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Updated: June 24, 2025
But Muhammed's preaching had obviously striven to honour the future life by painting the actual world in the gloomiest colours, and the material optimism of the secular-minded was unable to check the advance of Christian asceticism among the classes which felt a real interest in religion. Hence that surprising similarity of views upon the problem of existence, which we have now to outline.
Thus in the Qoran 61.6 we read, "Jesus, the Son of Mary, said: Children of Israel, I am God's apostle to you. 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.
Similar objections may be found in Muhammedan tradition; we may regard these as further developments of commands given in the Qoran, but it is also likely that Muhammed's apocryphal statements upon the point were dictated by Christian religious theory. They often appear in connection with warnings against frequenting the public baths, which fact is strong evidence of their Christian origin.
The necessities of increasing civilisation had introduced many Aramaic words to the Arabic vocabulary before Muhammed's day: these importations increased considerably when the Arabs entered a wider and more complex civilisation and were especially considerable where intellectual culture was concerned. Even Greek terms made their way into Arabic through Aramaic.
Such was the environment in which Islam was planted: its deepest roots had been fertilised with Christian theory, and in spite of Muhammed's call to repentance, its most characteristic manifestations were somewhat worldly and non-ascetic. "Islam knows not monasticism" says the tradition which this tendency produced.
He never read any part of the Old or New Testament: his references to Christianity show that his knowledge of the Bible was derived from hearsay and that his informants were not representative of the great religious sects: Muhammed's account of Jesus and His work, as given in the Qoran, is based upon the apocryphal accretions which grew round the Christian doctrine.
The course of this development was greatly influenced by Christianity, but Christian ideas had been operative upon Muhammed's eager intellectual life at an even earlier date. We must attempt to realise the working of his mind, if we are to gain a comprehension of the original position of Islam with regard to Christianity.
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