Tea at Trianon: Islamic State’s War on Christianity in Africa

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

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Islamic State’s War on Christianity in Africa—and Beyond

From It Can Always Get Worse:

The one attack report in Al-Naba 507 that was not from Africa was from Syria (Wilayat al-Sham). It documented a series of attacks on “the PKK militia”, the PKK being the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which operates under the banner of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) on Syrian territory. IS’s anti-PKK attacks were reported from “Al-Khayr” (Deir Ezzor), the eastern desert province where IS has its deepest roots thanks to the cynical actions of the fallen regime of Bashar al-Asad. IS claims to have killed seventeen PKK militiamen over the preceding week by assaulting village checkpoints with machine guns, and ambushing two PKK vehicles, one on the road between villages and one in a village using an IED. This is, says Al-Naba, part of the “continuing escalation of the mujahideen’s operations against the militia in the area.”
IS’s Sahel Province (Wilayat al-Sahel) claims to have killed thirty soldiers in an ambush in the Kalamba area of Burkina Faso, and to have repelled an attack by the army of Niger near the village of Kallagui that killed sixteen. “Local sources confirmed that the apostate militias are suffering heavy losses in terms of men and equipment, despite receiving support from French and American forces in the region”, Al-Naba claims.
IS’s West Africa Province (Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiya) “burned a military site of the apostate Nigerian army, killed three of them, and wounded at least two others, and destroyed one of their vehicles, in two separate attacks in Borno State in northern Nigeria”, according to Al-Naba. ISWAP allegedly also seized “weapons and other equipment” in the raid.
In Wilayat Mozambique, “the soldiers of the caliphate” abducted four Christians from a village in Cabo Delgado and then “slaughtered them”, says Al-Naba 507. A fifth Christian was murdered in another village in the same area of Mozambique.
IS’s Central African Province (Wilayat Wasat Ifriqiya) murdered four Christians in the Ituri area in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Al-Naba. Three Congolese Christians were shot to death by IS in a village and two days later another Christian was “slaughtered” on a road between two towns. Al-Naba boasts that his comes after ISCAP murdered fifty-three Christians in the Congo the week before, and “seized dozens of homes and possessions belonging to them”. (Read more.)