Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
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"The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)Jorge Luis Borges
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They say that bears
Have love affairs
And even camels,
We're merely mammals
Let's misbehave.Cole Porter
I regard Mohammed as a great man, who solved a political problem of appalling difficulty, — the construction of a state and an empire out of the Arab tribes. I have endeavored, in recounting the mode in which he accomplished this, to do justice to his intellectual ability and to observe towards him the respectful attitude which his greatness deserves.
Holy Prophet Muhammad
Surely, there is no advantage (preference) for an Arab over an aajami (non-Arab), nor a non-Arab over an Arab, nor a white over a black, except by piousness and good deeds.
Holy Prophet Muhammad
The source of the terror in Lebanon as in Iraq is to be found in the Koran and in the despotisms of the Arab Middle East.
David Horowitz
The great imposter Mohammed pretended that he was taught his Koran.
Holy Prophet Muhammad
Borges, Jorge Luis
Borgia, Cesare
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