The Towneley Cycle featured Prophet Muhammad as “the god of the Jews,” a character that “embodies the fulfillment of Old Testament villains and a warning of the approaching Apocalypse.” The Towneley Crucifixion also included tyrants like Herod and Pilate, who instructed the audience to remove their hats and prostrate flat on the ground as if performing the Islamic prayer, in another reference to the tyrant's god—Muhammad. In the same play, “the soldiers who crucified Christ invoke 'Mahowne' as if they were Moslems not Romans.”

XREF: Connects to the broader literature on medieval Christian perceptions of Islam and anti-Muslim polemic, as well as Orientalism's early roots.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 167