"Seven Pillars of Wisdom" is a well whose water is always sweet, and never runs to chalk.
Three widely spaced paragraphs, that illustrate what a difference a century can make. Read and weep.
[Speaking of the Arab revolt, as led by Feisal, one of the sons of the Sherif of Mekkah] "Of religious fanaticism there was no trace. The Sherif refused in round terms to give a religious twist to his rebellion. The tribes knew the Turks were Moslems, and thought that the Germans were true friends of Islam. They knew the British were Christians, and that the British were their allies. In the circumstances, their religion would not have been of much help to them, and they had put it aside. ‘Christian fights Christian, so why should not Mohammedans to the same.’ What we want is a government which speaks our own language of Arabic and will let us live in peace. Also we hate those Turks.” (100-01)
Then, sixty pages later... when speaking of Kasim (or Nejd, meaning central Arabia, i.e. Riyadh) townsmen serving with the revolt: “Not being a tribe, they had no blood enemies, but passed freely in the desert: the carrying trade and chaffer of the interior lay in their hands. The gains of the desert were poor, but enough to tempt them abroad, since the conditions of their home-life were uncomfortable. The Wahabis, followers of a fanatical Moslem heresy, had imposed their strict rules on easy and civilized Kasim. In Kasim there was but little coffee-hospitality, much prayer and fasting, no tobacco, no atistic dalliance with women, no silk clothes, no gold and silver head ropes or ornaments. Everything was forcibly pious or forcibly puritanical.
It was a natural phenomenon, this periodic rise at intervals of little more than a century, of ascetic creeds in Central Arabia. Always the votaries found their neighbors beliefs cluttered with inessential things, which became impious in the hot imagination of their preachers. Again and again they had arisen, had taken possession, soul and body, of the tribes, and dashed themselves to pieces on the urban Semites, merchants and concupiscent men of the world. About their comfortable possessions the new creeds ebbed and flowed like the tides or the changing of the seasons, each movement with the seeds of early death in its excess of rightness. Doubtless they must recur so long as the causes – sun, moon, wind, acting in the emptiness of open spaces, weigh without check on the hurried and uncumbered minds of the desert dwellers.” (166)
Perhaps then, what we see here is the unpleasant even psychotic linkage between oil wealth beyond imagining and a desert creed of poverty and excess, made particularly fierce by the crushing of egalitarian tribal society either under the boot of socialist-inspired centralized dictatorships (Syria) or by the stifling weight of a dominant, corpulent Royal Family (Saudi Arabia).
Ok, enough venting (read enough translated Arab newspapers and you just get to thinking they are all nuts...).
Fair Winds and Following Sands!
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