Old Wisdom

From the desk of Paul Belien on Fri, 2006-02-03 20:54

A passage from Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro, in the famous Freedom of speech monologue in Act V, Scene 3
(hat tip: Matthew Omolesky)

“I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunisi, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are ‘Christian dogs.’ Since they can’t stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead.”

wolves dressed as sheeps

Submitted by halleluya on Sun, 2006-02-05 10:54.

christ said
wolves will come dressed as sheeps.to recognize them ,see their actions.
they say a thing and do other.
islamist come here saying peace peace
but they do all but peaceful things.
remember iT !

Old Wisdom

Submitted by foreign devil on Sat, 2006-02-04 08:06.

Funny how everything old is new again.  Both Christopher Marlowe of literary fame and Winston Churchill, in the online book written in the 1840s, "The River War" have observations of the Muslim mind and those observations could well have been written today.  Both Marlow's plays, and Churchill's book about the War in the Sudan, illustrate the same paradox we see today where the faithful talk of a 'beautiful' religion but have some very bloodthirsty intolerant attitudes.  Churchill said that the Arab was "either at your throat or at your feet", implying he would try to kill you and when he didn't succeed, would be grovelling for your pity.  Untrustworthy.  We must not shirk looking and must read these old passages to remind ourself that we are not bad people for criticizing this intolerance and bloodthirstiness we are encountering.  That others before us have found this and this is what they had to say about it.