Medieval polemicists recast Muhammad’s peaceful deathbed as sexual defilement to condemn Islam.

Evidence

For Ramon Martí, missionary friar under a vow of celibacy, the most false and shocking thing about Muhammad and his followers is their sexual practices: polygamy, homosexuality, even sex in heaven! This gulf of incomprehension flavors Martí’s portrayal of Muhammad’s death. Earlier polemicists related horrendous fables about Muhammad’s shameful murder and the defilement of his corpse by pigs or dogs. The Muslim story of his death, by contrast, shows him surrounded by his loved ones, peacefully dying with his head in the lap of his beloved wife ‘A’isha. For Muslims, this touching scene emphasizes Muhammad’s humanity (just as, for Christians, the birth and death of Christ emphasize his humanity). Yet Martí is unable to see anything other than filth in this scene: “When he died he had his head between ‘A’isha’s breast and her chin, and she mixed her saliva with that of Muhammad. In this way the death or end of Muhammad was vile, unclean, and abominable. And such a death is in no way appropriate for a prophet or a messenger of God.” In a standard Christian deathbed scene, an attentive priest would hear confession and administer communion and extreme unction, and the dying man would prepare his soul to meet its maker. Instead of the Body of Christ, Martí seems to be implying, Muhammad’s last solace was the saliva of profane kisses; instead of the anointing hand of a priest, he is caressed by the breasts of a woman; instead of confessing and turning away from sin, he is clinging desperately to it. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1203

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how religious polemic distorts the benign aspects of an out-group’s practice — parallels the dress-policing theme where neutral customs get criminalized.
• DEEPTHINKING: Shows how the very same scene — Muhammad dying in A’isha’s lap — reads as humanity to Muslims and as abomination to a celibate friar; a mirror-image demonstration that what a culture treasures and what it reviles can be the identical fact. The parallel mapping of Christ’s birth/death emphasizes humanity vs. Muhammad’s death emphasizing humanity — yet one is holy, the other filthy.

Related

• Medieval polemicists recast Muhammad’s tender deathbed scene as sexual filth. (similarity 0.93)
• Medieval Christians read Muhammad’s ordinary humanity as religious failure. (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christian polemic weaponized Muhammad’s unascended body against his prophethood (similarity 0.82)
• The Jesus–Muhammad binary already structured medieval Christian polemic in full form (similarity 0.78)