Image-veneration was a genuine doctrinal wedge between the two faiths

Evidence

This is a potent ideological cocktail. The Saracen pagan king, inspired by the demons whose idols he worships, lusts after pure Christian boys and decapitates them when they do not surrender their bodies to him. In fury, he directs his flaming sword against those Christian provinces such as Galicia whose people rebel against the cult of the idols. The interior Christian minority and the exterior Christian enemy are both threatened by this diabolical power. Hrotsvitha makes no call to war, does not urge Christian knights to aid their oppressed Spanish brethren. But it is easy to see how this view of the pagan other could (and would) subsequently be used to justify war against Saracen “pagans”—and against Wendish or Lithuanian pagans closer to Gandersheim. Many earlier authors assumed that the Saracens or Arabs continued to observe the same cults as had their pagan ancestors. Yet Hrotsvitha is the first Latin author to describe this paganism in lurid detail and to use it to justify resistance against Saracen rule. This strategy will become common two centuries later, as the writers on the first Crusade glorify and justify the killing of Saracens by Christian knights. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600 (#expands, via linked claim)

Americans have scant opportunity to view the Islamic world except reductively, coercively, oppositionally. The tragedy of this is that it has spawned a set of counterreductions here and in the Islamic world itself. “Islam” can now have only two possible general meanings, both of them unacceptable and impoverishing. To Westerners and Americans, “Islam” represents a resurgent atavism, which suggests not only the threat of a return to the Middle Ages but the destruction of what is regularly referred to as the democratic order in the Western world. For a great many Muslims, on the other hand, “Islam” stands for a reactive counterresponse to this first image of Islam as a threat. Anything said about “Islam” gets more or less forced into the apologetic form of a statement about Islam’s humanism, its contribution to civilization, development, and moral righteousness. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 189 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Images taught the laity as written materials taught the clergy — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1137; Reductive images of Islam spawn mirror-image apologetic counterreductions — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 189; Christian hagiography provided the visual vocabulary for demonizing Muslims — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 60 (+2 more)

Related

• Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade (similarity 0.85)
• The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda (similarity 0.85)
• Proximity to Islam led Christians to abandon the idolatrous image of Saracens (similarity 0.83)
• Crusaders justified conquest by recasting Muslims as pagan Roman idolaters (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-Muslim polytheism charges were deliberate Crusade propaganda (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery (similarity 0.82)
• Latin Christendom’s first portraits of Islam reused the template of pagan idolatry. (similarity 0.82)
• Crusade-era writers invented Saracen idolatry to justify their own violence (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian writers invented Islam as pagan idolatry with a false god Mahoumet (similarity 0.81)
• Saracen idolatry imagery was Crusade propaganda, but originated pre-Crusade (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval polemicists framed Muslim image-abhorrence as savage iconoclasm (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade chroniclers framed Saracens as pagans whose defeat advanced Christian eschatology (similarity 0.80)
• Christians refashioned real Muslim persecutors into classical-style idolaters for hagiography (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christians were already debating icon veneration when confronted by Muslims (similarity 0.80)
• Crusaders justified holy war by calling Muslims pagan idolaters (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Christian-Muslim controversy necessarily centers on their fixed points of doctrinal disagreement #complicates (0.80)
• Reductive images of Islam spawn mirror-image apologetic counterreductions #qualifies (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 189
• Depicting Muslims as idolaters supplied the first textual justification for crusade #expands (0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 600
• Images taught the laity as written materials taught the clergy #expands (0.72) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1137
• Christian hagiography provided the visual vocabulary for demonizing Muslims #exemplifies (0.72) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 60