|
BETWEEN MOSLEM AND JEW
If we use civilization and Christendom as synonymous terms- and by
Christendom I do not mean necessarily to imply that it is composed of
Christians, but merely use the word as a generic theological expression
- it is easy to perceive why it should be regarded by Moslem and Jew
from very different points of view, and as destined to exercise a
very opposite influence upon the future of the two religions.
So far as the Moslem is concerned, instead of yielding to the influence
of civilization, they only tend to arouse his fanaticism. Totally
unable to adapt himself to them socially or politically, he finds
himself in the presence of a force, the insidious character of which he
is unable to resist, and beneath which he instinctively feels he is
destined to succumb, if he cannot successfully oppose its advance by
the sword.
Hense, we have the idea of jihad, or religious war, engrafted in his
nature; he is trained from his ealiest childhood to a hatred of the Ghiaour,
and cherishes through life the hope that the day may come when
an opportunity may arise for giving it forcable expression.
The Jew, on the other hand,
entertains no such for the Christian, though, God knows, he has much
more reason to do so. His terrible struggle for existence has
sharpened his faculties, until he has acquired a marvelous instinct for
the exploitation of his Christian neighbors, but it has not developed
any hatred for them.
On the contrary, those who are not too "advanced" feel a proud sense of
religious and intellectual superiority, which, so far as the latter
part of the sentiment is concerned, has been fully justified by
experience.
The orthodox Jew is sustained under all the adverse circumstances of
his fate by the living hope that the real history of his race is still
to come.
The Moslem feels his history lies in the past. Sullen and dogged,
his highest consolation rests in the belief, for which he has
prophetic indications, that, like Sampson, his end will be to pull the
temple of Christendom about his ears, and bury himself in its ruins.
The orthodox Jew believes, and is no less supported in that belief by
the assurances of his sacred books, that those ruins are destined to
prove the foundations of his future greatness and triumphs; but in
order to this consummation he fels that the tribal distinction and
religious exclusiveness of his race must be preserved.
Hense that the orthodox Jews of Russia and east of Europe have
manifested a strong opposition to the desire of their more advanced
Western co-religionists to promote a mass emigration to America, and
have inaugurated a counter- movement in favor of a return to the East,
which has seized upon the imagination of the masses, and produced a
wave of enthusiasm in favor of emigration to Palestine, the force and
extent of which of which only those who have come in contact with it,
as I have done, can appreciate.
From the 20 August 1882
issue of the New York Times
Lawrence Olephant, In The
Ninetenth Century
|
|
