Tea at Trianon: The Islamic State’s View of Democracy

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

Monday, April 7, 2025

The Islamic State’s View of Democracy

From It Can Always Get Worse:

The 34-minute speech had a lot of content specific to the then-upcoming Iraqi parliamentary elections on 7 March 2010, and the Islamic State’s determination to abort the process through violence, but Al-Zawi’s speeches were always formulated to refine and promulgate the Islamic State’s doctrine, and this one was no different, consisting in its first half of a wholesale ideological assault on the premise of democracy.
The second half of the speech is largely given over to outreach to Iraqi Sunni Arabs, particularly the tribes. Al-Zawi claims the jihadists are reviving after the “Surge” and Awakening in no small part because Iraqi Sunnis have apparently seen the error they made in turning against the Islamic State to ally with a Shi’a-led, U.S.-supported government that continues to persecute them. Those Sunnis who continue to stand against the Islamic State—the Awakening militias and the politicians in Baghdad—are vilified and threatened, and Al-Zawi was not lying about the jihadists’ ability to assassinate Awakening officials. But this is paired with Al-Zawi offering an inducement: to set aside all grievances with Sunni insurgents and tribes who now join the Islamic State project, even proposing an independent committee to facilitate this unity, which would have the ability to demand payment of blood money and other debts for past wrongs (though Al-Zawi says the Islamic State waives all its claims against others). Al-Zawi is absolutely insistent, however, that the platform of this coalition holds to the Zarqawists’ version of Islam: he explicitly says a small number signing on to this is better than a broader coalition around a diluted (in his view “corrupted”) platform.
It is an interesting look at how the Islamic State rebounded from its 2008 nadir, how it held to its doctrine while taking lessons from that experience which allowed it to more successfully approach the tribes, a key modification that helped pave the way for the “caliphate” declaration in 2014. (Read more.)