Islam Rediscovered
24. A Case of Discovery*
~ 421 ~
as that which was revealed to the Holy Prophet
during his life-time at different periods and on
different occasions ever since that memorable night
of the 27th Ramadan (
Lailatul Qadr
) when the angel
Gabriel stood before him and said:
Read, in the name of your Lord, who created,
created man from clots of congealed blood.
Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One,
Who taught man by the Pen, Who taught man
what he knew not! Indeed, man transgresses
in thinking himself self-sufficient. Verily to
your Lord is the return. (96: 1-8)
This historical groundwork of Islam has struck even
such a sceptic as Ernst Renan who in his “Etudes
d’Histoire Religieu” (pp. 220, 230) makes some very
pertinent remarks about it. Professor Bosworth
Smith holds similar views and expresses himself in
the following terms in his famous lectures on
“Muhammad and Islam.” “We know indeed, some
fragments of a fragment of Christ’s life; but who can
lift the veil of thirty years that prepared the way for
the three? ... But in Islam everything is different;
here, instead of the shadowy and the mysterious,
