Note 26 — Chapter XXII

I should be sorry to apply to a minister of any religion the opprobrious epithet of a "Surpliced Ruffian." It would seem, however, that Archdeacon Laffan aspires to the "bad eminence" of the apologist of assassins. What would my readers say, were I to report the Ministers of Islamism in The Desert to be the abettors of assassination? Or what would they have said, if a priest had been found to be the secret or open instigator of the quasi-bandit Ouweek, in his violent threat to murder me, because I chanced to be a Christian, or rather, a non-believer in Mahomet. We should not have found words sufficiently strong to express our reprobation of such priestly intolerance and wickedness. And yet Ouweek would have only acted out his religious principles in their stern literality,—‮قتلواهم‬—"kill them" (the infidels), as frequently written in the inexorable Koran; whilst Archdeacon Laffan's preaching is diametrically opposed to his religion, whose holy and clement command contrariwise is,—"to forgive our enemies, and bless those who curse us."