“Westerners have become accustomed to think of good and bad government in terms of tyranny versus liberty. In Middle-Eastern usage, liberty or freedom was a legal not a political term. It meant one who was not a slave, and unlike the West, Muslims did not use slavery and freedom as political metaphors” (Bernard Lewis, What …
False Impressions
[Fairy tales are] “accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world …
Some More Demands from Art
A couple films showing this year at Sundance are poised to top the charts . . . that is, if there are charts for which devotees of one-handed magazines are allowed to vote. Mouthbreathers everywhere, beads of earnest sweat on their foreheads, will no doubt blog their early a.m. approbation of this documentary about bestiality. …
Not An Economic Powerhouse
“Later attempts to catch up with the Industrial Revolution fared little better . . . According to a World Bank estimate, the total exports of the Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, a country of five million inhabitants” (Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? p. 47).
The Universal Read
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty—except, of course, books of information” (C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds, p. 15).
The Primal Confession
“After all, the Table of Contents in our Bibles is one of the Church’s first and most important confessional traditions” (Mother Kirk, p. 61).
A Clash of Faiths
Why should Christians learn about Islam? Why teach on it? Why discuss it? Why stir up yet another debate or controversy? One time, during the debates over the formation of the U.S. Constitution, someone proposed that the United States be prohibited from having a standing army of more than 15,000 men. I forget the exact …
Complete Reversal
“The impotence of the Islamic world confronted with Europe was brought home in dramatic form in 1798, when a French expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte invaded, occupied, and governed Egypt. The lesson was harsh and clear—even a small European force could invade one of the heartlands of the Islamic empire …
Something to Push Against
“Creative freedom can defeat itself because novelty can be felt only in relation to a perceived norm, just as rhythmic freedom can only be felt against a regular meter. When the norm is obscured by heedless violations, interest gradually disappears” (Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve, p. 155).
An Unthinkable Reverse
[Around 1718] “We have an Ottoman document . . . the first Muslim document in which Muslim and Christian methods of warfare are compared, to the advantage of the latter, and the previously unthinkable suggestion is advanced that the true believers should follow the infidels in military organization and the conduct of warfare” (Bernard Lewis, …