Arizona republican., 1892-09-15
maintains order in everything, the con

fou accuse us, they say, "of being depraved Are you less SO, you who keep up perpetual orgies in your great cities, expose your half clad wives and daughters at balls and feasts, and allow them to be whirled around in the arms of anybody and everybody You re- proach us for our ignorance. In order to pass through life with honor your in- struction is not SO good as ours. Thanks to the proverbs and the rules of wisdom that are taught to our children, they conduct themselves like little men. With you the men, and even the learned conduct themselves like little children. You charge our functionaries with venality Who contributes to its establishment if it is not the vulgar herd of traders of every class that Europe has scattered all over the east? You cry down our judiciary. We too have a right to accuse yours. You charge us with fatalism. Fatalists we are, just like your learned men and your philosophers, who base their calculations upon the iinmutability of natural laws. Resigned in the face of plagues, cata- elysms and death, we say 1t was writ ten. For the rest we follow the words of the prophet.
 One day the prophet asked an Arab visitor what he had done with his camel. The Arab replied, T have left him at thy gate. Hast thou tied himY inquired the prophet. No, have left him to the care of God Thou hast done wrong said Mohammed Thou shouldst first have tied him, and then have recon mended him to God.
 The Christian doctrines of predesti- nation and of grace are more depressing than our fatalism. Your ignorance of Islam makes you confound Mussulman slavery with ancient slavery and that which existed until recently in Russia and in Brazil With the Mussulmans there are no slaves. All are brothers, not in the Platonic sense of the Bible, but actually, having the same laws and the same positive duties according to the terms of the Koran. Unlike Chris tianity, Islam has never treated as sal able things, transmissible with the land, troops of men who professed the com mon faith, as was done with the serfs of the Middle Ages, the moujiks of Russia, and the negroes of your colonies. Prisoners of war are the only slaves that it recognizes. but their children are born free, and they themselves can become so by embracing Islam.
 "It is the custom from time immemo- rial in certain countries for parents to part with their children for money, in order to ward off poverty and open mp to themselves career of fortune. By virtue of Mussulman equality this ca reer is limitless in the east How many slaves have become pashas, generals and ministers? Almost all the sultans have been the sons of slaves The black slaves taken from central Africa find in Egypt and in Turkey fate incompar- ably superior to that of the slaves of your colonies Slavery is for savages the first step toward civilization. If their recruiting and their transportation give rise to well founded protests, the fault is not with Islam. Neither the Bible nor the Koran is responsible for abuses
 The Mussulmans proclaim the supe- riority of their Allah; but they acknowl- edge Moses as prophet and Jesus as Rouh Allah, the soul of God. Their veneration for Jesus extends to the mother The immaculate conception, introduced into Catholicism by Plus Tx, has been for twelve centuries Mussul' man belief
 ITO the extreme simplicity of the dogma must be added the positive enjoy ments which the paradise of Mohammed opposes to the platonic joys of the Christian paradise, in order to compre- bend the resistance of Islam to all att tempts at conversion. Christianity is menace, Islamism promise. said Napoleon l, and his opinion is worthy of meditation. Paris Figaro.