VOLTAIRE AND MOHAMMED

One of dozens of patriot protests across Australia yesterday (8/31)

[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on March 10, 2006. For context, log on to @elonmusk to learn what Britain’s Labor Government under Keir Starmer is doing to protect Moslem rape gangs and mass Moslem illegal migration, and on to @MarchFor Australia to see hundreds of thousands of Aussie patriots in every major city protest yesterday (8/31) what the Aussie Labor Government under Anthony Albanese is doing to promote mass Moslem immigration and smear anyone who disagrees as “racist” – just as does Starmer. Given this, I thought it timely to know about Voltaire and Mohammed.]

TTP March 10, 2006

This Monday (3/6), the Wall Street Journal had a front page article about Moslems rioting in France over the staging of a play in a small village in the French Alps called Saint-Genis-Pouilly.  The play was written in 1741 by Voltaire (1694-1778), and hasn’t been staged for centuries.  The title of the play is Mahomet, which is an older way to spell Mohammed.

The article provided very little information about the play’s content.  The author of the WSJ article clearly did not see the performance himself.  An internet search turns up a French edition of the play but none in English.  It’s far out of print, so to actually read the play, you’d have to go a large public or university library.

It just so happens, however, that I have the English translation of the complete works of Voltaire – all 42 volumes – in my personal library.  So I immediately sat down and read the entire play.  It is a drop dead, stone cold, mind blow.  It is fantastic.  And it couldn’t be more perfectly written for our day than if Voltaire was a clairvoyant.

Here is the play’s synopsis:

The year is 630 AD, the scene is Mecca.  Eight years before, Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina, and has now amassed a huge army to return and conquer the city.  Mecca’s ruler is Zopir, who looks upon Mohammed as a “tyrant” and a “savage murderer,” and refuses to surrender.  “What can you expect but slavery from a tyrant?” he asks.

Zopir has captured a slave of Mohammed’s, the beautiful Palmira who worships Mohammed and tries to get Zopir to surrender to him.  He will not ever do so to a “vile imposter… a madman… a robber.”  Mohammed sends his slave Seid to spy on Zopir and persuades him to murder Zopir as a commandment of God.

But Zopir is too kind and decent, and Seid can’t do it.  Mohammed sends him again with the wrath of Allah on his shoulders.  This is all part of Mo’s plan to get rid of both Zopir and Seid, for Seid and Palmira are falling in love and Mohammed wants Palmira for himself.

What Mohammed knows and no one else does is that Seid and Palmira are brother and sister captured in a raid as infants — and their father is Zopir.

Before Mohammed sends Seid out to kill his father, he gives him a slow-acting poison to drink.  Seid performs the parricide, and as Zopir lays dying they learn they are father and son and Palmira is his sister.  Seid rises in revolt against Mohammed, leads the citizens of Mecca against him, and just as his sword is about to lay Mohammed low, the poison takes effect and he dies.

Mohammed claims God struck down Seid for the sacrilege of opposing him and will do so to anyone else daring to doubt that he is the Prophet of God.  The Meccans disperse, he has triumphed, and turns to take Palmira as his trophy.  She stabs and kills herself before he has the chance.

The play ends with Mohammed’s lament:

She’s gone; she’s lost; the only dear reward

I wished to keep of all my crimes: in vain

I fought and conquered; Mahomet is wretched

Without Palmira: Conscience, now I feel thee,

And feel that thou canst rive the guilty heart.

O thou eternal God, whom I have wronged

Braved and blasphemed; O thou whom yet I fear,

Behold me self-condemned, behold me wretched,

Even whilst the world adores me: vain was all

My boasted power: I have deceived mankind;

But how shall I impose on my own heart?

A murdered father, and two guiltless children

Must be avenged: come, ye unhappy victims,

And end me quickly!-Omar, we must strive

To hide this shameful weakness, save my glory,

And let me reign o’er a deluded world:

For Mahomet depends on fraud alone,

And to be worshipped never must be known.

The claim is being made that Voltaire wrote Mahomet as an attack on religious fanaticism in general and as a disguised attack on Christianity in particular.  Nonsense.  He dedicated the play to Pope Benedict XIV, who wrote back a letter of appreciation.

Voltaire knew his Mohammed and Koran.  The characters of Seid and Palmira are taken from Mohammed’s adopted son Zeid and his wife Zainab bint Jahsh.  Mohammed’s lechery over Zainab caused him to invent a Commandment from God saying that God ordered Zeid to divorce Zainab and that is was Divinely OK for Mohammed to marry his daughter-in-law.  This is in the Koran, Sura 33:37.

The play is a direct assault on the moral character of Mohammed by Voltaire.  This is a classic work by a classic Western writer and should be performed on Broadway, by drama clubs and college/high school thespian groups all over the country.

As a public service, then, To The Point has published the entire complete and unabridged Mahomet of Voltaire in English translation.

I have had the play transcribed this week.

[No longer necessary:  the play is now on Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mahomet_(Voltaire)

I really encourage you to read the entire play.  You’ll soon see why we need Voltaire’s Mahomet publicly performed as a challenge to the moral arrogance of Islamism.