I apologize I missed your reply I think the passage relevant and should be included possibly as a quote but needs to be shortened greatly and quoted to focus on Muhammad the subject of this article rather than the Orient The point seems to be that western authors writing for a European audience would portray Muhammad as alien as a literary technique to provide a contrast with the familiar Perhaps Said could be quoted like this In Dantes Inferno Islam and its designated representatives are creatures of Western geographical historical and above all moral apprehension  Mohammed  is fixed in a visionary cosmology  fixed laid out boxed in imprisoned without much regard for anything except their function and the patterns they realize on the stage on which they appear What  Dante tried to do in the Inferno is  to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience manager and actors are for Europe and only for Europe Hence the vacillation between the familiar and the alien Mohammed is always the imposter familiar because he pretends to be like the Jesus we know and always the Oriental alien because although he is in some ways like Jesus he is after all not like him  I hope that captures the correct emphasis I would need to be distilled further for this article due to its length and undue weight concerns although the article Medieval Christian views on Muhammad might benefit from a longer version