Together with despotism and inextricably mingled with it is the
second great Islamic enthusiasm—the belief in the supremacy of
force. With violence the Muslim kingdom was to be attained.
Mahomet gave to the battle lust of Arabia the approval of his
puissant deity, bidding his followers put their supreme faith in
the arbitrament of the sword. He knew, too, the value of
diplomacy and the use of well-calculated treachery, but chief of
all he bade his followers arm themselves to seize by force what
they could not obtain by cunning. In the insistence upon these
two factors, complete obedience to his will as the revelation of
Allah’s decrees and the justification of violence to proclaim
the merits of his faith, we gain the nearest approach to his
character and beliefs; for these, together with his conception
of fate, are perhaps the most personal of all his institutions.
Mahomet has suffered not a little at the hands of his immediate
successors. They have sought to record the full sum of his
personality, and findin