Fanaticism sounds like the flat contrary of common sense; yet curiously enough they are both sides of the same thing.
The fanatic of the desert is dangerous precisely because he does take his faith as a fact, and not even as a truth in our more transcendental sense.

When he does take up a mystical idea he takes it as he takes the man or the palm-tree; that is, quite literally.
When he does distinguish somebody not as a man but as a Moslem, then he divides the Moslem from the non-Moslem exactly as he divides the man from the camel.

But even then he recognises the equality of men in the sense of the equality of Moslems.

He does not, for instance, complicate his conscience with any sham science about races.
In this he has something like an intellectual advantage over the Jew, who is generally so much his intellectual superior; and even in some ways his spiritual superior.

The Jew has far more moral imagination and sympathy with the subtler ideals of the soul.
For instance, it is said that many Jews disbelieve in a future life; but if they did believe in a future life, it would be something more worthy of the genius of Isaiah and Spinoza.