In the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims, the lack of awareness about Islam is easily explained. Christians simply did not show much curiosity in learning about Islam because most Christian authors initially viewed Muslims as a scourge sent from God to punish Christians for their sins. Dionysus of Tel-Mahre, a ninth-century Syrian patriarch, viewed the Muslim invasions of Syria as God's punishment of the Byzantine church for embracing Dyophysite theology—that is, the belief put forth by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 that Jesus consists of two distinct natures, divine and human, united in one person. There was no shortage of Byzantine theologians to adopt the flip side of the coin and maintain that God was punishing the Monophysites, those who rejected the Chalcedonian position and insisted on the divine and human natures merging into one nature in the person of Jesus. Both sides shared in common the hope that God might lift the scourge if genuine repentance ensued. Few thought it worth the trouble to study the religious beliefs of Muslims in order to find relief from divine chastisement.

XREF: Connects to the general theme of how religious rivals frame enemies as divine punishment, paralleling similar dynamics in other historical religious encounters.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 123