Medieval Christians saw Muslim mosque reverence as surprising propriety

Evidence

Friar Simon remarked how ‘cleanly and really reverently’ mosques were kept. The Liber Nicholay certainly expresses the local knowledge of Christians in places where Islam was practised, when — with surprise at something superfluous? — it describes how there is no spitting in mosques, so that of necessity people must go outside. It was generally understood that Christians defiled a mosque. Ricoldo also did justice to the ordinary reverent treatment of mosques, where men went barefoot and there was no spitting. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1201