Caetani was not a Muslim and he did not believe in the literal truth of the Qur'an. Instead his views about its origins were as follows. As long as Muhammad was alive, he could answer any doctrinal questions that arose, so there was little attention paid to written documents. The reign of his successor Abu Bakr was characterized by increasing confusion as multiple written and oral versions of Muhammad's teachings coexisted. To his great credit, Uthman understood the danger of this situation; he had an official version of the Qur'an developed and ordered the destruction of all unapproved versions. To summarize, Caetani thought that the Qur'an as it exists today did not come word for word from the pen of the Prophet, but was the result of a standardization and cleanup effort ("Uthman's recension") undertaken many years after his death.