Medieval polemic framed both Jews and Muslims as uprooted communities lacking spiritual rootedness

Evidence

A further element in Jacques’s critique that is common to his treatment of both Jews and Muslims is the theme of the ‘unconnected community’. The origins of Islam are sought in the semi-deserted city of scarcely civilised people who, having no religious leadership, have become idolaters. These people, who included Jews and ignorant and uncultivated pagans, formed Muhammad’s first followers after his flight from Mecca: ‘Seeing that these poor and uncivilized people were easy to lead, Muhammad built a temple in the city, in which he preached his fantasies and empty beliefs to the ignorant.’ In this matrix of religious error, the loss of doctrinal authority stems from loss of habitat: both lead to lack of spiritual rootedness. Similarly, in his discussion of the Jews, Jacques emphasises the scattering of the Jewish tribes across the Near East, with the result that they lost whatever religious guidance they had, and in consequence developed beliefs and traditions incompatible with their own scriptures. The Jews were eternal exiles whose destiny was to live alongside other peoples but separate from them, and distinguished from them by the mark of Cain. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 215

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘unconnected community’ trope — rootlessness causing doctrinal error — connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism thesis about how Europe constructed a unified image of the exotic East, and to the fear of wandering/mobile populations in the modern state. — connects to: Medieval authors mislabelled Islamic Christian and Jewish influences as heretical sects
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s interest in medieval Christian polemic against out-groups with a new frame: rootlessness as the root cause of false belief.