Christianity and Islam | Page 6

and she brings forth
Jesus under a palm-tree, near which is a running spring and by the dates
of which she is fed. On her return home she is received with reproaches
by her family but merely points in reply to the new-born babe, who
suddenly speaks from his cradle, asserting that he is the prophet of God.
Afterwards Jesus performs all kinds of miracles, forms birds out of clay
and makes them fly, heals the blind and lepers, raises the dead, etc., and
even brings down from heaven a table ready spread. The Jews will not
believe him, but the youth follow him. He is not killed, but translated to
God. Christians are not agreed upon the manner of his death and the
Jews have invented the story of the Crucifixion.
Muhammed's knowledge of Christianity thus consists of certain
isolated details, partly apocryphal, partly canonical, together with a
hazy idea of the fundamental dogmas. Thus the influence of
Christianity upon him was entirely indirect. The Muhammedan
movement at its outset was influenced not by the real Christianity of
the time but by a Christianity which Muhammed criticised in certain
details and forced into harmony with his preconceived ideas. His
imagination was profoundly impressed by the existence of Christianity
as a revealed religion with a founder of its own. Certain features of
Christianity and of Judaism, prayer, purification, solemn festivals,
scriptures, prophets and so forth were regarded by him as essential to
any religious community, because they happened to belong both to
Judaism and to Christianity. He therefore adopted or wished to adopt
these institutions.
During the period of his life at Medina, Muhammed abandoned his
original idea of preaching the doctrines which Moses and Jesus had
proclaimed. This new development was the outcome of a struggle with
Judaism following upon an unsuccessful attempt at compromise. In
point of fact Judaism and Christianity were as widely different from
one another as they were from his own teaching and he was more than
ever inclined to regard as his special forerunner, Abraham, who had
preceded both Moses and Jesus, and was revered by both religions as
the man of God. He then brought Abraham into connection with the
ancient Meccan Ka'ba worship: the Ka'ba or die was a sacred stone
edifice, in one corner of which the "black stone" had been built in: this

stone was an object of reverence to the ancient Arabs, as it still is to the
Muhammedans. Thus Islam gradually assumed the form of an Arab
religion, developing universalist tendencies in the ultimate course of
events. Muhammed, therefore, as he was the last in the ranks of the
prophets, must also be the greatest. He epitomised all prophecy and
Islam superseded every revealed religion of earlier date.
Muhammed's original view that earlier religions had been founded by
God's will and through divine revelation, led both him and his
successors to make an important concession: adherents of other
religions were not compelled to adopt Islam. They were allowed to
observe their own faith unhindered, if they surrendered without fighting,
and were even protected against their enemies, in return for which they
had to pay tribute to their Muslim masters; this was levied as a kind of
poll-tax. Thus we read in the Qoran (ix. 29) that "those who possess
Scriptures," i.e. the Jews and Christians, who did not accept Islam were
to be attacked until they paid the gizja or tribute. Thus the object of a
religious war upon the Christians is not expressed by the cry "Death or
Islam"; such attacks were intended merely to extort an
acknowledgment of Muhammedan supremacy, not to abolish freedom
of religious observance. It would be incorrect for the most part to
regard the warrior bands which started from Arabia as inspired by
religious enthusiasm or to attribute to them the fanaticism which was
first aroused by the crusades and in an even greater degree by the later
Turkish wars. The Muhammedan fanatics of the wars of conquest,
whose reputation was famous among later generations, felt but a very
scanty interest in religion and occasionally displayed an ignorance of
its fundamental tenets which we can hardly exaggerate. The fact is fully
consistent with the impulses to which the Arab migrations were due.
These impulses were economic and the new religion was nothing more
than a party cry of unifying power, though there is no reason to suppose
that it was not a real moral force in the life of Muhammed and his
immediate contemporaries.
Anti-Christian fanaticism there was therefore none. Even in early years
Muhammedans never refused to worship in the same buildings as
Christians. The various insulting regulations which tradition represents
Christians as forced to endure were directed not so much against the
adherents of another faith as against the barely tolerated