Medieval Christian portrayals of Islam grew from conquered dhimmi anxieties about apostasy

Evidence

The portrayals of Islam presented in this book found their first expression in the defensive ruminations of Christian dhimmis subjected to a vigorous new Muslim empire. The earliest Christian authors to describe the Muslim conquest and dominion of the Christian Roman empire reiterated the standard topoi used since the Hebrew prophets to explain their subjugation: the Muslim invader was a scourge sent by God to punish his wayward flock. As Christians got to know Islam better, and as they saw with growing alarm that their correligionaries were converting to Islam, they portrayed the rival faith as a Christological heresy, a worldly religion cleverly crafted by the cunning heresiarch Muhammad to dupe an uncouth and lascivious people into following him. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1358

Categorization

• XREF: Load-bearing for the vault: the Muhammad-as-cunning-heresiarch and lascivious-people stereotypes trace to conquered dhimmi psychological pressures, not mere ignorance — complicating Said-based readings that treat the image as top-down imperial fabrication.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether the ‘unruly and lascivious people’ trope fed later racialized portrayals of Muslims as sexually ungovernable.