I just recently reread Alexander Kinglake’s Eothen , which I was given to read as a school task back in the Cretaceous Era. It’s a lovely book, wonderfully quotable:

It so happened that most of the people with whom I had anything to do during my stay at Cairo were seized with plague, and all these died.

What got my attention, though, were his insights into Islam, as it was in the 1830s. Some of these, however, are a bit baffling. For instance, he describes the Wahhabi sect, which we all know about now, as “the Unitarians of the Mussulman world.” What does this mean? Can any Unitarian (or Wahhabi) reader of The Corner enlighten me? I mean, I thought the Unitarians were the “loosest” of the Christian churches–you don’t have to believe in anything much–while the Wahhabis are very, very strict on doctrine. Am I wrong? Is Kinglake wrong? Or what?