“Are you saying, (as has been claimed by many) that the Arabs & Persians are congenital liars??”
Telling the truth and the importance of integrity are Christian values. The Koran tells Muslims to lie to further the religion. The difference is why Christian cultures were able to develop complex businesses, banking and economies. Muslims remain, for the most part, in tribal settings with limited ability to achieve anything outside of what was possible in a farming village in the year 900. Any modernity they have was borrowed from the West.
Exactly. Every time I get into a discussion about the role of religion in society, I constantly point out that the civilizing force of Western Europe is Christianity, and without it we would still be back in Roman era behavior.
Well, that’s where Jews stepped in. Christians, until only the last few centuries, were not supposed to do usury—the charging of interest on borrowed money.
The Jews could.
I’ve always wondered why usury is no longer a “thing” in the Catholic or Protestant or Eastern Orthodox faiths.
Seriously, What changed? There was no “Divine revelation” as far as I know?
Also, we had a bunch of Iranian Air Force students at Keesler AFB in Mississippi back in 1976. I’ll never forget the day they almost burned down their barracks. A couple of them bought a chicken from a farmer, and then tried to burn the feathers off in their room with a blow torch. Set the room on fire!
As Peter O’Toole said in the 1962 Classic, “Lawrence of Arabia” in his dialogue with Omar Sharif:
T.E. Lawrence: Sherif Ali. So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people; a silly people; greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.
This was true in 818, 1218, 1718, 1918 and remains UNCHANGED in 2018!