Islam and the Freedom of Conscience — Page 112
~ 112 ~ ''Those who knew him best, his wife, his eccentric slave, his cousin, his earliest friend – he who, as Mohammed said, alone of his converts, ‘turned not back, neither was perplexed’ – were the first to recognize his mission [that is, his prophethood]. The ordinary lot of a prophet was in his case reversed; he was not without honour save among those who did not know him well. '' 53 ''The practices that Mohammed forbade, and not forbade only, but abolished, human sacrifices [that is, sacrificing humans] and the murder of female infants, and blood feuds, and unlimited polygamy, and wanton cruelty to slaves, and drunkenness, and gambling, would have gone unchecked in Arabia and the adjoining countries. '' 54 ''Nor could anyone have done what Mohammed did without the most profound faith in the reality and goodness of his cause [he had firm faith and conviction in his mission, claim and that he was sent from God; it is thus that a revolution was brought about]…there is everything to prove the real enthusiast arriving slowly and painfully at what he believed to be the truth. '' 55 ''To say that Arabia needed renovation was to say in other words that the time for a new prophet had come, and why might not that prophet be Mohammed himself? Sprenger, 53 Ibid, p. 127 54 Ibid, p. 125 55 Ibid, p. 127