by Rev. W.R.W. Stephens
originally published in 1877
paperback; 190 pages
The circumstances behind the birth of Islam and its rise to a world power is a fascinating story of human ingenuity and depravity. The Arabian world of the Seventh Century, into which Mohammed was born, was one given wholly over to idolatry. Imagining himself divinely chosen to return his people to a pure monotheism, Mohammed began to preach the strange mixture of Jewish Talmudism, Christian Gnosticism, and revised Arabian myth which, over a period of twenty years, would become the text of the Koran. Originally a religion of peace, Islam gradually grew more and more violent in its tenets and deprecations against dissenters as its founder and prophet grew increasingly more fanatical. This book is a case study in the natural tendency of human religion to morally degenerate in proportion to the power it wields over men in contrast to the truly heart-changing effects of the divinely-inspired religion of the Bible.
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