As a source of information, the traditions are obviously unreliable, for they are coloured by the excessive zeal and irrational bias of men whose judgment was warped by irrepressible fanaticism.They attributed to their hero elements that are grotesquely impossible.His advent was in their estimation, so portentous that it was celebrated by events which, for the time, upset all natural law.And his whole life has been linked with miraculous happenings of a most ludicrous type.More reasonable men have exalted the prophet because they have convinced themselves that he was what he ought to have been.This may account for the pious confidence of some of the more intelligent, who, accepting tradition as historical, have exalted their hero to the ideal, and have received the imagined glory as real.This tendency to exalt their master is well illustrated by the maxim of Shafy “In the exaltation of Mohammed it is lawful to exaggerate” a maxim invaluable to men who were seeking to glorify the prophet, and the usefulness of which was fully appreciated by the legislators and doctors when they were called upon to cope with the new relations and exigencies that came into being after his death.The conquests and progress of Islam necessitated almost daily the framing of new rules, while in the application of the old, constant modification and adaptation were required.To meet these needs, actual or supposed sayings and actions of the prophet were eagerly sought after, and, in time, with the growth of a professional body of traditionalists, all legitimate sources being exhausted, that which was doubtful, and even disputed, was accepted as authentic and reliable.Imagination augmented the legitimate springs of information, and the result was an exhaustive accumulation of precedents for every possible circumstance.

Sprenger, in his essay on “Tradition,” regarding the value and nature of the material needed for compiling a life of Mohammed, says:

“During the stir and activity of the first sixty years, thousands and thousands occupied themselves with handing down traditions.In every mosque they committed them to memory, and rehearsed them in every social gathering.All such knowledge was the common property of the nation; it was learned by heart and transmitted orally.It possessed, therefore, in the highest possible degree, the elements of life and plasticity.Bunson has discovered the divinity of the Bible in its always having been the people’s book.If this criterion be decisive, then no religion has better claim to be called the ‘vox Dei,’ because none is in so full a sense the ’vox populi.’The creations of the period we have been considering possess this character for hundreds of millions of our fellow men; for modern Islamism is as far removed from the spirit in which the Coran was composed, as Catholicism is from the spirit of the Gospel; and modern Islamism is grounded upon tradition.But in tradition we find nothing but the Ideal, Invention, Fancy, Historical facts, however they may have been floating among the people in the days if Ibn ’Abbas, and the other founders of genealogy, were trodden under feet, because men wished to remove every barrier which stood in the way of self-glorification.And of the thousand inventions which every day gave birth to, only those were recognised as true which most flattered the religious and national pride ...”

He also goes on to say:

“The time of creative activity, the gestation era of Moslem knowledge, passed away.Hajjaj choked the young life in its own blood, and the Abbaside dynasty, with kingly patriotism, sold the dearly-bought conquests of the nation, first to the Persians, and then to Turkish slaves, with the view of procuring an imaginary security for their throne.And thus there arose for the spiritual life also a new period.Already Wackidi had begun to work up into shape the mass of his traditionary stores, and busy himself in the department of scholastic industry.In the schools one could as little affect now the material tradition, or alter its nature, as attempt to change the organism of the new-born child.However arbitrary might be the invention of the ‘Miraj’ (Mahomed’s heavenly journey), and other fabrications of the first century, they still formed in this way the positive element and soul of religious, political and social life.The schools, as always, confined their exertions to collecting, comparing, abbreviating, systematising, and commenting.The material was altogether divine; and any unprejudiced historical inquiry, any simple and natural interpretation of the Coran, any free judgment on tradition or its origin, was condemned as apostasy.The only task that remained was to work up, in scholastic form, the existing material; and in this way was developed a literature of boundless dimensions, which yet at bottom possessed nothing real.The whole spiritual activity of the Mohamedans, from the time of the prophet to the present day, is a dream; but it is a dream in which a large portion of the human race have lived; and it has all the interest which things relating to mankind always possess for man.”

Sir William Muir agrees with these views, subject to two considerations.He says:

“The tendency to glorify Mohammed and the reciters of the traditions was considerably modified by the mortal strife which characterised the factions that opposed one another at the period, where, in attempting to depreciate one another, they would not be averse to perpetuating traditions in support of their contentions; such partisanship secured no insignificant body of historical fact, which otherwise would have been lost.”

He also points out that in a state of society circumscribed and dwarfed by the powerful Islamic system, which proscribed the free exercise of thought and discussion, tradition can scarcely be said to be the “vox populi.”The growth and development of tradition, the flagrant distortion of historical fact, the ethical code of Islam, may well give rise to a questioning of the validity of the prophet’s arrogant claims, and by their very methods of defence the apologists of Islam exhibit its weakness and inadequacy to meet the religious needs of man.The natural bias of Mohammed is evident throughout the Coran.His conceptions of God, of the future life, and of the duty of man, are all influenced by his consuming master passion.In all his writings there are lacking those characteristics which distinguish the true prophet the messenger of God from those to whom he is sent.This will be apparent by contrasting his views with those of any of the Old Testament prophets.They were eminently men prepared for their high calling by lofty yet practical communion with God men whose message was inspired by a vision of Divine Majesty, and an impressive conception of the justice and awful purity of Jéhovah.Men who called the nation to righteousness of life by a stirring appeal to conscience, and an unfaltering denunciation of the evils of the time.Their spiritual aspirations, therefore, by far surpass the loftiest ideals of the prophet of Islam, while their ethical conceptions infinitely transcend all that Mohammed dreamed of.The voice of the Eternal is clearly heard in the earnest utterances that fell from their lips, and through all their prophecies the willingness of Divine Mercy to reason with men in spite of their erring ways, is apparent.

Three characteristic elements are perceived in their preaching a very keen and practical conscience of sin; an overpowering vision of God; and a very sharp perception of the politics of their day.Of these elements, Mohammed’s teaching possesses only the last.