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Western polemics flared up, above all, around the person and the life of Muhammad.. To the Christian Middle Ages he was what he still is to some Christian theologians: the deceitful heretic, the false prophet. One of the Fathers of the Church, the Greek John of Damascus, saw Muhammad as the Anti-Christ; Dante called him the 'seminator di scandalo e di scisma'. Muhammad is described as the first of the accursed ones: Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze, He eyed me, with his hands laid his breast bare, And cried, "Now mark how I do rip me: lo! How is Mohammed mangled: before me Walks Ali weeping, from the chin his face Cleft to the forelock; and the others all, Whom here thou seest, while they lived, did sow Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent."
(136:1)
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