I watched the last 20 minutes of Lawrence of Arabia today.  I’ve read the book but I’ve seen the the movie in bits and pieces.  Alec Guinness is very cool as Prince Faisel.  The two scenes I remember are his interview with an American reporter.

”With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”

The other one I just saw today.  It is negotiation time at the end of the war:

Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution.

I started thinking about how little I know about Islam and its beginnings.  It looks like it started in a desert rural setting as opposed to Christianity which I know started in coastal urban areas.

The Bible is written and in a somewhat chronological order.  The Koran started in a verbal tradition and had been around for years before being written down.  It seems Islam started as a religion of the poor and illiterate.