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Updated: June 15, 2025
If Islam was ready to learn from Christianity in every department of religious life, what was the cause of the sudden superiority of Muhammedanism to the rising force of Christianity a few centuries later? And secondly, in view of the traditional antagonism between the Christian and Muhammedan worlds, how was Christianity able to adopt so large and essential a portion of Muhammedan thought?
His successors were known as caliphs, but from the very first his disciples quarrelled about the leadership, some affirming the rights of Ali, who had married Muhammed's daughter, Fatima, and others supporting the claims of Abu Bekr, his father-in-law. There was also a religious quarrel concerning certain oral traditions relating to the Koran, or the Muhammedan sacred scriptures.
Muhammedan mysticism is certainly not exclusively Christian: its origins, like those of Christian mysticism, are to be found in the pantheistic writings of the Neoplatonist school of Dionysius the Areopagite: but Islam apparently derived its mysticism from Christian sources.
A favourite story in various parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils, exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to make them men.
In the face of so clear a statement, the condemnation of marriage, which in any case was contrary to the whole spirit of the Qoran, could not be maintained. Thus the Muhammedan tradition contains numerous sayings in support of marriage. "Two prayers of a married man are more precious in the sight of God than seventy of a bachelor."
This form of criticism was developed from the emphasis which Islam had long laid upon the value of wisdom, or recognition of the claims of reason. Muhammedan tradition is full of the praises of wisdom, which it also originally regarded as the basis of religion.
The appearance of women of rank in public, and their exemption from any personal restraint in their own habitations, are very incompatible with the presence of Muhammedan rulers.
Architectural expense is confined to churches and mosques, which were intended for the service of God. These Christian ideas are reflected in the inexhaustible storehouse of Muhammedan theory, the great collections of tradition, as follows. "The worst use which a believer can make of his money is to build."
Within the scope of the present volume, all that can be done is to explain the points of contact between Christian and Muhammedan theories of life and religion. Such is the object of the following pages. We shall first treat of Muhammed personally, because his rise as a religious force will explain the possibility of later developments.
But even in the means employed to incite the Christian warriors and the manner in which the Crusades were carried on, there is a great similarity between the Christian and the Muhammedan procedure. The Church, when espousing the cause of the Crusader, did exactly what Muhammed had done when he preached a holy war. The Church addressed itself to the weaknesses and passions of human nature.
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