Anti-Muslim polytheism charges were deliberate Crusade propaganda

Evidence

This is a potent ideological cocktail. The Saracen pagan king, inspired by the demons whose idols he worships, lusts after pure Christian boys and decapitates them when they do not surrender their bodies to him. In fury, he directs his flaming sword against those Christian provinces such as Galicia whose people rebel against the cult of the idols. The interior Christian minority and the exterior Christian enemy are both threatened by this diabolical power. Hrotsvitha makes no call to war, does not urge Christian knights to aid their oppressed Spanish brethren. But it is easy to see how this view of the pagan other could (and would) subsequently be used to justify war against Saracen “pagans”—and against Wendish or Lithuanian pagans closer to Gandersheim. Many earlier authors assumed that the Saracens or Arabs continued to observe the same cults as had their pagan ancestors. Yet Hrotsvitha is the first Latin author to describe this paganism in lurid detail and to use it to justify resistance against Saracen rule. This strategy will become common two centuries later, as the writers on the first Crusade glorify and justify the killing of Saracens by Christian knights. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600 (#expands, via linked claim)

Two eighth-century Byzantine writers followed Anastasius’s lead in presenting Muhammad’s monotheism as a veneer covering his true idolatry. For Nicetas of Byzantium, Muhammad was in fact a devotee of the goddess Khabar: it is her idol the Muslims actually worship in Mecca. Georges the Monk gives a fraudulent translation of the Arabic Allahu akbar! (God is great!) that dhimmi would constantly hear intoned from minarets. He transcribes it as Allah wa Koubar, and he says that it means “God and Koubar”; the latter, he explains, is the Saracens’s name for the moon and Aphrodite. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 305 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muslims rejected the Trinity as polytheism and carnal generation; The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda; Medieval crusade propaganda recycled hostile legends about Muhammad for effect (+5 more)

Related

• The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda (similarity 0.90)
• Byzantine polemicists twisted Muslim monotheism into idolatry claims (similarity 0.82)
• Byzantine polemicists reworked Muslim monotheism as disguised polytheism (similarity 0.82)
• Image-veneration was a genuine doctrinal wedge between the two faiths (similarity 0.82)
• Saracen idolatry imagery was Crusade propaganda, but originated pre-Crusade (similarity 0.82)
• Crusaders justified conquest by recasting Muslims as pagan Roman idolaters (similarity 0.81)
• Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade-era writers invented Saracen idolatry to justify their own violence (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade chroniclers cast Muslims as pagan idolaters to justify retaking Jerusalem (similarity 0.80)
• A twelfth-century German chronicler accurately described Muslim monotheism against lurid crusader legend (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Christian writers invented Islam as pagan idolatry with a false god Mahoumet (similarity 0.79)
• An epic poem converted Muhammad into a powerless idol to justify crusade conquest (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Medieval crusade propaganda recycled hostile legends about Muhammad for effect #corroborates (0.95)
• Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade #expands (0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600
• Byzantine polemicists twisted Muslim monotheism into idolatry claims #exemplifies (0.82) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 305
• Crusade polemic framed Muslim iconoclasm as proof of implacable enmity #expands (0.80)
• Saracen idolatry imagery was Crusade propaganda, but originated pre-Crusade #qualifies (0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 591
• The Crusades introduced the figure of Muhammad as the anti-Christ into European thought #expands (0.78) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 179