Apocalyptic authors ranked Muslim rule as milder punishment than the flood.

Evidence

Yet, far from being a sign that God has abandoned Christians or that he prefers the Ishmaelites, the invasions are a just, even mild, punishment for the sexual sins of Christians. The only other mention of such sexual deviance in the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius is during the second millennium, when “the women were openly running after the men and, like mares in a wild herd, the women, and the men too, had gone mad in an excess of fornication.” The punishment then was the flood; in comparison, seventh-century Christians suffering under the yoke of the Ishmaelites could feel that they were getting off with a light sentence. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 320

Categorization

• SEED: The rhetorical move of ‘your conquerors are actually a light punishment’ — a pattern worth an essay on how subjugated peoples rationalize ongoing rule as comparative mercy.