Eulogius invented allegations of rape to fuel anti-Muslim hatred among tolerant Cordovans

Evidence

The goal is to inspire hatred for the “oppressors,” and (as wartime propagandists have long known) there is little better way to do so than to accuse the enemy of murder and rape. If most Cordovans seem ready to tolerate Islam with a sort of ecumenical open-mindedness, Eulogius sets out to show that the Muslim is not a friend but a potential rapist of Christ’s virgins. He not only imagines that Muhammad wants to deflower the Virgin Mary but also supposes that the Cordovan authorities want to force Christian virgins Flora and Maria to become prostitutes. … This is a rape of virgins consecrated to God, a rape that, it seems, exists only in Eulogius’s fevered imagination, but that underlines, for him, the brutality and lust of the Muslim, qualities that make him irrevocably other. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 532

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how atrocity propaganda (murder/rape accusations) works throughout history — parallels the WWI-era fabrications discussed in many propaganda histories.
• ADDENDUM: Rape-as-propaganda-to-demonize-the-other resonates with the moral-panic machinery discussed in my materials on cross-cultural scapegoating.