Accusations of retorturing Christ were transferred from pagans to Jews

Evidence

Throughout the Middle Ages, Muslims were often described as “tainted with Judaism.” Christian theologians argued that both Jewish and Muslim religious practices were flawed and heretical, and furthermore, that they were collaborators, either in conspiring to undo the Church or—and this is where the monsters often appear—mutilating and killing Christian men, women, and children. Renaissance paintings of the crucifixion, the martyrdom of saints, and other scenes often feature Jewish and Muslim (typically, Turkish) figures participating in these crimes. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 163 (#complicates, via linked claim)

At the heart of the religious nationalism used to motivate and justify the assault on Bosnia, and on Bosnian Muslims in particular, is the same myth of the Christ killer that was exploited in the past to instigate attacks on Jews. How Muslims, a people whose religion began six centuries after Jesus, could have been singled out for genocide as Christ killers and race traitors is a tale this book seeks to tell. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 50 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In terms of explanations, with only a few exceptions, until the Nazi era, it was assumed in the non-Jewish world that the Jews had brought on their own misfortune. In Christian tradition, the accusation of deicide, followed by Jewish “stubbornness” in not recognizing Jesus as the messiah, explained and justified the continuing pariah status and persecution of the Jews, typified by the construction in popular culture of the “wandering Jew,” forever doomed to live in miserable exile. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 483 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Jews were repudiated as internal to Christendom while Muslims were repudiated from outside; Christian theology structurally cast Jews as the demonic doubles of Christians from its beginnings — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 930; Christian eucharistic anxiety generated the blood-libel fantasy against Jews — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 893 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Jews were repudiated as internal to Christendom while Muslims were repudiated from outside #complicates (0.90)
• Christian theology structurally cast Jews as the demonic doubles of Christians from its beginnings #complicates (0.90) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 930
• Christian polemicists fabricated the content of pre-Islamic paganism #complicates (0.90) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 465
• Medieval Christians conflated Jews and Muslims into shared monster figures #complicates (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 162
• Christians imagined Muslims as Jewish co-conspirators in killing Christ #complicates (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 97
• Christians treated Jews and Muslims as interchangeable enemies in art #complicates (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 251
• Defensive Jewish polemics against Jesus provoked Christian book burnings. #complicates (0.90) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 154
• Christian and Muslim mutual denunciations paradoxically revealed their shared Jewish roots #complicates (0.90) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 317
• Medieval Christianity split Jews into heroic biblical past and servile present #complicates (0.90) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 204
• Theology branded Muslims as tainted collaborators with Jews against Christendom #complicates (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 163
• Christians commonly labeled Muslims ‘pagans’ and equated the terms in medieval Latin Christendom #complicates (0.90)
• The anti-Muslim genocide reused the Christ-killer myth once aimed at Jews #complicates (0.90) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 50
• Victim-blaming rationalized Jewish persecution from early Christianity through the pre-Nazi era. #complicates (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 483
• Christian eucharistic anxiety generated the blood-libel fantasy against Jews #complicates (0.85) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 893
• Jews prefigured Orientalized others as inside-yet-outside Western Christendom #complicates (0.85)