Medieval Christians projected their own mutilation fears onto Muslim monsters

Evidence

Christian attitudes toward the body changed with the Renaissance, due in part to a renewed interest in medicine and the sciences. During earlier centuries, there was a fear of bodily mutilation and dismemberment, an anxiety that contributed to the resurrection narrative expressed in the cannibalism mythologies that dominated medieval narratives featuring Muslim monsters. … The claims made about Chiara’s body suggest that mutilation and resurrection were evidence of “the association of dismemberment and sanctity [that] continued to permeate popular attitudes into the sixteenth century.” Stories of mutilation and death at the hands of a religious enemy allowed the Church to suggest that the existence of miracles was inherent in the only true religion. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 256

Categorization

• XREF: Central to the reader’s projection thesis: the Muslim monster as container for what the West cannot face — here, the fear of bodily dismemberment and doubt about the resurrection.
• DEEPTHINKING: The chain is dense and non-obvious: the Church’s own fear/anxiety about bodily mutilation, plus doubt about whether resurrection really held, got externalized into cannibalism myths about Muslim monsters, which then retroactively proved Christ’s truth — a full projection-justification circuit.