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Islam and Dhimitude: Where Civilizations Collide

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Previously I forwarded a review of this book by Raphael Israeli, PhD, published in the 1/11/02 edition of The Jerusalem Post. The following is my own review:

V. S. Naipaul, the Nobel laureate writer, depicts in both "Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey", and "Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples" how Islam attempts to erase the pre-Islamic history of conquered, indigenous peoples. Indeed, in awarding its 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mr. Naipaul, the Nobel Committee , credited the author "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".

Bat Ye'or's thirty years of scholarship on "dhimmitude", the religious, cultural, and political fate of non-Muslims, in particular Christians and Jews, living under Islamic rule, is a seminal effort to recapture this specific suppressed history. In her current work, "Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide", the author bravely elucidates how doctrinal patterns of subjugation of the dhimmi peoples (i.e., Christians and Jews) initiated during the Arab and Turkish waves of Islamic conquest, the jihad-dhimmitude continuum, are of immediate relevance to contemporary historical trends and specific events.

Ye'or's unique prism reveals striking, poignant hypocrises. For example, she compares the paucity of Western press coverage of the brutal ongoing, 20-year jihad waged by the Islamist Khartoum government against thousands of black African Christian and Animist inhabitants of the southern Sudan, to the ceaseless, exaggerated reporting of the so-called al Aqsa intifada:

"None of the Christian or animist children deliberately enslaved, converted to Islam by force, mutilated, obliged to flee, or killed had his photograph blown up in the Western press. And none of them was mentioned, nor their fate pitied. But Muhammad al-Dura, a Muslim Palestinian child- accidentally killed in a crossfire exchange between Palestinians who initiated it, and Israelis- became the most well known child victim on the globe. He was an effective banner for antisemitic and revengeful frustration against Israel- for the million and a half Jewish children deliberately rounded up, deported, and killed in Europe sixty years earlier. The serious Geneva daily, Le Temps, chose this tragedy as the 'photograph of the year' (December 30, 2000)."

This disturbing, graphic juxtaposition captures the books two key thematic elements: the violent, living legacy of jihad and dhimmi suppression in the Sudanese example, impossible to distinguish in its theological and juridicial underpinnings from the jihad of the Arab (634 to 750 C.E.) and Turkish (1021 to 1683 C.E.) waves of Islamization; and the notion of a "dhimmitude of the West", particularly evident in Europe, as manifested by official Church and/or European press silence regarding the blatant Islamist persecution of a Christian minority in the Sudan, or the rising tide of antisemitic violence in France, in particular, in contrast to the over wrought European reaction to perceived "persecution" of the Palestinians, strongly influenced (in a striking example of the self-loathing "dhimmi syndrome") by the distorted propaganda of dhimmi Christian Arab clerics,

A painstakingly documented book, its message requires urgent exposure in light of the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001. Indeed, the media, academia, and the lay public ignore Bat Ye'or's scholarly insights at our collective peril.

Bat Ye'or, historian of the dhimmi (non-Muslim) peoples under Islam, has written a blockbuster. This is essential reading for anyone interested in Western-Muslim relations in the new century. It debunks a thousand myths, and takes the mask of a whole world of evidence which has previously been shut tight to outside inspection.

After overviewing the history of dhimmitude - the condition of living as a non-Muslim under Islam - and its sister institution of jihad, Ye'or discusses a whole raft of implications of dhimmitude for the modern world. Along the way she throws light on the Balkans, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, persecution of non-Muslims under the Shari'a, the rise of Islamism and Arabism, the doctrine of Western guilt and Muslim sense of victimization -- this is a wonderful expose of a story which has been hidden for far too long. Although this book is deeply disturbing, its scholarship, thorough documentation and overwhelming human interest makes for compelling reading.

Will the 21st century be marked by unceasing religious conflicts? Or is there a way forward out of the cycles of violence, and the layers of hatred built up by history? Read this book to discover what part of the answer must involve! Or just read to understand Islam and the institution of jihad better. This is the book that sets September 11 into its proper context of 1400 years of history.

It is a dominant theme of the literature on the Jewish Diaspora that Jews in Muslim lands were treated better than Jews among Christians. It is repeated like a mantra, every student of Jewish history or of Islamic studies must learn it and repeat it, until it becomes myth. This excellent study is one of the few to challenge this dominat view. Today academics encourage the propoganda that Islam is 'more tolerant' than Christianity. However here we are given a small taste of that 'tolerance'. Dhimmi is a word meaning 'protected'. However just as the Nazis created concentration camps to 'protect' the Jews the word itself can be used in many ways. This book analyzes the experience of Jews in Muslim lands. Some have accused this work of 'only' concentrating on the negative aspects of Muslim-Jewish relations, however this is just the point, a litany of works have focused on this subject in Europe, it time that the dust be taken from the truth about Islamic nations.

Partly the problem rests on lack of sources and literature, this book begins to fill this essential gap.

A second way to analyze the question of which Jews were 'better off' is to see the end result. If Muslim lands were 'better' to the Jews then why did the Jews of Europe become free and wealthy? Why were there more Jews in Europe than muslim lands despite persecution, endless forced conversion and murder due to claims that Jews created the black death? Jews numbered 12 million in Christian lands while they numbered only a million in Muslim ones in 1930. By 1945 the numbers were 6 million and 1 million. By 1967 the numbers were 8 million and 50,000.

Seth J. Frantzman

As an American Catholic living and working in Istanbul, I experienced many shocks of recognition while reading this book, even here in secular Turkey. For example, any crticism, no matter how small, of any aspect of Turkish culture, no matter how insignificant-seeming, is perceived as blasphemy, if not of Islam, then of the great Turkish culture. I read the history books at school and am appalled not so much by the many inconsistencies therein, but more by fellow foreigners' propensity to espouse them, verbatim no less, as well. After all none of us wants to be perceived as intolerant, even if it means being tolerant of intolerance. With the situation like this in Turkey, I can only imagine how much worse it is the farther east, and deeper into the 'heart' of 'Islamiyet', one moves. This book gives me a very good idea, and it is none too appealing.

This is a fascinating and historically accurate account of the age old hatred and persecution of Christians and Jews as ordered by the Koran, and Islamic Sharia law.
After reading this book, one understands current world events better, e.g.: suicide murderers, massacre of Christian Sudanese, massacres of Christians in the Phillipines and in Indonesia, bombing of churches in Pakistan, and the massacre of Americans at the world trade center Sept. 11th 2001.
This book is a must read for people interested in understanding the Arab mindset, and it's origins.

I think Andrew Bostom's review should have convinced you to read this book, and you should also read Dr. Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad, an in-depth, well-researched, scholarly tome, my favorite book on the subject.

Bat Ye'or is a formidable historian, and her book describes in detail what is basically hell on earth---the painful consequences of letting Muslims subjugate one's culture by foolishly ignoring ALL manifestations of jihad, which include not only armed warfare, but also demographic warfare (Muslims multiplying faster than infidels) and Da'wa (deceiving and confusing infidels by claiming that Islam is a religion of peace, etc.).

Don't fall victim to Muslim Da'wa---be an informed infidel. Read this book, as well as

Eurabia
The Legacy of Jihad
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
Why I Am Not Muslim

The alternative to successfully resisting Islam is not pleasant (to put it mildly), as you will learn from reading this excellent book.

One of the great myths in regard to Islamic civilization is that it was egalitarian and respected fully the rights of Christians and Jews. In this work Bat- Yeor describes the status of 'dhimmitude' by which in Islamic society major minorities, as Christians and Jews were subject to legal and non- legal forms of discrimination. Bat-Yeor reveals that there is something in the historical attitude of Islam that makes it so difficult for it to recognize the real humanity of others, and give them an equal place in society.

Is this the only book you will ever need to read about conflicts in the Middle East? No. But it is the best of them.

A book about the denial of human rights to non-Whites in the antebellum American South would not be flattering to slave owners. Similarly, this book is not flattering to those who deny rights to non-Muslims. While being a "dhimmi" literally means being "protected," the word is used in the same sense as "protection money." "Dhimmitude" is basically the denial of human rights to non-Muslims.

Bat Ye'or points out three aspects of dhimmitude. First is political, the invariable choice to oppose rights for non-Muslims. Second is historical, the construction of a set of arbitrary lies and taunts regarding non-Muslims, a denial and destruction of non-Muslim history, and the invention of a bogus Muslim history. Third is theological, the development of religious attacks on non-Muslims and the generation of specifically anti-Jewish and anti-Christian theologies.

Bat Ye'or is at her best when she shows how all this has played out in real life. She shows how dhimmitude has led to inter-dhimmi conflicts, with Christians leaving the Middle East in droves while those Christians who remain are pressured to renounce the Old Testament and join (or even lead) the attacks on Jewish rights in Israel.

"was the assassination of the truth." Colonel Barakat was speaking before the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee about conditions of christian Lebanese refugees in Israel. Those refugees had fought against pro-Syrian islamist forces and the anti-Israeli group Hizbollah; they had been victims of jihad, islamic wars in South Lebanon, and had been ignored, abandoned by the international community. This story is found in the last chapter of this book.

I think Isaiah agrees with Colonel Barakat when he says in Isaiah 59:14-15:

Justice is turned back,
And righteousness stands afar off;
For truth has fallen in the public squares,
And uprightness cannot enter.

Yes, truth is lacking;
And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
Now the LORD saw,
And it was displeasing in His sight that there
was no justice.

In talking about this book, I'm always asked "what is dhimmitude", and I still don't have a good answer. Bat Ye'Or defines it in her introduction as "a domain which embraces the social, political, and religious relations of different human groups", and "dhimmitude embraces the condition of the dhimmi (non-muslim "protected" by islamic law). What helped me was her analogy that "the concepts of dhimmi and dhimmitude are equivalent to Jew and Judaism, of Christian and Christianity." If you're still mystified, as I am, Bat Ye'Or has websites devoted to these subjects on the worldwide web.

An "Amazon friend" recommended that I attend a talk by Bat Ye'Or in my neighborhood. So glad I did, and I bought my book directly from the source! I was impressed by this woman's soft-spoken demeanor, her mastery of the English language, (better than mine!), and the subject matter which is so relevant today. Unfortunately, students at Georgetown University were not so receptive when she gave a talk there soon after this book was published in 2002. The research in this book is incredible, Bat Ye'Or's research navigating through unchartered areas of islamic history, revealing how islamic law really deals with the "other" religions and peoples (dhimmis) to be found in their theocratic society. It took me two weeks to slowly plod through this book, underlining, highlighting so many pages, the information and islamic terms totally unfathomable and foreign to me. (I recommend bookmarking or photocopying the two page glossary of islamic words at the end, before and while reading it).

In this book, she looks at "the people of the book", jews and christians in islamic lands all over the globe. She has been criticized, because she is a jew, of being biased in her research. However, I was surprised that she didn't write of Israel and anti-zionism more. That information is to be found in this book, but there is plenty of evidence from other dhimmi groups to make a case that, at least to me, islamic laws need reforming. Except that is no easy solution; Islamic law is perfect and to criticize it is blasphemous and the sentence for blasphemy is death! What helped me in reading this book was what little I knew about the Armenian genocide during WWI from reading the Forty Days of Musa Dagh and Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris. The deportations and slaughters, somehow becoming understandable upon reading this book, Bat Ye'Or revealing how islamic law and jihad, islamic war, operate in the dar al-Islam (land of Islam). Ownership of ammunition is forbidden the dhimmi as well as the building of new churches or synagogues. Mohammed has said that "the bell is the devil's pipe", Chapter 3:Religious and Social Aspects of Dhimmitude; therefore, without the simple church bell, communities are rendered utterly defenseless, unable to warn one another of dangers, unable to mobilize any defenses when protection (Jezhiya/poll tax) cannot be paid for. (Thank goodness for the second amendment in this country).

No telling how many people in the Sudan are being murdered as I type this right now. A jihad there has been going on for decades. In Chapter 8: The Return of Dhimmitude, Bat Ye'Or mentions that in 2000, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum had an exhibit entitled "Genocide Warning:Sudan"; Amnesty International, this past week or so, now claims that today that warning is now a reality.

We must understand Islam, but we must be selective about the sources we listen to. Bat Ye'Or's voice is, in my opinion, as Major Joppolo explains in A Bell for Adano, "another broadcast, that you cannot hear quite so clearly."

Probably the most important book I have read in the last five years to gain an understanding of the realtionship between Christianity, Judism and Islam -- and I came across it by accident no less. The breadth of knowledge and citation displayed are exceptional.