Beginning with Pseudo-Methodius, both religious and secular writers associated or identified the followers of prophet Muhammad with the monstrous races. Throughout the protracted struggle (has it ever ended?), the Black Saracen is often depicted as a minion of the devil, a child of fornication, a crude outlaw covered with hair and wielding a club. In medieval sources, Muhammad himself becomes a Christian heretic who is thrown on a dung heap to be devoured by dogs and pigs. The mid-thirteenth century Pseudo-Turpin describes the Muslim Saracen warriors battling Charlemagne as “horned demonic Lares” (i.e., man-eating cynocephalics).

XREF: Links to broader medieval othering of non-Christian peoples, connecting to the monstrous races tradition and Orientalist discourse that continued into modern eras. Could also connect to postcolonial theory about dehumanizing the colonial/religious other. QUESTION: How did this medieval dehumanization evolve or persist in modern anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy? Also worth tracing the specific line from Pseudo-Methodius to later medieval depictions.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 222