ctrine of
fatalism proved Islam's greatest asset during its first hard years of
struggle, for it gave to its battlefields the glory of God's
surveillance: "Death is a favour to a Muslim." But with prosperity and
conquest came inaction; then fatalism, out of the weakening of endurance,
created the pessimism of Islam's later years. Being philosophically
uncreative, it descended into the sloth of those who believe, without
exercise of reason or will, in the uselessness of effort.

Before Islam decayed into inertia it had experienced a fierce and flaming
life. The impulse bestowed upon it by its founder operated chiefly in the
religious world, and indirectly in the realm of political and military
power. How far the religion of Islam is indebted to Mahomet's knowledge
of the Jewish and Christian systems becomes clear upon a study of the
Kuran and the Muslim institutions. That Mahomet was familiar with Jewish
Scriptures and tradition is beyond doubt.

The middle portion of the Kuran is filled to the point of weariness with
reiterations of Jewish legend and hero-myths. It is evident that Mahomet
took the God of the Jews to be his own deity, combining in his conception
also the traditional connection of Jehovah and His Chosen People with the
ancient faith and ceremonies of Mecca, purged of their idolatries. From
the Jews he took his belief in the might and terror of the Lord and the
admonitory character of his mission. From them also he took the
separatist nature of his creed. The Jewish teachers postulated a religion
distinct from every other belief, self-sufficient, owning no interpreter
save the Law and the Scriptures. Mahomet conceived himself also as the
sole vehicle during his lifetime and after his death for the commands of
the Most High. He aimed at the superseding of Rabbinical power, and hoped
to win the Jews into recognition of himself as successor to their own
teachers and prophets.

But his claims were met by an unyielding reliance upon the completed Law.
If the Jewish religion had rejected a Redeemer from among its own people,
it was impossible that it should accept a leader from an alien and
despised race. Mahomet, finding coalition impossible, gave free play to
his separatist instinct, so that in this respect, and also in its
fundamental conception of the deity, as well as in its reliance upon
inspired Scriptures and oral traditions, Mahomedanism approximates to the
Jewish system. It misses the influence of an