‘This is one of the secret histories which we reveal unto thee. Thou wast not present with Joseph’s brethren when they conceived their design and laid their plot: but the greater part of men, though thou long for it, will not believe. Thou shalt not ask of them any recompense for this message. It is simply an instruction for all mankind.’
And, again, in the LXVIIth Sūrah, he declares respecting the Qurʾān:—
‘It is a missive from the Lord of the worlds.
But if Muḥammad had fabricated concerning us any sayings,
We had surely seized him by the right hand,
And had cut through the vein of his neck.’
“It would be easy to multiply extracts of similar purport; but the above will suffice by way of illustration. There are modern biographers of the Prophet who would have us believe that he was not conscious of falsehood when making these assertions. He was under a hallucination, of course, but he believed what he said. This to me is incredible. The legends in the Qurʾān are derived chiefly from Talmudic sources. Muḥammad must have learned them from some Jew resident in or near Mekka. To work them up into the form of rhymed Sūrahs, to put his own peculiar doctrines in the mouth of Jewish patriarchs, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus (who talks like a good Moslem the moment after his birth), must have required time, thought, and labour. It is not possible that the man who had done this could have forgotten all about it, and believed that these legends had been brought to him ready prepared by an angelic visitor. Muḥammad was guilty of falsehood under circumstances where he deemed the end justified the means.” (Islām under the Arabs, p. 21.)
(9) The character of Muḥammad is a historic problem, and many have been the conjectures as to his motives and designs. Was he an impostor, a fanatic, or an honest man—“a very prophet of God”? And the problem might have for ever remained unsolved, had not the Prophet himself appealed to the Old and New Testaments in proof of his mission. This is the crucial test, established by the Prophet himself. He claims to be weighed in the balance with the divine Jesus.
Objection has often been made to the manner in which Christian divines have attacked the private character of Muḥammad. Why reject the prophetic mission of Muḥammad on account of his private vices, when you receive as inspired the sayings of a Balaam, a David, or a Solomon? Missionaries should not, as a rule, attack the character of Muḥammad in dealing with Islām; it rouses opposition, and is an offensive line of argument. Still, in forming an estimate of his prophetic claims, we maintain that the character of Muḥammad in an important consideration. We readily admit that bad men have sometimes been, like Balaam and others, the divinely appointed organs of inspiration; but in the case of Muḥammad, his professed inspiration sanctioned and encouraged his own vices. That which ought to have been the fountain of purity was, in fact, the cover of the Prophet’s depravity. But how different it is in the case of the true prophet David, where, in the words of inspiration, he lays bare to public gaze the enormity of his own crimes. The deep contrition of his inmost soul is manifest in every line—“I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me: against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.”