The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-02-14

OF Hfe-and, after an. the stranger sees
| no other and no deeper-he has left
! behind him that mere fraction Of the
! race which wears hats and trousers and
shoes, which sits on chairs, eats OF ia
bles. and sleeps on bedsteadS. He finds
the streets of Port Said thronged with
men wearing skirts and with women who
attract by hiding their faces rather than
by exposing them; with men who would
| die rather than uncover their heads on
| meeting a friend. on sitting down to a
meal or on kneeling to pray.
In a Mosque.
Walk into a mosque. after putting on
slippers over the shoes, and not a pic
ture Is to be seen on the walls for
Mahometanism forbids the pictorial rep
| resentation of any living thing, nor is a
strain OF music to be heard. But still
more significant contrast impresses the
traveller out of the west. Hardly a wom-
an Is at prayer, and often not one Is 10
be found among hundreds of PROSTATE
devOtees.
Mahometanism is a mans religion. #
has no Madonna to sanctify and trans
! inquire motherhood. On the contrary. ma
ternitv is a defilement which must be fol-
lowed by a long period OF publication
before the mother may even kneel above
sings OF Allah on his infant head. In
evitably the marital tie hangs loosely
on the Moslem husband and Lord Gro
mer tells of one of his hostlers who was
divorced and remarked eleven times in a
year or two.
The ideals of Islam are still farther
removed than its practices from those
of Christianity. While the New Tesla
ment teaches charity and forgiveness,
the Koran inculcates hatred and revenge
when We encounter unbelievers strike
of their heads until you have made a
great slaughter among them" is one of
the Koranic laws. Nevertheless, the
Moslcm is capable of greater tolerance
than the Christian, as he showed in the
Middle Ages. But he is tolerant in spite
of his religion and because the East nat
urally Is gentler than the fierce West.
The MahOmetan differs from the Chris
tian in his dream of heaven as much as
in his philosophy Of life. While one
prays and hopes to meet his departed
kindred and friends in a world eternal
where there will be no parting, the other
looks forward to dwelling among
hours superior to the people of the earth.
The Scorn of the East.
1t is not necessary to go into the
mosques to learn that east is east and
west is west. The Westerner cannot
pass along a street anywhere in all the
injurious Orient without being made
to feel the silent scorn of the East
erner.
In his pride in his civilization, its
ethics and its learning. its art and it's
arts, its law and its progress, the trav-
cling American goes FORTH too often
amazed and wounded by the complete
indifference of the people whom he
passes. They seldom pay the tribute
OF a glance to his too conscious supe-
riority, and by the time he has turned
the first corner in his ramble the feel
ing of all travellers beyond Port Said
possesses him, that he is alone in a hui
man wilderness.
One Egyptian did deign to favor me
with an expression of the almost mex
Pressible contempt of the East for the
as the only true source OF civilization,
but when l had the temerity to inquire
where the monuments OF that civilfza-
tion were to be found. he exclaimed
That question is so Westerni Your
people think and talk only of doing,
but we give all our thoughts to being.
You can perceive only what you can
touch: you value only what you can
add up in money terms.