We have not space to give the story of Mohammed’s life or of the religion which he founded. An analysis of the religion has been attempted by means of two tables, one showing its development from its creed and the other the philosophy of its origin from outside sources.[56] The result of a century of critical study by European and American scholars of every school of thought has certainly established the fact that Islam is a composite religion. It is not an invention but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the genius of Mohammed in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for human ills and forcing it down by means of the sword. These heterogeneous elements of Islam were gathered in Arabia at a time when many religions had penetrated the peninsula, and the Kaaba was a Pantheon. Unless one has a knowledge of these elements of “the time of ignorance,” Islam is a problem. Knowing, however, these heathen, Christian and Jewish factors, Islam is seen to be a perfectly natural and understandable development. Its heathen elements remain, to this day, perfectly recognizable in spite of thirteen centuries of explanation by the Moslem authorities. It is to the Jewish Rabbi Geiger that we owe our first knowledge of the extent to which Islam is indebted to the Jews and the Talmud. Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall has recently shown how Mohammed borrowed even from the Zoroastrians and Sabeans, while as to the amount of Christian teaching in Islam, the Koran and its commentators are evidence. There is a remarkable verse in the twenty-second chapter of the Koran, in which Mohammed seems to enumerate all the sources that were accessible to him in forming his new religion; and at that time he seems to have been in doubt as to which was the most trustworthy source. The verse reads as follows: “_They who believe and the Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians_ (Zoroastrians) _and those who join other gods to God, verily God shall decide between them on the day of Resurrection._” The God of Islam. GIBBON CHARACTERIZES THE FIRST PART OF the Moslem’s creed as “an eternal truth “—(“there is no god but God”); but very much depends on the character of the God, who is affirmed to displace all other gods. If _Allah’s_ attributes are unworthy of deity then even the first clause of the briefest of all creeds, is false. There has been a strange neglect to study the Moslem idea of God and nearly all writers take for granted that the God of the Koran is the same being and has like attributes as Jehovah or the Godhead of the New Testament. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all the Mohammedan conception of Allah is purely negative. God is unique and has no relations to any creature that partake of resemblance. He cannot be defined in terms other than negative. As the popular song has it, “Kullu ma yukhtaru fi balik Fa rabbuna mukhalifun ’an thalik—”[57]