Grotesque bodily corruption marked Jews and Muslims as subhuman

Evidence

Often the Jewish and Muslim hybrid characters that exhibited “diseased and debased bodies” were located in the same space, presented as partners in evildoings against Christian innocents. Guibert of Nogent’s descriptions of Jews as being deformed and infectious and Dante’s image of both Muhammad and Ali’s bodily degeneration in hell are but two examples. In Dante’s Inferno, Prophet Muhammad is located in the ninth bolgia of hell, and Lucifer is located in the region of hell identified as the Jewish quarter. Although these cases do not fit the definition of “monster,” the grotesqueness of these Jewish and Muslim bodies helped to alienate these communities from humanity because of their deficient state. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s guiding question about the specific figures — here bodily degeneration, rather than outright monstrosity, functions as the alienation mechanism.