Forster and the 19th century Anglican view of Mahometism

Anglican Reverend Forster who wrote an informative work on Mahomet or Muhammad [1876] was no friend of the Catholics. He devotes an entire chapter – in good English Anglican tradition and exaggeration – on the tyranny of 'Popery'. As deluded as Weber's “Protestant Work Ethic”, in which 1000 years of Medieval invention and change is studiously ignored, or Gibbon's claim that Christianity 'pacified' Rome and caused its 'Fall'. Rome never fell, it was carved up into 3 Germanic kingdoms, and it died a thankful and belated death due to civil war, inflation, bureaucracy, taxation and corruption. The benefits of despotic governance that everyone seems so besotted by in the 21rst century.

Forster quotes Church-hater Gibbon in assessing the cult of Muhammad. Basically Gibbon rightly observes that Mahometism is a debased, degraded form of uncivilized cult worship, devoid of anything uplifting or intelligent.

The cult uber alles. 

Forster also goes to pains to show that Mahometism simply stole from the Bible. Much of the garbled gibberish that makes up the Koran is a warped regurgitation of what is found in the holy book. One example amongst hundreds suffices in which Paul's Chapter 12 in Corinthians 1, is bastardized and parodied within the Koran, obviously by scribes who were unfamiliar with the actual content:

The actual text of Paul's letter is here.  It bears no resemblance to the Jihadic utterance above which is a threat against both the Jews and Christians. 

Forster rightly condemns Mahometism for what it truly is – a cult of violence, plagiarism, illogicality, hate and war. I doubt he would be invited to polite dinner parties in today's multicultural, Islamophiliac London.