Early Christian-Muslim Encounters after Bahira

It is intriguing to me that the earliest Christian encounters with Islam were not viewed with an eye towards figuring out who these invaders were or understanding why they were invading, but rather saw them as an instrument of God’s judgment against Christians. It also seems strange that the immediate reaction of the Christians was to write accounts of the impending apocalypse, because that does not appear to be a natural reaction to invasion by those who would eventually be seen as heretics. This gives rise to several questions that are not addressed by the author.

The very early incidence of the Christian account detailing the encounter between Muhammad and Bahira necessarily implies that the Christians viewed Muhammad to be influenced and educated by a heretic from among the Christians. Indeed, this is attested by several later Christian authors who see the “Mohamedans” as heretics. Yet, the earliest accounts of the interactions between Christians and Muslims are markedly different from the accounts of interactions between “orthodox Christians” and “heretics” (ex. the Melkites against the Maronites, or the Chalcedonians against the non-Chalcedonians). The “orthodox” never considered the attack by a heterodox group to be divinely authorized punishment for a wayward Church in the way that they did with the Muslims.

Perhaps some contextualization would be helpful here. Was the Christian view of Muslims as heretics not as prevalent in the earliest stages of encounter between the two groups as it was a century or two later? If so, how did that perspective develop, and how did it change the trajectory of the interaction between the two?