Baidhâwi.
Mahomet is accordingly to invite them to the true faith, to be himself
steadfast in the doctrines commanded by God, and not to follow the vain
imaginations of the Jews and Christians. He is at the same time to declare his
belief in all that God has revealed to them, and to say that he is empowered by
God to decide their differences and disputes. He is to impress upon them that
their God and his God is one and the same; that the works of the People of the
Book, and of his own People, will be equally accepted; and that there was no
real cause of difference or dispute between them.—(Compare Art. X.)
In this passage it is evident,—First, that Mahomet speaks of the
Jewish and Christian Scriptures as inherited by the Jews and Christians of his
own time, as then extant and in general use amongst them. Secondly, that
he expresses his belief in those Scriptures in unqualified terms, necessarily
implying that they were regarded as genuine and uncorrupted. Thirdly,
that the only cause of dispute between himself and the Jews and Christians of
the day, was the alleged doubts and differences into which they had fallen,
their erroneous interpretations and doctrines, and their enmity and divisions
among themselves. There was no essential difference between Mahomet and them; no
(حجة issue or) ground of controversy. Their errors and differences, which had
in reality no support from their Scriptures, Mahomet
