Medieval Christians attributed Islamic morals to climate and carnal weakness

Evidence

Muhammad taught whatever he thought would best please, and especially lust, which was the particular temptation of orientals, who live in a climate of great natural heat. It was often said that there was something brutish as well as carnal in the Arabs, or in the religion which was suited to their tastes. Islam positively exploited universal human weakness: ‘the religion that he established and the commandments that he gave were such as men are prone to even without commandments’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 815

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the climate-determinism tradition (Montesquieu, Ibn Khaldun) and to the author’s broader ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article about cultural moral attributions. — connects to: Medieval Christians explained Islamic licentiousness through Arab climate and temperament; Medieval fixation on genital washing mirrored Christian obsession with Islamic sexual sin