Medieval Christianity treated Jews and Muslims as equivalent infideles long before modern anti-Semitism

Evidence

It may be that medievalists have something to contribute to this painful debate; long before the development of the term anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century, the image of the Jew and the Muslim were complexly intertwined. Allan and Helen Cutler argued several years ago that “medieval anti-Semitism … was primarily a function of anti-Muslimism,” while Jeremy Cohen has more recently (and more precisely) pointed out that in the medieval “classification of the Jews together with the Muslims,” both are merely “subsets in a larger genus of hermeneutically constructed infideles who undermined the unity of Christian faith.” In canon law, regulations limiting the interactions of Christians with Jews and Muslims treated the latter two as equivalents. Literary texts reflect this interchangeability as well: medieval mystery plays depicting the nativity of Jesus, for example, characterize Herod using the conventions associated with Muslim sultans in the chansons de geste and romances. He is opulently dressed, given to violent rages and, most tellingly, invokes the name of his god, Muhammad (Mahounde). — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 230

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how identity categories are culturally constructed; parallels the ‘hermeneutically constructed infideles’ idea with contemporary constructions of the Muslim in post-9/11 discourse.
• SEED: An article angle: the medieval genealogical roots of conflating Jews and Muslims as interchangeable enemies — how a single conceptual slot (‘the infidel’) gets refilled across eras.