Medieval Christian writers mocked Islamic eating rules by exaggeration

Evidence

Only the reprobatio noticed the existence of rules that govern eating. Here exaggeration was used as a technique of ridicule. The Hanbali canon that black dogs cannot be eaten because they are jinn was referred directly to the authority of Muhammad; and the rule that the fingers must be licked before they are washed after eating was so stated as to lead to the conclusion, excessive by almost any standards but the most unfriendly, that this rule is ‘unclean, bestial and ridiculous’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1268

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general phenomenon of polemicists from one tradition exaggerating or misreading another tradition’s ritual minutiae — parallels how early modern Europeans described Hindu or Confucian practices as absurd, and how one faith’s serious rule (licking fingers before washing, black dogs as jinn) becomes ‘ridiculous’ when stripped of its theological frame. — connects to: Christians and Muslims historically rejected each other’s fasting as not genuine fasting — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1226