A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto, Vol. I

A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto (Volume I)
By Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan

First published in 1870, this pioneering work by the great Indian Muslim reformer and educator Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was written as a direct rebuttal to hostile European biographies of the Prophet Muhammad. Combining traditional Islamic scholarship with rationalist argument, it stands as a foundational text of modern Islamic apologetics and the Aligarh reform movement.

A public-domain work — full unabridged text digitized from a library scan. Minor OCR artifacts from the original scan may remain, particularly in quoted Arabic/Hebrew script.

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Excerpt

Of all the innumerable wonders of the universe, the most marvellous is religion, the foundation of which lies in the distinction between the acts of men, distinguishing them into good, evil, indifferent; for, if there be no such difference, there can be no religion, et contra.

Now the religious idea differs from every other in this respect, that man's belief in everything, religion excepted, depends or is based upon a previous conviction of its truth; the religious idea, on the contrary, appears to be innate, and is accepted, entertained, and acquiesced in, independently of any evidence of its truth derived through the instrumentality of the external senses.