Medieval Christian writers dismissed Muslim paradise as a brothel

Evidence

The Cordoban abbot Speraindeo described jannah in similar terms, writing, “In the next life, they [the Muslims] say, all the faithful shall be carried off to paradise. There beautiful women will be granted to us by God, far more exquisite than the mortal kind and laid on for our delight… . This is not a paradise but a brothel, a most obscene place.” The beautiful women alluded to in these accounts, presented to those who commit violence in the name of Islam, are the houris—black-eyed nymphs who pleasure Muslim men for eternity. A popular theme in medieval discourse about Islam, the trope remains popular today with those who argue that Islam is a perverse and violent religion. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s core thesis: the Muslim monster is manufactured as a projection of Christian anxieties — here, about sexuality.
• SHARE: The ‘paradise is a brothel’ quote from Speraindeo is a vivid, citable line worth sending to someone writing on religious polemic.