Thought For The Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.
An Arabian gentleman found riding on the road to Paris or hammering on the gates of Vienna can hardly complain that we have sought him out in his simple tent in the desert. The conqueror of Sicily and Spain cannot reasonably express surprise at being an object of morbid curiosity to the people of Italy and France.
In the city of Cairo the stranger feels many of the Moslem merits, but he certainly feels the militaristic character of the Moslem glories. The crown of the city is the citadel, built by the great Saladin but of the spoils of ancient Egyptian architecture; and that fact is in its turn very symbolical. The man was a great conqueror, but he certainly behaved like an invader; he spoiled the Egyptians. He broke the old temples and tombs and built his own out of fragments. Nor is this the only respect in which the citadel of Cairo is set high like a sign in heaven. The sign is also significant because from this superb height the traveller first beholds the desert, out of which the great conquest came.”
– G.K. Chesterton – “The Way of the Desert,” The New Jerusalem
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm#link2HCH0002
Oh how the Crusaders would be crying for Europe today. They let them walk right through on a red carpet.
My mum has been showing me clips of Sheikhs and Muslim leaders doing the rounds on social media of late, who have been publicly coming out and talking about the good that Christians bring to a society- safety, civility, progress etc…infact the Saudi King gives preferential treatment to Christians over Muslims who want to come and work in Saudi Arabia. For example – They are deliberately investing n strengthening the Christian community in Lebanon because they know the Christians will keep law, peace and order in the region. It’s eye-opening that Muslims distrust their own and realise they need to be governed with a strong hand.
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