Conversion of churches into mosques was framed as profanation justifying reconquest

Evidence

Having forged his new law, “in which he speaks as one who is delirious,” Muhammad “like a magician seduced barbarous peoples through fantastic delusions,” and his Saracens through war subdued the world, oppressing Christians from the north to the Mediterranean and from India to the west—to Spain, where “once many priests swore holy allegiance to God, now evil men give supplication to the execrable Muhammad, and the churches which were consecrated by the hands of bishops have now become profane temples.” Mark presents the conversion of churches into mosques as a profanation or pollution; the reconquest of these places by Christian rulers, who will have them duly purified and reconsecrated by bishops, is implicitly legitimate. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 950

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘On Sacrifice’ and to the broader theme in the corpus of sacred-space defilement and purification rituals as political instruments — reconsecration as a rite of power.
• SEED: Angle: how the pollution/reconsecration ritual logic — rather than law or theology — legitimated territorial conquest in medieval Christian doctrine.
• XREF: connects to: Christian writers nursed live resentment over churches converted into mosques