Medieval Christian writers invented Islam as pagan idolatry with a false god Mahoumet

Evidence

These Spanish and Eastern Christians were hostile to Islam but relatively knowledgeable about it. Such is not the case with many medieval European writers, who (as I show in chapter 5) portray the Saracens as idolaters, praying and sacrificing to the statues of a colorful pantheon: Apollo, Tervagant, Jupiter, and especially Mahoumet (or various other garbled versions of the name Muhammad). Ecclesiastical writers schooled in the Latin classics had a vivid image of pagan worship, an image they transposed to create a portrait of the religious error of the “pagan” Saracens. The chroniclers of the first Crusade used this image to glorify and justify the crusaders’ exploits. Epic poets developed the same images in the Chansons de Geste; fourteenth-century dramatists worked them into their passion plays. For many medieval authors, the Saracens were pagan idolaters. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the vault’s Islamophobia genealogy claims (Anidjar/Aziz/Razack) — the medieval template of the enemy religion as idolatrous false worship that these scholars trace as the root of contemporary Islam-West opposition.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ and sacrifice articles by showing the parallel Christian fabrication of pagan/Saracen idolatry for polemical purposes.
• SEED: The ‘garbled versions of the name Muhammad’ becoming a ‘god’ (Mahoumet/Mahound) is a rich genealogy-of-trope angle: a prophet’s name becoming a false deity’s name in the enemy’s imagination.