The Haj

Quotes (without permission) from the book by Leon Uris 

His situation was even more lonely, for a muktar must never let anyone know his thoughts. A structure of silence was the rule of life. Public utterances, even to a friend or relative, were always based on what was expected to be said. No one spoke of personal longings, secret ambitions, fears.

[Gideon Asch] ‘Suppose we didn’t have the water arrangement. Would you have encouraged your people to riot [against Jews]]?’ [Muktar Ibrahim] "During the summer heat my people become frazzled. They worry about the autumn harvest. They are drained. They are pent up. They must explode. Nothing directs their frustration like Islam. Hatred is holy in this part of the world. It is also eternal. If they become inflamed, I am but a muktar. I cannot stand against a tide. You see, Gideon, that is why you are fooling yourselves. You do not know how to deal with us. For years, decades, we may seem to be at peace with you, but always in the back of our minds we keep up the hope of vengeance. No dispute is ever really settled in our world. The Jews give us a special reason to continue warring.’... ‘Aha!’ Ibrahim said. ‘That proves you are weak and that will be your downfall. You are crazy to extend us a mercy that you will never receive in return.’

[Ibrahim] Perhaps Islam looks fanatical to you, but it provides us with the means to survive the harshness of this life and prepare us for a better life hereafter.’ 

'So the purity of the zionist dream becomes tainted with the ugliness of reality' Brompton said.

[Ibrahim] As for me, for a quarter of a century I was the Muktar of Tabah and never once in that time did we turn a stranger from our doors. [Mayor Clovis Bakshir] 'You never woke up one morning to discover fifty thousand people camped in your square'...'Government to them is a mystical extension of Islam'

The belt of Islam held some of the planets worst land, which ran from North Africa into the dismal places of the pacific ocean. It was that crushing part of the world where men could not beat the earth. Numbly they embraced Islam and its fatalistic outlook. Islam gave them something to grasp hold of in order to continue the struggle through life. This land bullied everyone who attempted to exist on it. So harsh, so brutalizing were the forces of nature that those people imprisoned upon it were convoluted into forming a society where cruelty was commonplace.

Ibrahim needed information, perhaps guidance, but men even so close by blood Relationship and position seldom spoke straight with one another.

Mohammed is the final and ultimate prophet. He alone is the messenger of Allah. All other religions are therefore null and void. The nonbelievers are infidels, always to be suspected and eventually to be destroyed.

My father was very liberal at letting the villagers run up a debt on the theory that 'a man in your debt cannot call you  a dog,  for he is the dog and must obey '

All Muslims realize they have no control over their own lives and destinies.

Illness,  death, drought, pestilence, earthquakes, any disasters must be fatalistically accepted as the will of Allah.

[Ishmael] My father said many times to me that or people were more easily moved by words than by ideas and more by ideas than logic.

[Colonel Sayyad] It is not for general consumption,  but there will also be a declaration that Jordan will grant automatic citizenship to any Palestinian who do desires '. How humanitarian,  Ibrahim thought.  The little king rules an impoverished Bedouin wasteland that cannot feed itself.  If the British Leanne with their subsidy,  it will be a beggar nation. It cannot survive without money from the Syrian and Egyptian and Saudi treasuries.  Abdullah is now trying to artificially inflate his population and use us to lay claims to lands that do not belong to him. The king is farting higher than his ass.

[Ibrahim] Some things never change. Allow a woman to walk in front of you and you will catch her wind for the rest of your life.

[Jesus to ishmael] The truth is that Allah is one. He is all-good and all - evil. He has planted an equal measure of good and bad in all of you. You have been given a mind, in order to wage a war within yourself and to satisfy only yourself. Hang on to your own soul. Don't give it away. Find your own answer and you will be free.

Haj Ibrahim was fine-tuned to Mudhil’s every word to catch an inference, a hidden meaning, unspoken words between spoken words, unspoken lines between spoken lines. 

[Ishmael] What was it that Dr. Mudhil had read to me by T. E. Lawrence, that great English hero of the Arabs? He said ... let me think ... yes, I remember: The Arabs have no halftones in their register of vision ... They exclude compromise and pursue the logic of their ideas to its absurd ends, without seeing the incongruity of their opposed conclusions. Their convictions are by instinct, their activities intuitional. ... Clever man, that Lawrence of Arabia, clever man.