Don't forget this exchange between Huck and Tom, from Tom Sawyer Abroad:

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land—there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's
our duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine,
and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to—"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck
Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like
this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO
own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy,
and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a
shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march
against them and take it away from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now,
if I had a farm and another person—"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming
is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all
you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally
different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers—dey mos' sholy is.
I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't
run across none dat acts like dat."



On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I recently published, on YouTube, a video of my reading chapter 13 of
> The Innocents Abroad.  It received a comment of some degree of
> astonishment on the degree of dislike Twain held for the Ottoman Empire.
> I replied with a remark to the effect that in some part he was reacting
> to the elitism he perceived in the Muslims, ie how anything that
> Christians come into contact with is defiled.
>
> I wanted to research this a bit further and found a paper presented by
> one Ben Rejeb, Lotfi, "Mark Twain, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine".
> The paper is not available but the abstract describes it:  "... This
> paper will explore the sources of that vision, Twains orientalism and
> his modes of expression, as well as the interplay of fancy and reality,
> of humor and seriousness, of childrens fantasies and historico-political
> designs."
>
> The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies
> Association.  My print out of the abstract does not contain the date of
> the meeting.
>
> Would anyone care to comment about this?
>