it by pretended revelations, and who spread it both by violence and by permitting to others the same lascivious practices he indulged himself.” We see at this stage the association of Islam with violence, a theme that would recur over the centuries.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism thesis about Western misrepresentations of Islam persisting through centuries.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 66