Charles, Prince of Folly

A few days before Christmas Prince Charles gave a short broadcast about the persecution of Christians and others while managing to avoid naming the persecutors, and even including the persecutors among the persecuted. Here is the text along with some [comments] on the most relevant sentences:

“In London recently I met a Jesuit priest from Syria. He gave me a graphic account of what life is like for those Christians he was forced to leave behind. He told me of mass kidnappings in parts of Syria and Iraq and how he feared that Christians would be driven en masse out of lands described in the Bible. He thought it quite possible there will be no Christians in Iraq within five years. Clearly for such people religious freedom is a daily stark choice between life and death.

The scale of religious persecution around the world is not widely appreciated. Nor is it limited to Christians in the troubled regions of the Middle-East. A recent report suggests that attacks are increasing on Yazidis, Jews, Ahmaddis, Bahais and many other minority faiths.

[What do they have in common? That’s right, all persecuted by Muslims.]

And in some countries even more insidious forms of extremism have recently surfaced, which aim to eliminate all types of religious diversity.

[Muslims again, under the banner of ISIS.]

We are also struggling to capture the immensity of the ripple effect of such persecution. According to the United Nations 5.8 million more people abandoned their homes in 2015 than the year before, bringing the annual total to a staggering 65.3 million. That is almost equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom. And the suffering doesn’t end when they arrive seeking refuge in a foreign land. We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive towards those who adhere to a minority faith.

[Aggressive? In what way? Do Marine Le Pen’s or Geert Wilders’ supporters rape or murder immigrants? No they do not. They merely oppose, legally and democratically, the invasion of their countries by military age males whose religious ideology and predatory behaviour pose a deadly threat to indigenous Europeans. The idea that populist groups (that’s the people, right?) oppose immigrants because of their minority faith is dishonest. They oppose the primarily Muslim immigrants because of their violently supremacist faith which happens to be minority…at the moment.]

All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s.

[No it hasn’t. It is grotesque to equate Nazi persecution of peaceful, productive German citizens because they happened to be Jewish with resistance to the forced acceptance of young men who make women afraid to go out alone and people in general afraid to go to Christmas markets or pop concerts.]

I was born in 1948, just after the end of World War II in which my parents’ generation had fought and died in a battle against intolerance, monstrous extremism and an inhuman attempt to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. That nearly 70 years later, we should still be seeing such evil persecution is to me beyond all belief. We owe it to those who suffered and died so horribly not to repeat the horrors of the past.

[If Prince Charles was referring to the evil persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims in Europe and elsewhere then we would all understand. But he isn’t. He is referring to those ghastly populists again. This is the canard, adopted by Muslims and their dhimmi supporters, that Muslims are in danger of extermination by native Europeans. This is not just grotesque but obscene considering the troops now permanently needed in France to guard synagogues and Jewish schools. No…Muslims are not the new Jews. Jews are the new Jews and Muslims are the new Nazis.]

Normally at Christmas we think of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder though if this year we might remember how the story of the nativity unfolds with the fleeing of the holy family to escape violent persecution. And we might also remember that when the Prophet Mohammed migrated from Mecca to Medina he did so because he too was seeking the freedom for himself and his followers to worship.

[Yes, Mohammed and his followers migrated to Medina for the sake of freedom of worship, but only their own. Within five years he had slaughtered, exiled or sold into slavery the three main Jewish tribes in the Medina area and within ten years his armies had imposed Islam on most of Arabia. On the other hand Jesus was taken to Egypt for temporary refuge from Herod. Eventually he returned to Judea and taught a message of peace. To equate these two migrations is to attempt a very ugly sleight of hand which I hope the majority of people will see through.]

Whichever religious path we follow, the destination is the same: to value and respect the other person, accepting their right to live out their peaceful response to the love of God.

[Charles has had state and interfaith connections with Muslims most of his life yet it seems hard to believe that he has ever opened a Koran. While other religions can usually be said to respect, or at least tolerate, non-believers Islam values and respects only Muslims. According to Islamic scriptures unbelievers are to be subjected to a vicious religious apartheid in this life and can expect to be tortured for eternity in the next.]

That’s what I saw when attending the consecration of a Syriac Orthodox cathedral in London recently. Here were a people persecuted for their religion in their own country but finding refuge in another land and freedom to practise their faith according to their conscience. It is an example to inspire us all this Christmas time.”

Why would Charles make such obvious factual errors and such perverse connections? It is a mystery to normal people how he can so obviously deny the reality of Islam which we see all around us. But he is not alone. The representatives of the C of E which he will one day head, along with prime ministers, our unelected overlords in Brussels and the Pope all sing the same tune. The entire elite, in fact, now increasingly being rejected by those appalling populists, the people.

Whatever his motives, to equate ordinary people who see the evil of Islam with Nazis is a howling lie. Charles has clearly put himself on the side of the enemies of the British people. We can only hope that he will have to account for it one day, perhaps when the tide of populism reaches the gates of Buckingham Palace.