Tea at Trianon: Christians of Iraq

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

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Christians of Iraq

From The National Review:

The U.S. has pledged to channel significant USAID funding to faith-based organizations on the ground that help to oversee the rebuilding of homes, schools, and hospitals as well as of water and electricity infrastructures and to make vital repairs. In order to further stabilize the region and increase economic opportunity, funds must be disbursed quickly.

One of Iraq’s most prominent Christian leaders has deeper concerns. On the fifth anniversary of the ISIS invasion of northern Iraq, Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic archdiocese of Erbil, Kurdistan, stresses that “Christianity in Iraq is perilously close to extinction.” The Church in Erbil has cared for the exiled families from the Nineveh Plains for almost three years. In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Warda insists that the ISIS atrocities are part of “the recurring cycle of violence targeting Christians in the Middle East for more than 1,400 years.”

From the beginning of Islam in the seventh century, whether Christians and other non-Muslims “were to be tolerated and to what degree” depended on the “judgment and whim” of particular rulers, Warda explains. In the end, Christians were tolerated or not “depending upon the intensity of the prevailing jihadi spirit.” The archbishop notes that even during the Arab Golden Age, from the eighth to the 14th centuries, which was “built on Chaldean and Syriac scholarship” and marked by rich Muslim–Christian dialogue, “it was never a question of equality” between Christians and Muslims.

The horrors of ISIS have “shocked the conscience” of the Islamic world. What remains to be seen, says Warda, is whether “Islam will continue on its current political trajectory, in which sharia law is the basis for civil law and nearly every aspect of life is circumscribed by religion, or whether a more civil, tolerant movement will develop.” On that score, recent alarming reports have circulated that the Iraqi parliament is due to vote on a provision to appoint mullahs as judges, with the prospect that sharia law will override secular laws that are in conflict with it. (Read more.)