Medieval Christians used Islam’s marital norms to claim moral superiority

Evidence

For Christians, marriage meant a union with one partner, dissoluble only by death—they thus pointed to Muhammad’s multiple wives as proof of his perversion. (Abraham’s multiple wives, however, were left out of the debate.) Islam permitted men to take four wives, allowed divorce, and even allowed divorced women to remarry. Christians viewed this with horror. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 67

Categorization

• XREF: Selective moral standard (Abraham buried, Muhammad condemned) parallels today’s selective outrage over Muslim vs. allied-state violence. — connects to: Reformation polemics redeployed medieval constructs of Islam unchanged — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 157; Medieval theologians constructed Muslims as a degraded race descending from the slave Hagar; Medieval elites first linked Islam and Muhammad to violence and sexual deviance — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 66 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Accurate knowledge of Islam did not soften early Christian hostility toward it #complicates (0.60) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 132
• The essay critically assesses the contemporary scholarship on Christian Islamophobia, arguing that it often overlooks the internal Christian divisions and portrays Christianity as a monolithic… #complicates (0.55)