英国语文第六册(双语):大马士革与伦敦（二）(1)
Our cities are filled and ornamented with hotels, coffee-houses, hospitals, work-houses, prisons, and similar conspicuous buildings. Generally speaking, there are none of these in the East. Hospitals and institutions for the sick and the poor were the offspring of Christianity, and are, I am inclined to think, peculiar to Christian lands.
在我们的城市里，酒店、咖啡屋、医院、工厂、监狱、还有类似比较显眼的用来装饰城市的建筑随处可见，在东方的城市里通常却看不到。为病人和穷人设立的一些医院和机构都是基督教名下的产物，所以我更倾向于认为这些医院和机构是基督教国家特有的。
There are few prisons in the East, and these are very wretched. Imprisonment as a punishment is little practised, and is altogether unsuited to the Mohammedan law and mode of thinking. Life is not so sacred as with us. It is urged that if a man deserves to be confined as a dangerous member of society, he deserves to die; society will never miss him, and some expense will be spared: "Off with his head;—so much for Buckingham."
东方几乎没有监狱，有的话也是那种糟糕透顶的监狱。监禁作为一种惩罚方式和伊斯兰教的法律以及思维模式是相违背的，因此很少会被采用。东方人看待生命没有西方人看得那么神圣，如果一个人被认定是社会危险分子，那么他就应该立即处死；社会也永远不会追悼他，而且他的死还能节省一些费用：“砍掉他的脑袋；——白金汉就是落得了此等下场。”
Hence in Damascus, and in the East generally, people are not liable to the reproach which is sometimes brought against us—that the best house in the county is the jail. Besides, in the East, punishment follows crime instantaneously. The judge, the mufti, the prisoner, and the executioner, are all in the court at the same time. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the back is made bare, the donkey is ready (for perjury, in Damascus, the man rides through the city with his face to the tail), or the head falls, according to the crime, in the presence of all the people. Awful severity, and the rapidity of lightning, are the principles of their laws; nor do they deem it necessary to make the exact and minute distinctions of crime that we do. The object is to prevent crime, and this is most effectually done by the principle of terror and the certainty of immediate punishment.
因此，在东方，在大马士革，人们不会轻易去指责说自己国家的监狱是建得最好的屋子，但是他们有时却会拿这句话来指责西方国家。此外，在东方，犯人一般都会被当即处决，法官、穆夫提（伊斯兰教法典说明官）、犯人、处决者会同时出现在法院里，判决一旦公布，犯人就要裸露后背，驴子已经准备就绪（在大马士革，作伪证的人要倒骑毛驴游城），或者根据其罪名当众斩首，严酷和神速是东方国家法律的原则；而且他们认为像西方国家这样对罪行做出详细区分是没有必要的。目的都是为了预防犯罪，不同的是他们实现这个目的依据的是恐吓和即时行刑的必然原则，也是最有效的原则。
