John Bytheway Quotes
Decide while you're young to keep the commandments of God, and you won't have to think fast, because before temptation even steps up to the bat, you'll have made your decision. You were smart enough to think first.
Bytheway, John. What I Wish I'd Known in High School. Deseret Book, 1999.
This quotation, 500 years later, would be used by American anti-Catholics to justify their antipathy to the Catholic Church. This was about a most undemocratic statement about the common man and his capabilities which was completely counter to the American view. The fact that it was 500 years past or that many American Catholics did not believe it or that even if they did, it was restricted to matters of theological faith, was not considered by the Know-Nothings and others.
Bush made religion a driver of his Presidency and policies in a way far in excess of other American Presidents. See {633550}. There has always been some debate as to whether he actually believed that or he was just saying it to pander to the religious conservatives who formed an important component of his base.
Al-Maarri’s quotations are not only meaningful in their own right, but they illustrate the openness and free thinking that was allowed in the early days of Islam before about 1100. If anyone wrote such things today in most Islamic countries he would at least be jailed if not executed for blasphemy. And if any Christian in Europe made the same statement, he would have been excommunicated at least if not tortured and murdered.
