Crusade chroniclers invented an idol of Mahomet to justify violence.

Evidence

The temple of Solomon has become the center of the cult of the pagan idol of Mahummet; for Raymond d’Aguilers, the “blasphemies” that the Saracens performed in the temple (the Dome of the Rock) called down the righteous vengeance of God in the form of a bloody massacre. But Raymond did not say what these “blasphemies” were; Raoul provides a vivid image of them: a silver idol of the pagan god Mahummet. Tancred, first thinking the statue might be one of Mars or Apollo, finally realizes that it is Mahummet, whom he also calls Antichrist. The destruction of this profane image, intruder in the temple of the Lord, provides a dramatic, vindictive climax to the first Crusade. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 662

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of ‘pollution of holy places’ as a justification for crusading, echoed in later Bernard of Clairvaux preaching and in modern rhetoric about sacred geography.
• SEED: Article angle: how fabricated enemies — invented idols, fake blasphemies — function as the necessary precondition for sanctioned mass violence across eras.