Tea at Trianon: Defying ISIS

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Defying ISIS

From Christianity Today:

Not every Muslim hates Christians. Even as the Islamic State (ISIS) continues its reign of terror in Mosul, one Muslim man found the courage to stand up for his Christian brothers and sisters by making an iron cross for them in a bombed-out church.

The story was shared by Jeremy Courtney, CEO of Preemptive Love Coalition, an organisation focused on helping people living in combat zones. When Courtney, who is residing in Iraq, heard about the story of how the iron cross came to be, he decided to provide people with a different story on the happenings in Mosul as well as in Aleppo, Syria.

In the video, Courtney showed a piece of the iron fashioned into a cross by the Muslim man, who explained that he made it to honour his Christian friends who lost their church because of an ISIS bombing.

"Here inside this church that ISIS destroyed here inside Mosul city limits, we found this cross that our friend Marwan helped fashion out of metal," he said, according to Faith Wire. "Marwan is a Muslim. But when he came into this church he couldn't accept that others who claimed to be Muslims had rampaged through this place destroying the signs and icons of his Christian friends." (Read more.)