Prince Charles Quotes
I have for some time now been deeply troubled by the growing difficulties faced by Christian communities in various parts of the Middle East. It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are increasingly being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants.
Charles, Prince of Wales. "A Speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at a Reception for Christians from the Middle East." The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, 17 Dec. 2013.
He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he correctly observes that the Islamic world was considerably more tolerant than the Christian until the 18th century when Islam had become less tolerant in the Middle East while the Christians were modernizing and going through a cultural and intellectual enlightenment and societal modernization while the Muslims, became less tolerant than they were in earlier years leading to the modern situation.
What the historian did not know was how similarly the Protestants would behave against the Catholics when they had the power. Since the Catholics were the established church, and the Protestants the new “heretics” the Protestants were on the receiving end of most of the atrocities at the beginning. However, as if they had been scholled by their horrible experiences, they repeated them just exchanging the perpetrators and the victims.
Ariel Sharon, before he became Israeli Prime Minister was an Army General, who led the attack on the Palestinian PLO terrorists in Southern Lebanon. He had made an alliance with the Lebanese Christian Phalangists who had been brutalized and many had been murdered by the PLO militants who operated out of the Sabra and Shatila Beirut refugee camps where the terrorists had a safe haven and their PLO headquarters in Shatila. Israeli troops under Sharon had reached Beirut, and then the Phalangists attacked the two refugee camps where they had scores to settle and sought revenge. Somewhere between 700 and 3500 Palestinians were killed. Most of them were civilians (according to the Palestinians) or terrorist fighters (according to the Phalangists). Sharon was faulted by many for the deaths; these critics observe that Sharon, as the victorious military power in the area was responsible according to the rules of war for the safety of all civilians in the area. He commanded the strongest military in the area and he allowed or did not stop the Phalangists who were exacting their revenge. Therefore some accused him of war crimes. There was also an Italian military peacekeeping contingent in the camps but they chose not to intervene.
There is of course no way to tell the sect of a Muslim by physique alone, although there are major behavioral differences. The reason the quotation was newsworthy was that it was amazing that a senior Senate leader was so ignorant of such a critical and problematical subset of the world.
Odo of Chatillon-Sur-Marne. This is an amazingly distressing quotation for most moderns. Here we have the Pope preaching genocide and ethnic cleansing. This was one of the main triggers of the bloody Crusades and is not forgotten by Muslims in the Middle East Today. As Islam has not changed a great deal in 1000 years, most Muslims assume that the same is true of Christianity and especially the popes and the Roman Catholic Church. This is one of the reasons that the Islamic world reacts so strongly when a pope makes any statement negatve about Muslims and Islam.
The French were governing Syria under a League of Nations mandate which was about to expire in 1936. The Alawites and other minorities feared for their future once the Sunni Muslims took over the government. The petition asked the French to continue to exercise their authority. The Alawite solution was to ruthlessly seize control of the Syrian government with the support of the Christians, Jews and other minorities. Al-Assad’s son and then his grandson took over as the President (de facto dictator) of Syria. In the 2012 Syrian revolution against the Alawites, al-Assad (the grandson) fought the insurgency so brutally that many nations ended up supporting and aiding the rebels. However, the fear of what would happen if the Alawites were again relegated to minority status, drove the Alawite brutality.
Charles, Prince of Wales is the heir apparent to the British throne as the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. He has been heir apparent as well as Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay since 1952 and he is the oldest and longest-serving heir apparent in British history. He is also the longest-serving Prince of Wales, having held that title since July 1958. Upon the death of his father, Prince Philip, on 9 April 2021, Charles also inherited the title Duke of Edinburgh.
