Muslim monsters were depicted as cannibals who ate their enemies.

Evidence

The identification of Jews as dogs—ravenous, wild, and cannibalistic—continued for centuries. In the eighteenth century, Jewish dogs were accused of eating children, narratives based on late medieval and Renaissance paintings of Jews and Muslims killing Christian children. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 232 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The authentic Muslim monsters in early cinema are grotesque, subhuman figures.; Hell’s paintings filled with Jewish, Muslim, and African monsters torturing humans.; The cannibal Muslim monster expressed Christian fear of bodily corruption (+8 more)

Related

• Jews and Muslims shared a canine monstrous identity in medieval literature (similarity 0.88)
• Torturers’ animalization of detainees mirrored the medieval monster image of Muslims (similarity 0.86)
• Dog-headed men served medieval art as both Jew and Muslim monsters of evil (similarity 0.85)
• Bestiaries transferred Jewish monstrous symbols onto Muslim characters (similarity 0.84)
• Hell’s paintings filled with Jewish, Muslim, and African monsters torturing humans. (similarity 0.84)
• Blood-libel imagery linked Jews and Muslims eating Christian children. (similarity 0.84)
• The dark-skinned Muslim monster persisted from medieval iconography into American imaginations (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval anti-Jewish monster imagery supplied the template for the Muslim monster (similarity 0.84)
• Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval writers represented Jewish and Muslim bodies as jointly diseased and degenerate (similarity 0.83)
• Muslims were ideologically collapsed into heretics, Jews, and the devil by Christian writers. (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians inhabited a world where monsters coexisted with humans everywhere (similarity 0.83)
• Renaissance art showed Muslims and Jews murdering and eating Christian children (similarity 0.83)
• Christian art associated Jews with barking dogs and cannibal violence (similarity 0.82)
• Jews and Muslims shared the dog-headed monster linked to the devil in Christendom (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Fears of dismemberment shaped medieval cannibalism myths about Muslims #corroborates (0.70)
• Blood-libel imagery linked Jews and Muslims eating Christian children. #corroborates (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 232
• Medieval Muslim-monster imagery persists today through Gothic horror and Orientalism #expands (0.60)
• Oriental villains shaped the Muslim monsters of Gothic horror #expands (0.50)
• Islamophobia’s growth is furthered by savagery attributed to Islam’s victims #expands (0.50)
• Torturers’ animalization of detainees mirrored the medieval monster image of Muslims #complicates (0.40)
• Medieval female Muslim monsters fused misogyny and racism #expands (0.40) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 189
• Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering #expands (0.40)