Medieval sexual fantasies about Muhammad later transferred to all Muslim men

Evidence

Norman Daniel has conducted one of the most authoritative studies on the image of Islam generated by the intellectual elite in the West from the early twelfth century to the middle of the fourteenth. His book Islam and the West shows that key among their various lines of attack was the argument that Islam’s revelations were “pseudo-prophecies,” based not only on the authority of Christian scriptures but also on the notion that Muhammad could not be a prophet. Instead, Muhammad was cast as “a low-born and pagan upstart, who schemed himself into power, who maintained it by pretended revelations, and who spread it both by violence and by permitting to others the same lascivious practices he indulged himself.” We see at this stage the association of Islam with violence, a theme that would recur over the centuries. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 66 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Film transformed a gentlemanly captivity into a Muslim-monster fantasy; Muslim monsters are repositories of erotic taboo, not just fear.; History invents phantasms — fantasies attached to Muslim bodies — that remain powerful (+4 more)

Related

• Medieval elites first linked Islam and Muhammad to violence and sexual deviance (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval and colonial Europeans projected obsessive sexual-masculinity fantasies onto Muslim men (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval sexual slanders against Muhammad attached to all Muslim men (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval sexual slanders against one man were generalized to all Muslims and persist today (similarity 0.84)
• The monster-Muhammad’s sexual deviance was imagined to spread to all Muslim men (similarity 0.83)
• Modern Islamophobic rhetoric manufactures sexualized fantasies about Muslim men (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians imagined Muhammad as a monstrous race-begotter with magical sexual powers (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim sexual monstrosity fantasies persisted from medieval claims into the colonial croco-sapien (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim monsters are repositories of Western desires as much as fears (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christian texts fabricated Muslim sexual superstitions that persisted into colonial-era mythology. (similarity 0.82)
• Modern Muslim monsters rest on medieval fantasies (similarity 0.82)
• Muslim monsters are marked by toxic hyper-masculinity or sexually toxic femininity. (similarity 0.82)
• German Turcica manufactured lurid tales of Muslim sexual deviance (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christian polemicists sexualized Muhammad into a monstrous hyperfertile pimp (similarity 0.81)
• Even real distant creatures became Muslim monsters through imagined sexual monstrosity (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Medieval elites first linked Islam and Muhammad to violence and sexual deviance #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 66
• Muslim sexual monstrosity fantasies persisted from medieval claims into the colonial croco-sapien #expands (0.60)
• Medieval genitalia fantasies persisted into colonial-era European mythology #expands (0.55)
• Medieval Muslim monsters inherited Classical categories and predated real encounters. #complicates (0.40)