In 1892, a publication of the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS) credited the prophet's success to a combined strategy of carrot and stick, arguing that Muhammad took a decrepit form of Judaism and Christianity and "added to it elements of worldliness and sensuality which rendered it acceptable to the natural mind, and by establishing the principle of enforcing his tenets by the sword, he ensured their zealous propagation."

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of 19th-century Western orientalism and missionary polemics against Islam.

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon F…, loc. 89