On 8 June 632, according to the traditional biography, the Prophet died after a short illness. He had achieved a great deal. To the pagan peoples of … - Bernard Lewis

In talking of the Christian world, in English and, I suppose, in all the other languages of the Christian world we use two terms: Christianity and Christendom. Christianity means a religion, in the strict sense of that word, a system of belief and worship and some clerical or ecclesiastical organization to go with it. If we say Christendom, we mean the entire civilization that grew up under the aegis of that religion, but also contains many elements that are not part of that religion, many elements that are even hostile to that religion. Let me give one simple example. No one could seriously assert that Hitler and the Nazis came out of Christianity. No one could seriously dispute that they came out of Christendom. In talking of Islam, we use the same word in both senses, and this gives rise to considerable confusion and misunderstanding. There are many things that are described as part of Islam, which are indeed part of Islam, if we take the word as the equivalent of Christendom, but are very much not part of Islam are even alien or hostile to Islam if we take the word Islam as the equivalent of Christianity. I think this is a very important point, which one should bear in mind.

The three major Middle Eastern religions are significantly different in their relations with the state and their attitudes to political power. Judaism was associated with the state and was then disentangled from it; its new encounter with the state at the present time raises problems which are still unresolved. Christianity, during the first formative centuries of its existence, was separate from and indeed antagonistic to the state with which it only later became involved. Islam from the lifetime of its founder was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.

The evidence for the growth of anti-black prejudice comes in the main from two groups of sources. The first of these is literary, especially poetry and anecdote. Several Arabic poets, of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, are described as "black" and are known collectively, to the literary tradition, as aghribat al-'Arab-"the crows of the Arabs."' Some of them-mostly preIslamic-were Arabs of swarthy complexion; others were of mixed Arab and African parentage. For the latter, and still more for the pure Africans, blackness was an affliction. In many verses and narratives, they are quoted as suffering from insult and discrimination, as showing resentment at this, and yet in some way as accepting the inferior status resulting from their African ancestry. One such was the poet Suhaym (d. 660), born a slave and of African origin. His name, obviously a nickname, might be translated as "little black man." In one poem he laments: 'If my color were pink, women would love me. But the lord has marred me with blackness.'