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 Islam 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. (Islam, iv., p. 186); also some of the accounts mentioned in Gueterbock, Der Islam 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 give the young man every opportunity to complete his study of the religion of Mohammed, “which so far has only been treated in a senseless way.”  As a fruit of this study L’Empereur thinks it necessary to mention in the first place the better understanding of the (Christian) Holy Scriptures by the extension of our knowledge of Oriental manners and customs.  Besides such promotion of Christian exegesis and apologetics and the improvement of the works on general history, Hottinger himself contemplated a double purpose in his Historia Orientalis.  The Roman Catholics often vilified Protestantism by comparing the Reformed doctrine to that of Mohammedanism; this reproach of Crypto-mohammedanism Hottinger wished “talionis lege” to fling back at the Catholics; and he devotes a whole chapter (Cap. 6) of his book to the demonstration that Bellarminius’ proofs of the truth of the Church doctrine might have been copied from the Moslim dogma.  In the second place, conforming to the spirit of the times, he wished, just as Bibliander had done in his refutation of the Qoran, to combine the combat against Mohammedan unbelief with that against the Turkish Empire ("in oppugnationem Mahometanae perfidiae et Turcici regni").

[Footnote 2:  J.H.  Hottinger, Historia Orientalis, Zuerich, 1651 (2d. edition 1660).]