Twelfth-century polemics reduced Islam to a carnal cult of lust

Evidence

Alan has clearly culled his ideas from a hostile Christian biography of Muhammad; he later asserts that his corpse was devoured by dogs. He gleaned from this reading the notion that Islam is a depraved cult based on carnal pleasure. This is the gist of most of Alan’s anti-Islamic arguments: he lambasts the Muslims for asserting that God impregnated the Virgin through a material breath (flatus materialis). They hope for carnal pleasures in heaven, interpreting literally the biblical promises of a land of milk and honey. They practice ablutions thinking that water—rather than contrition and confession—can wash away sin. They justify their polygamy by citing the example of the Old Testament patriarchs, when in fact they merely want to satisfy their lust. The Saracens, along with the Jews, misinterpret Old Testament prohibitions against idolatry and polygamy, erroneously accusing Christians of idolatrous worship of images of the saints. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 882

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the claim in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ that moral accusations about bodies are usually class and identity signaling, here directed at an external religion. — connects to: Critics linked Islamic sexual laxity to its doctrines of determinism and paradise; Medieval polemic linked Muslim ablutions to the Venus cult