Abu 'I-Alaa Al-Ma'arri (973-1057), a poet born near Aleppo, Syria We laugh, but inept is our laughter; We should weep and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter Re-molded no more. --- Religion is a "fable invented by the ancients". So, too, the creeds of man: the one prevails Until the other comes; and this one fails When that one triumphs; ay, the lonesome world Will always want the latest fairy-tales. --- Among the crumbling ruins of the creeds The Scout upon his camel played his reeds And called out to his people —"Let us hence! The pasture here is full of noxious weeds. --- Hanifs are stumbling, Christians all astray Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way. We mortals are composed of two great schools Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. --- What is religion? A maid kept close that no eye view her; The price of her wedding-gifts and dowry baffles the wooer. Of all the goodly doctrine that I f...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51