The Qur’an is strikingly preoccupied with the two monotheisms which Muhammad had known from his boyhood, Judaism and Christianity. He was concerned to proclaim a new unity of religion through ‘the God’ (al-ilah, subsequently abbreviated as Allah) who had been the focus of the shrine cult at Mecca, but otherwise Muhammad spoke contemptuously of Arabian traditional cults, and he was very aware of the sacred books which had previously spoken of one God, the Tanakh and the Christian New Testament. His concern for them, and indeed stringent criticism of their
