Muslims were given the legal status of Jews rather than slaughtered like heretics

Evidence

In his work, Michael Camille mentions a painting of Muhammad that depicts him “wounding and attacking Christ,” suggesting that images of Muslims in the same schema as Jewish executioners were in fact produced. Despite the lack of pictorial images, Muslim cynocephalie are portrayed as Christ-killers and the enemies of Christian soldiers in texts. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 221 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These ideas are also extended to Muslims by subsequent legislation. The third Lateran council (1179) prohibited both Jews and Saracens from owning Christian slaves. At a time when the Cathar heretics, denied any legitimate role in Christian society, are slaughtered by the troops of the Albigensian Crusade (and subsequently rooted out by papal inquisitors), Muslims, though theologically classed most often as heretics, are attributed the de facto social status of Jews. Apart from Alfonso X, no Christian legislator of the thirteenth century offers any justification for this association. But the two groups, Muslims and Jews, are increasingly lumped together in ecclesiastical and civil legislation. Muslims are granted a legitimate, subordinate role in the Christian polity, but one which will (along with that of the Jews) become more precarious in the later Middle Ages. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1017 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

There was indeed, from the thirteenth century onward, a growing volume of law restricting the legal status of Jews and Muslims and limiting the “polluting” contacts between Catholics and infidels. Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Church legislation and legal commentaries tended to confirm this trend: for juridical purposes, Muslims were treated as Jews (rather than as pagans or heretics). The principal aim of this legislation was to prevent “contamination” of Christendom through contact with the infidel: sexual contact, social ties, religious contamination through the syncretistic rites of recidivist converts, and so on. The Muslim or Jew, like the leper, needed to be marked, isolated, quarantined, in order to protect the Christian. The twin (and seemingly contradictory) concerns were to keep the Christian community safe from all “contamination” from the infidel (living in the same house with him, being subjected to his power) and to convert the infidel (or at least to remove social and economic impediments to his conversion). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1365 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muslims held that Jews and Christians corrupted their scriptures; Muslims and Jews were equated as blasphemers to bar them from public office; Medieval Christianity treated Jews and Muslims as interchangeable heretics (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Muslims were placed in the same Christ-killer schema as Jews #corroborates (0.95) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 221
• Thirteenth-century canon law treated Muslims juridically as Jews to prevent contamination #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1365
• Thirteenth-century canon law fused Muslims and Jews into one subordinate class #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1017
• Medieval Christianity treated Jews and Muslims as interchangeable heretics #complicates (0.85)
• Jews were repudiated as internal to Christendom while Muslims were repudiated from outside #complicates (0.80)
• Current rhetoric on unassimilable Muslims mirrors centuries-old claims about Jews #complicates (0.80) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 928
• The unassimilability trope once applied to Jews now targets Muslims #complicates (0.75)
• Jewish converts retained a stigma that Muslim converts did not carry #complicates (0.75) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 539
• The Crémieux Decrees granted Jews citizenship while denying it to Muslims #complicates (0.75)