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XXIII
DISCOURSE OF A TURK
When the Jew had finished, a Turk, who had smoked throughout the meeting, washed
his mouth, recited the formula Allah Illah, and said to me:
I have listened to all these dreamers. I have gathered that thou art a dog of a Christian,
but thou pleasest me because thou seemest liberal, and art in favour of gratuitous
predestination. I believe thou art a sensible man, assuming that thou dost agree with
me.
Most of thy dogs of Christians have spoken only folly about our Mohammed. A
certain Baron de Tott, a man of much ability and geniality, who did us great service in
the last war, induced me some time ago to read a book of one of your most learned
men, named Grotius, entitled The Truth of the Christian Religion. This Grotius
accuses our great Mohammed of forcing men to believe that a pigeon spoke in his ear,
that a camel conversed with him during the night, and that he had put half the moon in
his sleeve. If the most learned of your Christ-worshippers can write such asinine stuff,
what must I think of the others?
No, Mohammed did none of these village-miracles, of which people speak only a
hundred years after the supposed event. He wrought none of those miracles which
Baron de Tott read to me in the Golden Legend, written at Geneva. He wrought none
of your miracles in the manner of St. Médard, which have been so much derided in
Europe, and at which a French ambassador has laughed so much in our presence. The
miracles of Mohammed were victories. God has shown that he was a favourite by
subjecting half our hemisphere to him. He was not unknown for two whole centuries.
He triumphed as soon as he was persecuted.
His religion is wise, severe, chaste, and humane. Wise, because it knows not the folly
of giving God associates, and it has no mysteries; severe, because it prohibits games
of chance, and wine, and strong drinks, and orders prayer five times a day; chaste,
because it reduces to four the prodigious number of spouses who shared the bed of all
oriental princes; humane, because it imposes on us almsgiving more rigorously than
the journey to Mecca.
Add tolerance to all these marks of truth. Reflect that we have in the city of Stamboul
alone more than a hundred thousand Christians of all sects, who carry out all the
ceremonies of their cults in peace, and live so happily under the shelter of our laws
that they never deign to visit you, while you crowd to our imperial gate.
Referenca: Marrė nga - Toleration and Other Essays by Voltaire. Translated, with an Introduction, by Joseph
McCabe (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1912).
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