The views put forward by Western Orientalists with regard to some aspects of early Islamic history have been taken seriously in the Islamic world and gave rise to numerous rejections by the Islamists. What made William Montgomery Watt different from the preceding Orientalists is that he introduced relatively different approaches to the religious identity of the Prophet and the current theories and arguments about the economic, social and political organisation of Islam. The major characteristic of the theory developed by William Montgomery Watt is that he maintained his belief in Christianity and adopted a historicist approach to Islamic history while he at the same time accepted the religious identity of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and declared that he had seen the message of the Prophet as a mere revelation from God. Indeed, he has not considered the Prophet only as a figure reacting under the influence of religious and external cultural factors, just to the contrary, he saw him as a person reacting against a social environment. Thus, Watt tried to analyse the social structure of Mecca of the time sociologically and psychologically and attempted to account for the political teachings of the Prophet, which were fit for the social structure of his environment, from the perspective of an historicist.