Add to all this the silent but strong influence of the Jews and Christians who were in constant contact with these idolaters and we have the explanation of the _Hanifs_. These Hanifs were a small number of Arabs who worshipped only _Allah_, rejected polytheism, sought freedom from sin and resignation to God’s will. There were Hanifs at Taif, Mecca and Medina. They were in fact seekers of truth, weary of the old idolatry and the prevalent hollow hypocrisy of the Arabs. The earliest Hanifs of whom we hear, were Waraka, the cousin of the prophet Mohammed, and Zeid bin Amr, surnamed the Inquirer. Mohammed at first also adopted this title of Hanif to express the faith of Abraham but soon after changed it to Moslem. It is only a step from Hanifism to Islam. Primary monotheism, Sabeanism, idolatry, fetishism, Hanifism, and then the prophet with the sword to bring everything back to monotheism—monotheism, as modified by his own needs and character and compromises. The time of ignorance was a time of chaos. Everything was ready for one who could take in the whole situation, social, political and religious and form a cosmos. That man was Mohammed. XVII ISLAM IN ITS CRADLE—THE MOSLEM’S GOD[55] “Islam was born in the desert, with Arab Sabeanism for its mother and Judaism for its father; its foster-nurse was Eastern Christianity.”—_Edwin Arnold._ “A Prophet without miracles; a faith without mysteries; and a morality without love; which has encouraged a thirst for blood, and which began and ended in the most unbounded sensuality.”—_Schlegel’s Philosophy of History._ “As we conceive God, we conceive the universe; a being incapable of loving is incapable of being loved.”—_Principal Fairbairn._