These interpretations were naturally identical in manner and differed only as regards place and time. Muhammed had heard of the Jewish Messiah and of the Christian Paraclete, whom, however, he failed to identify with the Holy Ghost and he applied to himself the allusions to one who should come after Moses and Jesus. Thus in the Qoran 61.6 we read, "Jesus, the Son of Mary, said: Children of Israel, I am God's apostle to you. I confirm in your hands the Thora (the law) and I announce the coming of another apostle after me whose name is Ahmed." Ahmed is the equivalent of Muhammed. The verse has been variously interpreted and even rejected as an interpolation: but its authenticity is attested by its perfect correspondence with what we know of Muhammed's pretensions.
To trace in detail the development of his attitude towards Christianity is a more difficult task than to discover the growth of his views upon Judaism; probably he pursued a similar course in either case. At first he assumed the identity of the two religions with one another and with his own doctrine; afterwards he regarded them as advancing by gradations. Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed, these in his opinion were the chief stages in the divine scheme of salvation. Each was respectively confirmed or abolished by the revelation which followed it, nor is this theory of Muhammed's shaken by the fact that each revelation was given to a different nation.
He regards all preceding prophets in the light of his own personality. They were all sent to people who refused them a hearing at the moment. Punishment follows and the prophet finds a body of believers elsewhere. These temporary punishments are confused with the final Judgment; in fact Muhammed's system was not clearly thought out. The several prophets were but men, whose earthly careers were necessarily crowned with triumph: hence the crucifixion of Jesus is a malicious invention of the Jews, who in reality crucified some other sufferer, while Jesus entered the divine glory. Thus Muhammed has no idea of the importance of the Crucifixion to the Christian Church, as is shown by his treatment of it as a Jewish falsehood. In fact, he develops the habit of characterising as false any statement in contradiction with his ideas, and this tendency is especially obvious in his dealings with Judaism, of which he gained a more intimate knowledge.
At first he would refer sceptics to Christian and Jewish doctrine for confirmation of his own teaching. The fact that with no knowledge of the Old or New Testament, he had proclaimed doctrines materially similar and the fact that these Scriptures referred to himself, were proofs of his inspired power, let doubters say what they would. A closer acquaintance with these Scriptures showed him that the divergencies which he stigmatised as falsifications denoted in reality vast doctrinal differences.
In order to understand Muhammed's attitude towards Christianity, we will examine in greater detail his view of this religion, the portions of it which he accepted or which he rejected as unauthentic. In the first place he must have regarded the Trinity as repugnant to reason: he considered the Christian Trinity as consisting of God the Father, Mary the Mother of God, and Jesus the Son of God. In the Qoran, God says, "Hast thou, Jesus, said to men, Regard me and my mother as Gods by the side of God?" Jesus replies, "I will say nothing but the truth. I have but preached, Pray to God, who is my Lord and your Lord" (5.116, f). Hence it has been inferred that Muhammed's knowledge of Christianity was derived from some particular Christian sect, such as the Tritheists or the Arab female sect of the Collyridians who worshipped the Virgin Mary with exaggerated reverence and assigned divine honours to her.
It is also possible that we have here a development of some Gnostic conception which regarded the Holy Ghost as of feminine gender, as Semites would do;[A] instances of this change are to be found in the well-known Hymn of the Soul in the Acts of Thomas, in the Gospel to the Egyptians and elsewhere. I am inclined, however, to think it more probable that Muhammed had heard of Mariolatry and of the "mother of God," a title which then was a highly popular catchword, and that the apotheosis of Jesus was known to him and also the doctrine of the Trinity by name. Further than this his knowledge did not extend; although he knows the Holy Ghost and identifies him with Jesus, none the less his primitive reasoning, under the influence of many old beliefs, explained the mysterious triad of the Trinity as husband, wife, and son. This fact is enough to prove that his theory of Christianity was formed by combining isolated scraps of information and that he cannot have had any direct instruction from a Christian knowing the outlines of his faith.
Muhammed must also have denied the divinity of Christ: this is an obvious result of the course of mental development which we have described and of his characteristically Semitic theory of the nature of God. To him, God is one, never begetting and never begotten. Denying the divinity of Jesus, Muhammed naturally denies the redemption through the Cross and also the fact of the Crucifixion. Yet, strangely enough he accepted the miraculous birth; nor did he hesitate to provide this purely human Jesus with all miraculous attributes; these were a proof of his divine commission, and marvellous details of this nature aroused the interest of his hearers.
Mary the sister of Ahron--an obvious confusion with the Old Testament Miriam--had been devoted to the service of God by her mother's vow, and lives in the temple under the guardianship of Zacharias, to whom a later heir is born in answer to his prayers, namely John, the forerunner of the Holy Ghost. The birth is announced to Mary 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.