"The Moslem, in proof of their religion, appeal to the plenary and manifest inspiration of the Koran. They rest the divinity of their holy Book upon its inimitable excellence; but instead of holding it to be divine because it is excellent, they believe its excellence because they admit its divinity. There is nothing in the Koran which affects the feelings, nothing which elevates the imagination, nothing which enlightens the understanding, nothing which ameliorates the heart: it contains no beautiful narrative, no proverbs of wisdom or axioms of morality; it is a chaos of detached sentences, a mass of dull tautology. Not a solitary passage to indicate the genius of a poet can be found in the whole volume."