Medieval Christian polemicists appealed selectively to Muslims’ own asceticism

Evidence

Ricoldo, while he asserted the irrationality of Iskamic law in this matter, was content not to argue in detail, except in relation to the material Paradise. He liked to appeal to impartial tribunals in the abstract; to the Philosophers, even to the Muslims themselves: among all men, and even among Muslims, he for example asserted, it is thought more virtuous to abstain (from eating and copulating ) than to indulge. “The Muslims themselves have contemplatives and ascetics whom they especially praise.’ … Lull gave his personal touch to traditional arguments. He objected to polygyny that it caused women to sin mentally (by desire, because they must have less satisfaction individually) more than Christian women do. There is often a clownish element in Lull’s notions, although in this case what at first sight seems whimsical may have a certain Justification in the closed female societies of the magnates’ harims. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 813