Allah Will Never Place The World Beneath The Feet Of Those Who
Make Themselves The Slaves Of Drink And Sensuality While They Preach
Penitence And The Joys Of Chastity, And While Extolling Poverty Enrich
Themselves To The Loss Of Their Neighbors.
For these the sad and silent
cloister; for us, the crystalline fountain and the shady grove; for
them, the
Rude and unsocial life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us,
the charm of social life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny;
for us, a ruler who is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance;
for us, letters and instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them,
the wilderness, celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us,
plenty, love, brotherhood, and eternal joy."
In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of
battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the
Cross that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman's mosque a
Christian cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip's temple to
the spirit of the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that a
great deal could be said on Abderrahman's side. This is a world which
will not be renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has
triumphed in the arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in
Moslem Spain. One finds Philip himself, with his despatches in that high
nook, rather than among the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar,
though his statue is duly there with those of his three wives.
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