Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Start |||
The
Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News
Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield |
|
European Witness
George Horton's
EXCERPTS FROM TURKEY - THE BLIGHT OF ASIA
Most Important Parts Selected by Ellopos
Page 20
THE PECULIAR state of mind which has enabled the Turk to commit outrages on humanity that have shocked and insulted the entire race have been due to three things: his own nature, the teachings of the Koran and the example of the Prophet. This is what Gladstone means when he speaks of the "combination of his nature and his religion." [...] The difference, mentally, between the Arab and the Turk, is thus depicted by Buckhardt:
"The Arab displays his manly character when he defends his guest at the peril of his own life and submits to the reverses of fortune, to disappointment and distress with the most patient resignation. He is distinguished from the Turk by the virtues of pity and gratitude. The Turk is cruel, the Arab is of a more kindly temper; he pities and supports the wretched and never forgets the generosity shown him even by an enemy." [...]
I am convinced that the Turks are the only branch of the Mohammedan faith, which has never made any contributions to the progress of civilization or produced anything which, as Sir Edwin Pears says, "the world would gladly keep." They have been destructive and not constructive. [...]
The New Testament advocates purity of life and even leans toward asceticism. Christ himself was unmarried and was of spotless purity. The Koran is sensual in its teachings, both as to this life and the life hereafter. It promises the true believer an allotment of paradisiacal females, when he arrives in the other world. What the relation of the earthly wives will be to this new group is more or less uncertain. This doctrine of the Koran throws the light very clearly on the contemptuous regard, in which woman is held by the followers of Mohammed. [...]
Not one Turk in a thousand, if that many, can read the Koran, as it is written in Archaic Arabic, but the general conception that they are the faithful and all others are "dogs of unbelievers’’ is well fixed in their minds as also the few broad articles of faith hitherto enumerated. Illiteracy is generally prevalent among the Turkish people, and the hodjas or priests do not do much in the way of teaching except crying from the minarets "God is God and Mahomet is His Prophet." Nevertheless, during the horrible days of massacre, fire and rape in Smyrna, the Turks were chanting, with joy: "Their wives shall be widows and their children orphans." Hearing this, and thinking of the thousands of babes who were being made fatherless, or subjected to suffering and death, I could not help remembering the words: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Mr. Geddes in his statement asserts that in no instance did he see any Moslem giving alms to Armenians, it being a criminal offense for any one to aid them, the object of the deportations being "the extermination of the race." The teachings of the Mohammedan cult render it possible to issue such an order to an entire nation, with the certainty that it will be universally obeyed.
[Ellopos' note: when Rimbaud spoke about "Koran's bastard wisdom" (sagesse bātarde du Coran), he was not accurate. Koran has not a bastard wisdom, because Koran has no parents at all. With all the sympathy towards islamic countries, yet we must admit that Koran is an ideological invention fabricated in a laboratory without real spiritual roots. Koran has denial instead of a heart, since it despises the very 'elements' of its construction, namely the Old and the New Testament.
Sp. Zambelios rightly writes about Koran that it is "a monstrous mixture of Judaism and Christianity, decorated with fictitious tales that please or surprise the imagination of semi-wild people, while from the start to the end it emits political rage and religious frenzy (Byzantine Studies, Athens 1857, pp. 169-70). Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus writes that the people who followed Islam, "were deceived and corrupted by Mohammed, who promised them victory against the Christians (Epitaph to his brother Theodorus Palaeologus, Patrologia Graeca 156.220). As a power of rottenness, to the degree that it shapes the life of people who follow it, Koran can not but lead them to an ever greater spiritual decay From Koran one can expect what one expects from any spiritual poison: whatever good might happen among islamic peoples, it happens "rather in spite of their creed than because of it", as Horton accurately says.
We can't have a firm ground against Islamic corruption, if we 'fight' by using monogamy against polygamy, etc., that is by watching the symptoms instead of the cause. We should start by thinking what is the Christian meaning of Resurrection. The meaning of Resurrection is not just an after-life whatever (even demons will live forever), Christian Resurrection is living with Christ. But if we don't live with Christ, if we don't know Him here and now in person, why will we live with Him in the next life? Then we are doomed already, in this case it doesn't matter if we are monogamous or polygamous. St. Symeon in the East warns, that neither the mysteries of the Church, nor any 'moral behavior', scientific knowledge or even faith itself can help us, before we know Christ in person in this life. Cf. When shall the Day of the Lord come? * Becoming invisible and suddenly appearing * Holy Communion * Don't put yourself in despair]
Back to
Full Text : Table of Contents
