Christians classified Muslims with Jews and heretics as devil-allied enemies of the church

Evidence

The Venerable Bede wrote, “the Saracens occupy the same ideological space as the erring, the worldly and the gentiles in opposition to the spiritual fraternity: in short, as enemies of the church they are in the company of Jews, Philistines, heretics and the devil.” Satan was among the many idols that Muslims were accused of worshipping. One of the earliest references to Muslim devil-worshippers is found in Jerome’s writings, where he refers to a Lucifer-worshipping cult in pre-Islamic, fourth century Arabia. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 142

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core thesis that the Muslim-as-devil image was part of a shared theological category system (demons and heretics), built before real contact.
• QUESTION: The claim of a fourth-century Lucifer-worshipping cult in pre-Islamic Arabia — what is that based on and is it credible, or itself a fabricated ‘fear without an object’?