Perspective from the 1800s

I have been reading a few books written by three British men - a traveler, an engineer and a soldier.  All three lived in/visited Kurdistan sometime during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  They have each told their perspective about their time in this land, its cities, and with the people who live here.

The traveling man decided he wanted to go in disguise to see the "real" people and visit places the first class traveler would not be able to see.  I am posting this excerpt where he contrasts Christianity and Islam.  I think it is a very telling perspective that as a Christian living in an Islamic society, I could take some of it to heart.  Based on other things he says, he is not a believer so I feel he isn't necessarily biased very strongly toward either belief system.

It is unfortunate that the Asiatic Christian is, as a rule, a very undesirable creature, more bigoted than the most fanatical Muhammadan, of a craft and infidelity seldom witnessed in other lands, and of an attitude towards his co-religionists of different tenets that can be only described as traitorous. It may be reckoned a heretical statement to put forward, but the dweller in the East is bound to confess that among the greater part of the peoples of Western Asia, Islam produces a better man than Christianity. The temperament of the Middle Eastern Semitic is ultra-utilitarian. The ideals that Christianity puts before him have too slender a hold upon a nature that craves for the substance, and the latitude allowed in daily life by the Western faith accords ill with the temperament that seeks set rule and law, that may govern the manner of his rising and sitting, of his eating and sleeping, and by the observance of which he may accumulate the merit that may secure to him the acquisition of ideals almost mundane. The high soul and spirit required by Christianity is too far above these material minds, and the hazy and ill-understood ideal cannot hold their endeavors as do the needs of life and the almost unconquerable cupidity of the Semitic nature. So we see the spiritual and intangible, the higher head and sign of their religion lost sight of, in the struggles that rage about leadership of their minor saints, and points of doctrine and dogma that tear asunder the Christian community. Islam is material, her ideals are powerful and simple, there is through all that unification of leader and led that all can appreciate. One God, one Prophet, one Book, each in its own rational relation to the other, a simple doctrine, powerful in its direct appeal to the unity, a leader, a prophet who lays down with the despotism understood of the ancient Semitic spirit, law and letter for all things ; that is a creed that the Arab mind sees as tangible, if such an expression be permissible ; a law for all and a reward attainable by the observance of its well-defined canons, demanding not too much of the man in his daily life, yet holding him — as all who know the East must know — with a mysterious and invincible power that calls upon his life when it wills, and finds it ever ready for the sacrifice.
Persecution has doubtless made the Christian crafty and distrustful, and is often quoted as an excuse for the many undesirable qualities he possesses which the Musulman does not share. Alone among these Christian sects stand the Chaldeans of the north, whose pride of race and tongue has done something to keep them above the Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks they despise, and to preserve alive in their breasts the sentiment of the ruling race from whom they profess to spring, and which saves them from many a littleness which is an integral part of the nature of the other Christians.

The persecution of the Christians — of which Diarbekr has too often been the theatre — excites the sympathy of all nations, and rightly too ; for whatever be their quibbles, they hold fast to Christianity through all the massacres and terror that Turkish vindictiveness has incited and paid for.

I would be curious to know your thoughts, so post a comment.  I would ask however that your comment be in regards to this excerpt, not in reply to other comments.

If you would like to read his book, click here.