Lateran IV excluded Muslims and Jews from office by classing both as blasphemers

Evidence

Muslims and Jews are also associated in their supposed hostility toward Christians. Both, for Lateran IV, are “blasphemers”; members of both groups parade around in garish clothes during Holy Week, mocking Christians who express their ritual grief at Christ’s Passion. This hostility is specifically invoked to justify the prohibition from holding public office: a “blasphemer” must not be given any power over a Christian. A polemical view of Islam informs the decisions of Lateran IV: the council does not enumerate or distinguish between the different “blasphemies” of the Muslims or the Jews, but it affirms that they are sufficient to justify the exclusion of both from positions of authority. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1018

Categorization

• SEED: A genealogy of the enduring Western trope that religious outsiders are inherently hostile to Christians and therefore unfit for public authority — traces modern suspicions about Muslim officeholders to a thirteenth-century papal council.