Medieval Christians identified Muhammad with Behemoth, Leviathan, and the Antichrist

Evidence

The dominant vision expressed in medieval Christian writings about Islam’s founder is that he was a monster who begot a monstrous race, a sexual monster with impressive powers, including a super-supply of semen—a gift that is magically transferred to all Muslim men, who, according to at least one text, had penises the size of trees. Early Christians often identified Muhammad with Biblical monsters. In one example, Alvarus identifies the Prophet with both Behemoth and Leviathan. Pope Innocent III claimed that Muhammad was the Antichrist: A certain son of perdition, Muhammad the pseudo-prophet, arose. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 126

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The Biblical-monster identification directly answers the reader’s question about which monster figures recur and what anxiety each carries - here apocalyptic anxiety.

Related

• Medieval Christians imagined Muhammad as a monstrous race-begotter with magical sexual powers (similarity 0.91)
• Since the early medieval period, Christendom largely viewed Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a false prophet, a servant of Satan, or the Antichrist. (similarity 0.88)
• The monster-Muhammad’s sexual deviance was imagined to spread to all Muslim men (similarity 0.84)
• The Crusades introduced the figure of Muhammad as the anti-Christ into European thought (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians read the Antichrist prophecy as prefiguring Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Europeans imagined Muslims as multiple monsters before any real contact (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian identity defined itself as normative humanity with all else monstrous (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval sexual fantasies about Muhammad later transferred to all Muslim men (similarity 0.79)
• Theological explanations blamed Christian corruption and cast Muslims as God’s punishing instrument (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Christendom defined itself by expelling threatening forces beyond its perimeter (similarity 0.79)
• Christian writers modernized the ancient Antichrist tradition by adding Muhammad as its newest precursor. (similarity 0.79)
• The Muslim monster image first emerged in eighth-century Christian polemics about Muhammad (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Muslim monsters were assembled from classical, biblical, and ethnic-other sources (similarity 0.79)
• Muslims were cast as apocalyptic beasts within Christian eschatology. (similarity 0.79)
• Twelfth-century Christians catalogued Muhammad as a compiler of condemned heresies (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Prideaux related the rise of Muhammad and the bishop of Rome’s claim to reign over all churches. Hence, the Antichrist seems at this time to have set both his Feet upon Christendom together, the… #corroborates (0.70)
• In colonial America, many Protestants associated Islam and Catholicism with the Antichrist. Indeed, Prideaux related the rise of Muhammad and the bishop of Rome’s claim to reign over all churches.… #corroborates (0.70)
• Colonial Protestants yoked Islam and Catholicism together as twin Antichrist powers #complicates (0.55) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 166
• Church persecution as doctrine caused the emergence of Muslim monsters #expands (0.50) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 84
• Drake viewed the Roman Catholic Church as a false church administered by Antichrist #responds-to (0.40) — John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, 56