Allah, who had given him power, soon allowed him to use it for the protection of the interests of the Faithful against the unbelievers.  Once become militant, Mohammed turned from the purely defensive to the aggressive attitude, with such success that a great part of the Arab tribes were compelled to accept Islam, “obedience to Allah and His Messenger.”  The rule formerly insisted upon:  “No compulsion in religion,” was sacrificed, since experience taught him, that the truth was more easily forced upon men by violence than by threats which would be fulfilled only after the resurrection.  Naturally, the religious value of the conversions sank in proportion as their number increased.  The Prophet of world renouncement in Mecca wished to win souls for his faith; the Prophet-Prince in Medina needed subjects and fighters for his army.  Yet he was still the same Mohammed.

Parallel with his altered position towards the heathen Arabs went a readjustment of his point of view towards the followers of Scripture.  Mohammed never pretended to preach a new religion; he demanded in the name of Allah the same Islam (submission) that Moses, Jesus, and former prophets had demanded of their nations.  In his earlier revelations he always points out the identity of his “Qorans” with the contents of the sacred books of Jews and Christians, in the sure conviction that these will confirm his assertion if asked.  In Medina he was disillusioned by finding neither Jews nor Christians prepared to acknowledge an Arabian prophet, not even for the Arabs only; so he was led to distinguish between the true contents of the Bible and that which had been made of it by the falsification of later Jews and Christians.  He preferred now to connect his own revelations more immediately with those of Abraham, no books of whom could be cited against him, and who was acknowledged by Jews and Christians without being himself either a Jew or a Christian.

This turn, this particular connection of Islam with Abraham, made it possible for him, by means of an adaptation of the biblical legends concerning Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael, to include in his religion a set of religious customs of the Meccans, especially the hajj.[1] Thus Islam became more Arabian, and at the same time more independent of the other revealed religions, whose degeneracy was demonstrated by their refusal to acknowledge Mohammed.

[Footnote 1:  A complete explanation of the gradual development of the Abraham legend in the Qoran can be found in my book Het Mekkaansche Feest (The Feast of Mecca), Leiden, 1880.]

All this is to be explained without the supposition of conscious trickery or dishonesty on the part of Mohammed.  There was no other way for the unlettered Prophet, whose belief in his mission was unshaken, to overcome the difficulties entailed by his closer acquaintance with the tenets of other religions.