OCR Text |
Show CAUSE OF MOSLEM HATRED. When asked the reason of this fiendish hatred of the European, the chief, Mahomed, said: "You Christians send your toothless and ignorant and unclean missionaries among our people to unsettle our established faith. They are degraded specimens of manhood, who cannot compare in physique with our teachers of the Koran, we must be clean in body and soul; and we say if this be the product of Christianity we will have none of it. Thus our people in and about the holy cities do not view with any kindness your emissaries, but oftimes there comes government action of some European power which inflames the Moslem races, and it gives rise to these unhappy outbursts of religious passion. You can see, therefore, that we are not all to blame, although murder is expressly prohibited by the Koran. Mohammed says to us, "If you meet an unbeliever say to him: ‘You have your religion. I have mine,' so that none of our devout teachers ever inculcate the idea of massacre." This doctrine is undoubtedly taught by the religious s?? of the best birth and standing throughout Arabia and north and eastern Africa; and many cases can be recited where the bold speech and interference of a Moslem priest has saved a Christian or a Jew at the time of a general massacre. Wholesale assassinations like those at Alexandria, Tantah, and formerly of Damascus and Judah, reveal some of the noblest of characters both among the Mussulmans and Christians-instances on both sides of devoted personal friendship and sacrifice therefor, even to death. In all eastern massacres the two incentives-fanaticism and plunder-have generally been the twin motives that have found expression at the hands of sympathizers. But the body of Turkish gentry in Egypt, with their many oriental vices, are a humane and kindly people in time of profound peace, and when their private ends are not thwarted. |