ABSTRACT
Not only among the ancient Greeks with authors like Herodotus and Plutarch but also in medieval Islamic civilization there existed an interest in the religions of other civilizations and in religious history as such. The way in which non-Muslims were perceived empirically depended on the information available and also upon the possibilities of direct contact between Muslims and non-Muslims, either inside or outside Muslim territory, and Muslim curiosity about non-Muslim beliefs, practices and ways of life. This chapter describes some basic distinctions made in medieval Muslim thought with regard to non-Muslims. Heretical opinions in the Muslim community could be ascribed to the influence of dhimmi and other foreign doctrines which, it was suspected, had infiltrated Islam together with the entry of new converts. Throughout the polemical literature we can distinguish typical forms of Muslim ideas of truth, mostly of a rather narrow kind useful for polemical purposes.
