“Understanding Dhimmitude”

Mordechai Nisan's brilliant review of Bat Ye'or's latest tome is an absolute must-read. Longtime Atlas readers know of the admiration and reverence I have for historian Bat Ye'or's unparalled scholarship and brilliance.

Understanding Dhimmitude: By Mordechai Nisan, Front Page Magazine (thanks to Andrew Bostom)

The books and articles by Bat Ye’or on Islam and jihad, dhimmitude
and the collapse of Oriental Christianity, Eurabia and the
Muslim-Christian anti-Zionist alliance, compose an oeuvre of
historic proportions and scholarly significance. In a period of some
thirty years she wrote five major works that substantiated with massive
evidence the historic persecution of
Jews and Christians (dhimmis) under Islamic rule and the contemporary Arab project for the Islamization of Europe and the West.

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A young refugee from Egypt who migrated to England, “a small woman,
fragile, shy” as she writes in the preface of her latest book, Understanding Dhimmitude,
Bat Ye’or has invested extraordinary energy (with the assistance and
encouragement of her late husband David Littman) in the education of a
generation about hidden histories, malevolent schemes, insidious
incremental long-term processes, treacherous elites, and human
sufferings, which are markedly unknown to public awareness.

Bat Ye’or has now offered the reading public a condensation of
“twenty-one lectures and talks on the position of non-Muslims in Islamic
Societies” under the title of Understanding Dhimmitude. This
book resonates with heart-pounding anxiety, yet buoyed by human empathy
for the oppressed and humiliated dhimmis, denied dignity and rights,
crushed under what the Quran calls “Allah’s religion.”

Unlike her other works that detail the scope and horror of Muslim subjugation and contempt for demeaned infidel
non-Muslims in the distant past and until today, offering a broad
canvas from Pakistan to Morocco, and the awful spoliation of Copts in
Egypt and Armenians in Turkey, Assyrians in Iraq and Christians in
southern Sudan, this most recent book provides the reader with rigorous
conceptual clarity of the historic global Islamic jihad and its
universal caliphal ambitions for mankind. The only legitimate
religion, as always, is Islam alone. And its divine mandate, as she
explained in a talk at St. Paul’s Church in London in 2003, is nothing
less than to rule the world and implement Quranic law.

With her five major books in hand, and a growing reputation as a
woman of courage and truth, with a call for justice for the defenseless
dhimmi victims of Islam, Bat Ye’or lectured in a variety of forums in
Europe, America, Canada, and Israel. She was consistently forthright
 and precise, teaching and warning. The major themes that Bat Ye’or
expresses and explains in her lectures can be summarized as follows:

1. Islam in its religious doctrine and civilizational aspirations
   demands a superior status in replacing and superseding Judaism and
   Christianity, its ancient forerunners;
2. Islam has from its origins constructed a “regime of dhimmitude [over
   the inferior and tolerated non-Muslims], the laws of dhimmitude…the
   mentality of dhimmitude” (p. 118) that has imposed insecurity and
   oppression on the native peoples of the Orient/Middle East;
3. Islam succeeded to bring about a situation such that “the whole of
   Oriental Christendom was destroyed” (p. 40), a kind of “religious
   cleansing” rolling on to this very day;
4. There is no validity to “the myth of a marvelous Muslim-Christian
   symbiosis” or a “Middle East Golden Age” (p. 161), not in the past nor
   to its present formulations and offshoots, like the Euro-Arab Dialogue
   and the Alliance of Civilizations, which are deceptive plots for Muslim
   conquest;
5. The Islamic jihad mentality of conquest overwhelmed Eastern
   Christianity and now targets “the Christian West” (p. 83) – with the
   goal “to force us all to live in the shadow of dhimmitude in Europe” (p.
   52).
6.  In the face of Islamic jihad, “Israel represents the national
   liberation of a dhimmi people” (p.55), as the Jews have risen up in
   rebellion against the forces of Muslim repression and degradation to
   secure their political independence in their ancient homeland.

While historian Georges Bensoussan refers to a history of
“conviviality and contempt” to describe the fantasy and reality of
Muslim relations with non-Muslims over 14 centuries, Bat Ye’or shows a
canny insight into the intricacies and interconnections touching this
complex subject. Her prescience identifies Christian collaboration with
Islam, designed to harm the Jews, which ends up ironically strengthening
the common Muslim adversary of both Christians and Jews; she
understands that Western/Christian anti-Semitism is a theological and
historical foundation for the West’s collapse in the face of the Muslim
invasion of Europe, as the European Union joins forces with the Arab
League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to plummet Israel
into submission and disarray; she uncovers the devious Palestinian ruse
of calling Jesus a Palestinian (when he was a Jew from Judea) to bond
Muslims with Christians against the Jews; she exposes Europe’s
accommodation with Palestinian terrorism as the moral bankruptcy of a
civilization already weary and tattered from a 20th century marred and
mired in wars and totalitarianism; she explains the Muslim war to
destroy the nations of Europe and rejects moralizing multiculturalism,
which is promoting Europe’s suicide by turning cities and neighborhoods
into conquered Muslim territory; and, lastly, she has challenged the
historical presentation of Islam as tolerant and its civilizational
ambiance as pluralistic by mobilizing mountains of historical data that
show Islam was discriminatory and denigrating towards all non-Muslims,
especially the Jews and the Christians.

Nietzsche understood that “the knowledge of the past is desired only
for the service of the future and the present,” in order to make history
and not glibly remember it. Bat Ye’or made the argument that it is
imperative to know history, especially when the history is now;
when its ideas and rhythms continue to flow into the present era. Islam
is ordained “to fight against the people [non-Muslims] until they
testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that
Muhammad is his Apostle,” as narrated in the compilation of traditions Salih al-Bukhari, and this article of faith is hewn in stone in the hearts of the believers
(as the Muslims consider themselves alone to be). This must be
understood in order for the non-Muslims – Europeans, Americans, Israelis
– to respond in a forthright and resolute fashion to the predatory
religion of Islam.

In an address to the Third Christian Zionist Congress in Jerusalem in 1996, Bat Ye’or pointed out that she introduced the word dhimmitude in 1983 to describe the common destiny of suffering and discrimination endured by Jews and Christians under shariah
law. The Christians of Iraq and Syria, Iran and Pakistan, Lebanon and
Egypt, Sudan and Nigeria, have all been victims of Muslim massacres and
terrorism. Meanwhile, the Jewish presence across the Middle East and
North Africa dwindled under the scourge of Islam. Islam, resplendent
with arrogant pride and absolute faith, considers its Islamization and
dhimmization of non-Muslim peoples and countries as an act of Divine
Law, legitimate and obligatory. The Muslim Ummah (nation) will
push relentlessly until victory, and after the Muslim assault
historically gobbled up the Middle East and beyond, it aspires now to
turn Christian Europe into the Home of Islam. With Europe losing
confidence in its identity and philosophy of life, the demands of Islam
and the mass Muslim immigration there are transforming the continent
that may no longer breathe the free air of Rousseau, Goethe, and Mill.

There was a time in history, before the bane of being “politically
correct” struck us like thunder, when you could say things as they are,
tell the truth, express an opinion, offer an explanation without
qualification. You might criticize Islam and not be cursed as
blasphemous. But things have changed as the scepter of Islam and its
menacing shadow begin to cover the pathways of America and Europe. Bat
Ye’or through her writings and lectures may not have saved the
Christians of the East or of the West, but she has done the great
service of voicing the gravity of their destiny. With empathy and
clarity she has brought the truth to the doorstep of mankind; and
mankind’s leadership should do now whatever is politically necessary to
assure that her prophetic warnings do not become a death writ.

Bernard Lewis wrote in 1995 that “it may be that Western culture will
indeed go: the lack of conviction of many of those who should be its
defenders and the passionate intensity of its accusers may well join to
complete its destruction.” Of this horrific prognosis, and its
historical depth and contemporary trajectory, we can learn much from Bat
Ye’or, as in her most recent book Understanding Dhimmitude

Dr. Mordechai Nisan taught Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Christian Zionist

10 years ago

Thanks Pam, I see it on Amazon. I need a good book for the beach.

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