Medieval Christians enlisted Muslim philosophers as witnesses against the carnal Paradise

Evidence

The Liber denudationis even goes so far as to claim that Muslims believe that in the next life each Muslim in paradise will be awarded for his virtue by an elongation of his penis: it will be so long, in fact, that he will need seventy Christians and seventy Jews to carry it before him! — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 820 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Christian commentators in all ages, and certainly not least in the Middle Ages, have seen that beatitude to which the Qur’an invites believers as one of the most important disproofs of the Islamic religion. Because Christian thought is wholly bound up in the concept of eternal life, the irrationality of Islam propter finem quam promittit has seemed to Christians so clear a mark of its invalidity. Three distinct bodies of fact, the historical details of Muhammad’s personal life, the requirements of Islamic sexual ethics and the elements in Paradise which the Qur’an delineates were linked together to constitute one single theme. Islam was essentially built upon a foundation of sexual licence which was plainly contrary to the natural and the divine law. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 843 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Learned Muslims, claimed William of Auvergne, realised that through these ideas Muhammad ‘was made ridiculous before the whole world’; later, Ramén Marti would insist, with a wealth of illustrations, that even the Muslim philosophers, ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and al-Farabi, made eternal beatitude consist in the knowledge and love of God. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 822 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The carnal Paradise was the central symbol of Christian anti-Islam polemic; Medieval Christian polemicists caricatured Muslim paradise beliefs with absurd bodily inventions — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 820; Medieval Christians treated Qur’anic Paradise as proof of Islam’s invalidity — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 843 (+2 more)

Related

• Medieval Christians treated Qur’anic Paradise as proof of Islam’s invalidity (similarity 0.91)
• The carnal Paradise was the central symbol of Christian anti-Islam polemic (similarity 0.91)
• Medieval Christian polemicists caricatured Muslim paradise beliefs with absurd bodily inventions (similarity 0.90)
• Medieval Christians dismissed the Islamic Paradise as intellectually embarrassing (similarity 0.89)
• Medieval polemicists ridiculed Islamic paradise for its alleged carnal absurdities. (similarity 0.82)
• Critics linked Islamic sexual laxity to its doctrines of determinism and paradise (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval polemicists called the Muslim Paradise a brothel and tavern (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christian polemic mocked Muslim sexual mores to discredit the Koran (similarity 0.81)
• A medieval chronicler portrayed Muslim paradise as carnal reward for killing Christians (similarity 0.81)
• Christian writers framed Muslim paradise as carnal reward for killing Christians (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian polemic interpreted Qur’anic texts as nastily as possible (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade-era polemic framed Islam as carnally licentious and militarily coercive against Christian love (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christians derided Muslim bodily pleasures to affirm intellectual superiority (similarity 0.79)
• Christian polemicists portrayed medieval Muslim sexuality as wholly unregulated (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Christian critics mirrored modern assumptions about Muslim shrine devotion (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Medieval Christian polemicists caricatured Muslim paradise beliefs with absurd bodily inventions #corroborates (0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 820
• Medieval Christians treated Qur’anic Paradise as proof of Islam’s invalidity #exemplifies (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 843
• Medieval Christians dismissed the Islamic Paradise as intellectually embarrassing #corroborates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 822
• Medieval Christian scholars exaggerated Islam’s internal religion-philosophy conflicts. #responds-to (0.75)