or the most part with the
orthodox Church, also regarded Islam as a lesser evil than the
Byzantine established Church. Moreover Islam, as being both a
political and ecclesiastical organisation, regarded the Christian
church as a state within a state and permitted it to preserve its own
juridical and at first its own governmental rights. Application was
made to the bishops when anything was required from the community and
the churches were used as taxation offices. This was all in the
interests of the clergy who thus found their traditional claims
realised. These relations were naturally modified in the course of
centuries; the crusades, the Turkish wars and the great expansion of
Europe widened the breach between Christianity and Islam, while as the
East was gradually brought under ecclesiastical influence, the
contrast grew deeper: the theory, however, that the Muhammedan
conquerors and their successors were inspired by a fanatical hatred of
Christianity is a fiction invented by Christians.

We have now to examine this early development of Islam in somewhat
greater detail: indeed, to secure a more general appreciation of this
point is the object of the present work.

The relationship of the Qoran to Christianity has been already noted:
it was a book which preached rather than taught and enounced isolated
laws but no connected system. Islam was a clear and simple war-cry
betokening merely a recognition of Arab supremacy, of the unity of God
and of Muhammed's prophetic mission. But in a few centuries Islam
became a complex religious structure, a confusion of Greek philosophy
and Roman law, accurately regulating every department of human life
from the deepest problems of morality to the daily use of the
toothpick, and the fashions of dress and hair. This change from the
simplicity of the founder's religious teaching to a system of
practical morality often wholly divergent from primitive doctrine, is
a transformation which all the great religions of the world have
undergone. Religious founders have succeeded in rousing the sense of
true religion in the human heart. Religious systems result from the
interaction of this impulse with pre-existing capacities for
civilisation. The highest attainments of human life are dependent upon
circumstances of time and place, and environment often exerts a more
powerful influence than creative power. The teaching of Jesus was
almost overpowered by the Graeco-Oriental culture of later He