Excerpt from Mohammed and Mohammedanism: Critically Considered

As in nature, so in history, objects assume a different aspect according to the standpoint from which they are contemplated. In the suitability of the different stand points also there is a gradation from the worst to the best.

As a rule, the higher and freer the standpoint, the more serviceable it is for obtaining a correct view. He would be a bold man who affirmed that he had so entirely exhausted the momentous subject of Islam and its Prophet, as to leave nothing more to be done by those who follow after. Taking for granted that my predecessors, whose merits I gratefully acknowledge, rather wished to encourage than prohibit further research, I kept my eyes open, whilst following in the way they had trodden, and judged for myself, as they had done before me. The intelligent reader, by accompany ing me on the stern and bracing march of research, will be able to say, whether I have succeeded in observing here and there what had been left unnoticed by those who went before me, and in occasionally placing in a fuller and truer light what was already known.

I would especially invite the thoughtful reader to direct his attention to the manner in which I have traced the development of Mohammed into the prophet he became; to the inward harmony which I have shown to exist between his Meccan and Medinan periods, notwithstanding their out ward dissimilarity; to the large mythical element in the Moslem biographies which I have laid bare, together with the leading idea from which it sprang; and to the peculiar character of the Mohammedan opposition to Christianity and Christendom, which I have pointed out in its fundamental principle and in its practical manifestation throughout the course of its history. It appears to me almost impossible that any judicious reader could honestly and impartially ponder the grave array of data and records which I unroll before him, without becoming convinced, with me, of the designedly and deeply antichristian character of the entire system of Islamism.

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