forcible extension of its faith, and in the community of Mohammedans which
systematically attempted to reduce the world to its authority by force of
arms, it saw only an enemy whose annihilation was, to its regret, beyond
its power. Such an enemy it could no more observe impartially than one
modern nation can another upon which it considers it necessary to make war.
Everything maintained or invented to the disadvantage of Islâm was greedily
absorbed by Europe; the picture which our forefathers in the Middle Ages
formed of Mohammed's religion appears to us a malignant caricature. The
rare theologians[1] who, before attacking the false faith, tried to form a
clear notion of it, were not listened to, and their merits have only become
appreciated in our own time. A vigorous combating of the prevalent fictions
concerning Islâm would have exposed a scholar to a similar treatment to
that which, fifteen years ago, fell to the lot of any Englishman who
maintained the cause of the Boers; he would have been as much of an outcast
as a modern inhabitant of Mecca who tried to convince his compatriots of
the virtues of European policy and social order.

[Footnote 1: See for instance the reference to the exposition of the
Paderborn bishop Olivers (1227) in the Paderborn review _Theologie und
Glaube_, Jahrg. iv., p. 535, etc. (_Islâm_, iv., p. 186); also some of the
accounts mentioned in Güterbock, _Der Islâm im Lichte der byzantinischen
Polemik_, etc.]

Two and a half centuries ago, a prominent Orientalist,[2] who wrote
an exposition of Mohammed's teaching, felt himself obliged to give an
elaborate justification of his undertaking in his "Dedicatio." He appeals
to one or two celebrated predecessors and to learned colleagues, who have
expressly instigated him to this work. Amongst other things he quotes
a letter from the Leiden professor, L'Empereur, in which he conjures
Breitinger by the bowels of Jesus Christ ("per viscera Jesu Christi") to