A British Orientalist John Davenport (1789-1877) in his well-known work, ‘An Apology for Muḥammad and the Koran’, admits the honesty and sincerity behind Prophet Muḥammad’s claim of being a Prophet of Allah.
With his humble and earnest endeavour, John Davenport tried to free the history of Prophet Muḥammad from false accusations and illiberal imputations and to vindicate his just and honest claim to be regarded as one of the greatest benefactor of humanity.
The book includes a chapter that completely deals with the four main allegations charged by Western scholars on the life and massage of Prophet Muḥammad. These charges included:
- First, that Muhammad promulgated a new and false religion as a revelation from God, it being, on the contrary, but a mere invention of his own for gratifying his ambition and lust.
- Second, that Prophet Muḥammad (peace be upon him) propagated his religion by the sword, amounting to bloodshed and human misery at a large scale.
- Third, the sensual character of his Paradise as described in the Quran.
- Fourth, the encouragement he has given to licentiousness by legalizing polygamy etc.
Davenport maintains:
“The writers who, misguided by a blind zeal, have thus assailed the fair fame of the Restorer of the Worship of the Unity, have not only shown themselves to be wholly uninfluenced by the spirit of that charity so strongly and emphatically inculcated by the Saviour himself, but have also erred in judgment,
for the least reflection would have convinced them that it is not from a Christian and modern standpoint that the Prophet and his doctrines ought to be examined and criticized, but from an Eastern one;
in other words, Mohammed should be contemplated and judged as a religious reformer and legislator living in Arabia in the seventh century after Christ, and he must then, most undoubtedly, be acknowledged as the very greatest man whom Asia can claim as her son, if not, one of the rarest and most transcendent geniuses the world itself ever produced”.
“In order to properly estimate the merits of Koran, it should be considered that when the Prophet arose as eloquence of expression and purity of diction were much cultivated, and that poetry and oratory were held in the highest estimation.
It was to the Koran so considered as a permanent miracle that Mohammed appealed as the chief confirmation of his mission, publicly challenging the most eloquent men in Arabia, then abounding with persons whose sole study and ambition it was to excel in elegance of style and composition, to produce even one single chapter that might compete therewith.
Is it possible to conceive, we may ask, that the man who directed such great and lasting reform in his own country by substituting the worship of the one only true God for the gross and debasing idolatry in which his countrymen had been plunged for ages … to have been a mere impostor, or that his whole career was one of sheer hypocrisy?
Can we imagine that his divine mission was a mere invention of his own, of whose falsehood he was conscious throughout?
No, surely, nothing but a consciousness of really righteous intentions could have carried Mohammed so steadily and constantly, without ever flinching or wavering, without ever betraying himself to his most intimate connections and comparisons, from his first revelation to Khadijah, to his last.
Western princes had been lords of Asia instead of the Saracens and Turks; they would not have tolerated Mohammadenism as Mohammedans have tolerated Christianity, since they persecuted, with the most relentless cruelty, those of their own, faith whom they deemed heterodox.
There is no doubt that amongst all Lawgivers and Conquerors, there is not a single one whose life story is found in more details and authenticity than the Mohammed”.