It is true that we Orthodox Christians suffered much from Muslims,
especially Turks. This happened because their religion too was distorted by
racial passions, although even Mohammed started to spread Koran by war. Note
that Arabs, the patriots of Mohammed, do not recognise the Turks, who took
religion from them, as genuine Muslims, and they don’t like them. ...
Mohammed, the founder of the new religion in the East, was an illiterate
camel driver. At his years, as before, his country Arabia had for religion a
mixture of idolatrous superstitions about a big black rock they called Kaaba,
which the patriots of Mohammed worshipped and still worship.
At that time in Arabia Jewish merchants dominated, but also Christians
existed even in Mecca. Mohammed realised that his race was far below these
religions, the Jewish and the Christian, and wanted to help her, to open her
eyes, because, although illiterate and unhewn, he was clever. He was greatly impressed by the life of Christians, especially in
monasteries, he admired the monks, that they were devoted to God paying no
care to the vanities of the world, and besides their denial of property,
that they held fast, they prayed, they were hospitable, they loved the other
people. This is why he had many relations with Christian monks.
He also had a close relation with some Jewish woman, very wealthy,
Chatitze, with whom in the end he was married. Chatitze was very learned,
and she had always learned people in her company, among them a wise
astrologer named Varakas, who had been baptised Christian and had translated
to Arabic numerous fragments of the Old Testament. Mohammed was very much
helped by his wife, because with her he was talking about all he had learned
on the religious situation of the East during his trips from Mecca to
Damascus, when he was a driver to caravans. His name and his knowledge
spread to Mecca and the rest of Arabia. Despite his admiration for
Christians, he saw that they were divided by heresies and weakened by that.
Along with this, he saw that the weakness of Christian religion was that it
was teaching virginity, or no more than monogamy, while these races were
from the creation of the world used to polygamy.
