B1009 <=> B1011 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1010]

“’Your religion arose much later and its contents were intentionally restricted by its great creators, who had it in mind to lay particular stress on certain everyday customs.

“’They did this because at that time there were clearly manifest both the decline of the Christian religion and the disappearance in ordinary people of the capacity for contemplation, that is, for the state in which alone the truths indicated in the detailedly genuine religious teachings can be understood.

“’Having noticed all this, the great creators of the Mohammedan religion decided on the one hand to simplify the teaching itself and on the other hand to emphasize certain customs, so that the everyday life of the followers of this new teaching – who had lost the capacity for contemplation and consequently the possibility of understanding truths consciously – might at least mechanically flow more or less tolerably.

“’Just at that time, among other customs, they established and laid particular stress on the customs you mentioned of sooniat, abdest and polygamy, the beneficial results of which we can see even now in practice.

“’For example, as you yourself have justly observed, thanks to circumcision and ablution one rarely finds among the followers of this religion either onanism or certain venereal diseases, and thanks to polygamy we see among the followers of this religion such a reciprocal so to say psycho-organic maintenance of the foundation of family life as it is almost entirely absent among the followers of the Christian religion.

“’Of the useful customs originally contained in the Christian religion and which were introduced by the creators of that religion into the life of its followers for the preservation of health and for the maintenance of the foundations of morality necessary for a happy life, nothing now remains except the custom of periodic fasting, that is, of abstaining at certain times of the year from the consumption of certain edible products.