Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/47

 40 the announcement of the Day of Judgment is much more prominent than the Unity of God; and it was against his revelations concerning Doomsday that his opponents directed their satire during the first twelve years. It was not love of their half-dead gods but anger at the wretch who was never tired of telling them, in the name of Allah, that all their life was idle and despicable, that in the other world they would be outcasts, which opened the floodgates of irony and scorn against Mohammed. And it was Mohammed's anxiety for his own lot and that of those who were dear to him in that future life, that forced him to seek a solution of the question: who shall bring my people out of the darkness of antithesis into the light of obedience to Allah?

We should, a posteriori, be inclined to imagine a simpler answer to the question than that which Mohammed found; he might have become a missionary of Judaism or of Christianity to the Meccans. However natural such a conclusion may appear to us, from the premises with which we are acquainted, it did not occur to Mohammed. He began—the Qorân tells us expressly—by regarding the Arabs, or at all events his Arabs, as heretofore destitute of divine message : "to whom We have sent no warner before you." Moses and Jesus—not to mention any others—had not been sent for the Arabs; and as Allah would not leave any section of mankind without