Quotable quotes from the wonderful world of free speechers ... Part 16

Edward Augustus Freeman (1823 – 1892)   English historian, Liberal politician

"No Mahometan government can ever give to its subjects of other religions what we in Western Europe are used to look on as really good government. No Mahometan nation can really become part of the same community of nations as the Christian nations of Europe. These positions make it needful to look a little further into the nature of the Mahometan religion, and into the relations which, under a Mahometan government, must always exist, between its Mahometan subjects and its subjects of other religions."

"[Islam] is essentially an obstructive, intolerant system, supplying just sufficient good to stand in the way of greater good. It has consecrated despotism; it has consecrated polygamy; it has consecrated slavery. It has declared war against every other creed; it has claimed to be at least dominant in every land… When it ceases to have an enemy to contend against, it sinks into sluggish stupidity… It must have an enemy; if cut off, like Persia, from conflict with the infidel, it finds its substitute in sectarian hatred of brother Moslems… By [only] slightly reforming, it has perpetuated and sanctified all the evils of the eastern world. It has, by its aggressive tenets, brought them into more direct antagonism with the creed and civilization of the west."

"History is past politics and politics are present history."

"A man must in all times and places know whether he speaks the same language as another man; but he does not always go on to put his consciousness of difference into the shape of a sharply drawn formula."

"The relation between Christian and Mussulman under Mussulman rule is fixed, not by a law like an Act of Parliament, which may at any time be changed, but by a supposed divine law which cannot be changed. The relations between the Christian and the Mussulman, that is, the abiding subjection and degradation of the Christian, are matters of religious principle."

"Every word that a man speaks is the result of a real, though doubtless unconscious, act of his free will."

"The practical point is that, whatever a nation of some third religion might do, a Mahometan nation cannot live on terms of real community with Christian nations; a Mahometan government cannot give real equality and good government to its Christian subjects. The question. in modern Europe lies between Christian and Mahometan, because all the nations of Europe besides. the Turks are Christian. But it must be borne in mind that the question of the relation between Mahometan and Christians is only part of a greater question, that is, of the relation between Mahometans and men of other religions generally. What is true of Mahometans and Christians in Europe, is, or has been, true of Mahometans and Pagans in Asia."

"For the first principle of the Mahometan religion, the lordship of the true believer over the infidel, cuts off the possibility of any true national fellowship between the true believer and the infidel. Even the Greek or Armenian who embraces the Latin creed goes far toward parting with his nationality as well as with his religion."

"Wherever Mahometans have borne rule, the Mahometan part of the population has always been a ruling race, and the Christian or other non-Mahometan part has always been a subject race. The truth is that this always must be so; it is an essential part of the Mahometan religion that it should be so. The Koran, the sacred book of the Mahometans, bids the true believers to fight against the infidels, till the infidels either embrace Islam or submit to pay tribute."