[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Breha

Obviously i fully agree. I have read Bat ye'Or books

I don't. I'll see if I can get them through some other source, because I don't want one cent to go to her.

I'm reading a review of her book Islam and Dhimmitude, by some Mordechai Nisan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He says that she makes four main points, which I will review (he doesn't, he just accepts them as he would accept the Torah):

(1) The commonly claimed Islamic tolerance of "protected peoples" (dhimmis) is a historical falsehood that conceals the normative reality of jihad (holy war) as much as it does Jewish and Christian subjugation. Islam's doctrinal foundations do not tolerate "infidel" equality with Muslims, much less the self-affirmation as free peoples who aspire to liberate themselves, as in the cases of Jewish and Christian efforts in Israel and Lebanon respectively.

This is true, but there is much to the story that they don't mention. Certainly, the dhimmi is a status of submission to Islam, based on religious adscription. However, historically the Jews were given a privileged status in Spain after the Muslim invasion, for their collaboration in the invasion and also because they needed a force to keep down Christians. I have mentioned it in my post above. Only when the more fanatic N. African Almohads and Almoravids forced Spanish Muslims to accept their integrist view of Islam, the Jews felt more comfortable with Christians.

So it is preposterous that she speaks of a "joint" Jewish and Christian subjugation as if they were concerned for Christians.

(2) The willingness of many Middle Eastern Christians to accept dhimmitude will result not in their hoped-for symbiotic Christian-Muslim co-existence but in the disappearance of Christianity from the region.

What about those Middle East Christians? It is not only Muslims who have acted against them. Jews too. This is hipocritical.

Further, I remember some people who went on a visit to Saddam's Iraq years ago, where they could see how Christians and Jews lived under Saddam's regime. Not a complaint, neither from the Christians nor from the Jews. And now? Things have changed ever since the US ousted Saddam to suit Israel. So what's the game? to erase any trace of laicism from the Middle East so that all Islamic countries are of an unacceptable nature to the eyes of Europe?

(3) Autonomous Christian civilization is currently withering in its European homeland (North America is another story). Europeans are giving way on many issues concerning Islamic practices to their increasingly assertive Muslim populations, such as permitting the muezzin's call to be broadcast in Oslo and applying the Iranian law of divorce in Germany and looking the other way from bigamy in Spain.

True but, if the muezzin's call should not be allowed in Europe, something with which I agree heartedly, why should the synagogues and all Hebrew practices be allowed? I mean, aren't they both from the Middle East and equally foreign to Europe?

How much an hipocrite one can be?

(4) The bond of dhimmitude linking victimized Jews and Christians needs rejuvenation. It is often forgotten, as Bat Ye'or explains, that "if the Jew must be a dhimmi, the Christian, too." The author calls for a Jewish-Christian dialogue and campaign to salvage their civilizations from the Islamic assault. The author does not hold out hope, at this time at any rate, for moderate Muslims to be part of that discussion.

This false binomial of Jewish-Christian helps me understand why on the previous point she says that "Autonomous Christian civilization is currently withering in its European homeland (North America is another story)." Now, in my not so humblest opinion, this is point is very interesting.

At first, while reading point #3, I asked to myself why they say that North America was another story [with regards to Europe]. I was searching for a different answer, something perhaps more complex. But then I realized that it was as simple as it's always been. One only has to see what "christianism" in the US of America is, and how it compares to the Western Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in Europe, and even to Lutheranism for much part at least where it is not stained by the influence of Calvinism.

In fact I use "christianism" in between quotes and decapitalized on purpose, because I should use Judeo-Christianism instead. Indeed, so-called christian denominations in America are impregnated of Judaism from the day that the first coloners arrived there, through Calvinism, and they have been growing into that affection for Judaism since then. Today they even have sects which have no shame to call themselves "christian" and which consider Jews the chosen people and the reason for their own existance. Is that not an extreme form of dhimmitude?

So, what's the deal with point #4? Europe must willingly accept the submission, the dhimmitude to Judaism in order to avoid the dhimmitude to Islam? Is that the "rejuvenation" that they speak about?


What about another option?

No dhimmitude from either way. Neither from Islam nor from Judaism. A Free Europe of Free Nations!


P.S. the four points made by Bat Ye'or were extracted from this review: Review of Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide - Middle East Quarterly