CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/The Book of KhalidPublic

A Lebanese iconoclast emigrates to America and embarks on a quixotic quest for the truth.

Page 251 of 298
Table of Contents

VI

the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing today? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes, but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste not a drop.

“O my Brothers, let us cease rejoicing in the Dustur ; for at heart we know no freedom, nor truth, nor order. We elect our representatives to Parliament, but not unlike the Europeans; we borrow from France what the deeper and higher mind of France no longer believes; we imitate England in what England has long since discarded; but our Books of Revelation, which made France and Germany and England what they are, and in which is the divine essence of truth and right and freedom, we do not rightly understand. A thousand falsehoods are cluttered around the truth to conceal it from us. I call you back, O my Brothers, to the good old virtues of our ancestors. Without these the Revolution will miscarry and our Dustur will not be worth a date-stone. Our ancestors⁠—they never bowed their proud neck to tyranny, whether represented in an autocrat or in a body of autocrats; they never betrayed their friends; they never soiled their fingers with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafés and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough of these today.

“Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind⁠—these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the

251