Islam and the Freedom of Conscience — Page 127
~ 127 ~ many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher. '' 73 Ruth Cranston Ruth Cranston wrote in World Faith : ''Mohammad never instigated fighting and bloodshed. Every battle he fought was in rebuttal. He fought in order to survive… and he fought with the weapons and in fashion of his time. Certainly no Christian nation of 140,000,000 people [as this book was published in 1949] who today dispatch 120,000 helpless civilians with a single bomb, can look askance at a leader who at his worst killed a bare five or six hundred. '' ''The slayings of the Prophet of Arabia in the benighted and bloodthirsty age of the seventh century look positively puerile compared with our own, in this ‘advanced’ and enlightened twentieth. Not to mention the mass slaughter by the Christians during the Inquisition and the Crusades – when, Christian warriors proudly 73 Annie Besant. The Life and Teachings of Mo h ammad. Theosophical Publishing House. , India. p. 4 (1932)