ON DHIMMITUDE AND SECULARISTS
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Here is a masterful article on dhimmitude and collaborationism by Bat Ye'or. I am particularly struck by the passage:
"The contribution of dhimmi Christian collaborationism to Islam is even
more important. It satisfies three objectives: 1) its propaganda shores up
the mythology of past and present peaceful Islamic-Christian coexistence and
confirms the perfection of Islam, jihad, and sharia; 2) it promotes the
demographic expansion and proselytism of Islamic propaganda in the West; 3)
in the theological sphere it eliminates the Jewish Jesus and implants
Christianity in the Muslim Jesus, in other words it facilitates the
theological Islamization of all Christendom."
Replace "Christian" with "secularist Hindu" and you have a pretty good
description of the situation in India.
On a separate point, while I welcome Koenraad Elst's insightful comments
on the Sangh Parivar, I feel a greater need today is for a Sangh-like
movement in the West, especially Europe. Perhaps one's efforts are better
spent by making that happen. It is not hard to see where present trends will
take Europe.
NSR
E-mail Author
Send to a Friend
Print Version
September 18, 2003, 11:20 a.m.
Eastern Christians Torn Asunder
Challenges - new and old.
By Bat Yeor
The dhimmi mentality cannot be easily defined and described. An endless
variety of reactions has been provoked by the evolving historical situations
in the civilization of dhimmitude, which spans three continents and close to
fourteen centuries. Generally speaking, dhimmi populations can be described
as oscillating between alienation and submission and, at the other extreme,
a self-perception of spiritual freedom.
The basic aspects of the dhimmi mentality are related to characteristics of
its status and environment, because dhimmitude operates exclusively within
the sphere of jihad. Contrary to common belief, jihad is not limited to holy
war conducted militarily; it encompasses all strategies, including peaceful
means, aimed at the unification of all religions within Islamic dogma.
Further, as a juridical-theological construction, jihad determines all
aspects of relations between the Umma - the Islamic community - and
non-Muslims. According to the classical interpretation, these are classified
in one of three categories: enemies, temporarily reconciled, or subjected.
Because neither jihad nor dhimmitude have been critically analyzed, we can
say today that the Islamist mentality - currently predominant in many Muslim
countries - establishes relations with non-Muslims in the traditional jihad
categories of war, truce, and submission/dhimmitude.
In our times dhimmis are found among the residues of indigenous populations
of countries that were Islamized during a millenium of Muslim conquests:
Christians, Hindus, and a scattering of Jews and Zoroastrians. Christians
would seem to be the most familiar group, closer to Westerners by proximity,
culture, religion, and subject to the same status under Islam as the Jews,
the other ahl al-Khitab, "people of the Book" - the Bible. But this
impression is often deceiving as the reassuring appearance of similarity is
misleading.
The behavior of Christian dhimmis varies according to the country, the
social category, and their association with the ruling classes as, for
example, their participation in the Iraqi or Syrian Baath parties or the
PLO, a militarist organization engaged in the Arab jihad against Israel.
Christian dhimmis appointed to important positions by Muslim rulers have
often served as agents between the Arab world and strategic centers in the
West: churches, governments, industries, universities, media, etc.
Because Christian dhimmi populations are on the whole highly skilled and
better educated than the surrounding population, they often suffer from
malicious jealousy coupled with the traditional anti-Christian prejudices of
the Umma. The persistence of Christianity in Muslim environments testifies
to qualities of endurance and adaptability. Yet survival in dhimmitude had
its price: the dhimmi pathology.
Briefly summarized, Christian attitudes can be classified in three
categories: active resistance, passive resistance, and collaboration. These
three attitudes are manifest within one and the same population, but certain
geographical or historical situations favor one or another.
ACTIVE RESISTANCE
Recent examples of active resistance are noteworthy. The repression of the
Christian rebellion against the establishment of sharia in the Sudan in 1983
caused more than two million dead and over four million displaced. Lebanese
Christians fought against the Islamization of their country during the civil
war that began in 1975. At the dawn of the 20th century, Armenian and
Assyrian Christians were punished by genocide for their attempts at
independence. In the present day, active Christian resistance against
Islamization in Indonesia, Nigeria, and other African countries is manifest
in the massacre of Christian civilians, the burning of villages, the flight
of populations. Westerners, and especially Europeans, turn a deaf ear to the
sufferings of Christians who actively resist Islamization, frequently
blaming them for their own misfortunes.
PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Examples of passive resistance can be found in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran.
Egyptian Christians denounce the violence of which they are victims and
strive to protect their dignity, reduce legal and professional
discrimination, and secure basic rights such as permission to build or
renovate churches. Here again, the West prefers to ignore their dire
situation or underplay it with episodic attention. Christians engaged in
active or passive resistance exhaust their meager resources in vain efforts
to alert their fellow Christians and enlist their help.
COLLABORATIONIST CHRISTIANS
Collaborators are recruited among Christians who identify themselves as
Arabs. This type of collaboration, which caused endless fratricidal battles
over the centuries, has been denounced by dhimmis struggling for centuries
against an Islamic domination that progressed with the help of Christians.
Christian collaborationism has taken different forms in the course of
history, according to circumstances and political opportunity. It is
expressed today in a two-pronged political and theological project. The
political project is implemented in a trans-Mediterranean fusion, with the
construction of an economic, cultural, political, geographical entity
composed of the European Union and Arab and African countries. This policy
of association and integration, active in all international forums, works to
counterbalance American policy, under cover of a notion of "international
legitimacy," albeit a legitimacy of sanguinary totalitarian Arab dictators.
Collaborationist Christian dhimmis function as the intellectual and economic
mechanism of this project because they belong to both worlds. Their role is
to invent the idyllic Islamic-Christian past that upholds the political
construction of a future Eurabia and to dissimulate the anti-Christian
foundations of Islamic doctrine and history.
Dhimmi collaboration on the theological level is oriented in two directions:
toward Christianity and toward Islam. It finds its most radical _expression
in the "Palestinian Liberation Theology," meaning nothing less than the
liberation of Christianity from its Jewish matrix. The spiritual center of
this theology is the al-Liqa institute in Jerusalem, created in 1983 for the
study of the Muslim and Christian heritage in the Holy Land. This strongly
politicized institute, sponsored by international Christian organizations,
specializes in disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda through its
international religious and media channels.
Uniting Marcionist and Gnostic theological currents, this Palestinian
theology strips away Jesus's Jewishness and turns him into a sui generis
Arab-Palestinian Jesus, a twin of the Muslim Jesus (Isa). Christianity, thus
liberated from its Jewish roots, can be transplanted in Arab-Islamism. This
would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making
Israelis usurpers of the Islamic-Christian Palestinian homeland. This theory
denies the historical continuity between modern Israel and its biblical
ancestor, the locus of nascent Christianity.
The theology of Palestinism, integrating all the anti-Jewish themes of
replacement theology, is reworked to fit the new Palestinian fashion and
addressed to Christians all over the world, inviting them to gather together
around an Arab-Palestinian Jesus, symbol of a Palestine crucified by Israel.
The theme goes back to the 19th century. However, in those days when the
idea of an Arab-Palestinian entity differentiated from the Arab world did
not even exist, the unifying role of Palestine was assigned to Arab
nationalism.
Palestinist theology shores up the Euro-Arab policy of Christian-Muslim and
European-Arab fusion: the modern state of Israel - considered a temporary
accident of history - is bypassed and Europe's Christian origins are
anchored in an Islamic-Christian Palestine. Having fulfilled its historical
role of uniting the two enemies - Christianity and Islam - opposed to its
very existence, Israel can now disappear, sealing the fusion between Europe
and the Arabs. The unifying role devolves on Islamic-Christian Palestine;
the reconciliation of Islam and Christianity can finally be consummated on
the ashes of Israel and its negation. This is why the European Union - and
especially France - designates Israeli "injustice" and "occupation" as the
unique sources of conflict between Europe and the Arab/Muslim world, and the
cause of international, anti-Western Islamist terrorism.
The contribution of dhimmi Christian collaborationism to Islam is even more
important. It satisfies three objectives: 1) its propaganda shores up the
mythology of past and present peaceful Islamic-Christian coexistence and
confirms the perfection of Islam, jihad, and sharia; 2) it promotes the
demographic expansion and proselytism of Islamic propaganda in the West; 3)
in the theological sphere it eliminates the Jewish Jesus and implants
Christianity in the Muslim Jesus, in other words it facilitates the
theological Islamization of all Christendom.
According to Islamic dogma, Islam encompasses Judaism and Christianity, both
of which are falsified posterior expressions of the first and fundamental
religion, which is Islam. All the characters of the Bible, from Adam to
Abraham, Moses to David, the Hebrew prophets, Mary, Jesus, and the apostles,
were Muslim prophets who preached Islam, and it is only in their quality as
Muslims that they are recognized and respected. They belong to the Koran,
not to the Bible. From this viewpoint the bond between Judaism and
Christianity is a falsification, because the filiation of Christianity is
Islamic, not Judaic. Christianity descends from Islam, the first religion of
all humanity (din al-fitra). Christianity is a falsified _expression of
Islam, and belongs to Islam. According to a hadith, when Isa, the Muslim
Jesus, returns, he will break the cross, kill the pig, abolish the jizya
(poll tax for infidels), and money will flow like water. Exegetes interpret
the destruction of symbols attached to Christianity - the cross and the
pig - as the extinction of that religion; the suppression of the jizya means
that Islam has become the only religion; and the abundance of wealth refers
to the booty taken from infidels. In other words the return of the Muslim
Jesus could lead to the destruction of Christianity.
The global jihad has made the problems of dhimmitude a worldwide reality.
Europe's creeping dhimmitude, expressed in a refusal even to mention in its
proposed constitution the "Judeo-Christian" values of its civilization, is
one of the major elements of the current European-American divide.
- Bat Yeor is the author of The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam:
From Jihad to Dhimmitude. Her latest book, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where
Civilizations Collide, has just been reprinted. A version of this article
was first published in French and is translated by Nidra Poller in
collaboration with the author.
Here is a masterful article on dhimmitude and collaborationism by Bat Ye'or. I am particularly struck by the passage:
"The contribution of dhimmi Christian collaborationism to Islam is even
more important. It satisfies three objectives: 1) its propaganda shores up
the mythology of past and present peaceful Islamic-Christian coexistence and
confirms the perfection of Islam, jihad, and sharia; 2) it promotes the
demographic expansion and proselytism of Islamic propaganda in the West; 3)
in the theological sphere it eliminates the Jewish Jesus and implants
Christianity in the Muslim Jesus, in other words it facilitates the
theological Islamization of all Christendom."
Replace "Christian" with "secularist Hindu" and you have a pretty good
description of the situation in India.
On a separate point, while I welcome Koenraad Elst's insightful comments
on the Sangh Parivar, I feel a greater need today is for a Sangh-like
movement in the West, especially Europe. Perhaps one's efforts are better
spent by making that happen. It is not hard to see where present trends will
take Europe.
NSR
E-mail Author
Send to a Friend
Print Version
September 18, 2003, 11:20 a.m.
Eastern Christians Torn Asunder
Challenges - new and old.
By Bat Yeor
The dhimmi mentality cannot be easily defined and described. An endless
variety of reactions has been provoked by the evolving historical situations
in the civilization of dhimmitude, which spans three continents and close to
fourteen centuries. Generally speaking, dhimmi populations can be described
as oscillating between alienation and submission and, at the other extreme,
a self-perception of spiritual freedom.
The basic aspects of the dhimmi mentality are related to characteristics of
its status and environment, because dhimmitude operates exclusively within
the sphere of jihad. Contrary to common belief, jihad is not limited to holy
war conducted militarily; it encompasses all strategies, including peaceful
means, aimed at the unification of all religions within Islamic dogma.
Further, as a juridical-theological construction, jihad determines all
aspects of relations between the Umma - the Islamic community - and
non-Muslims. According to the classical interpretation, these are classified
in one of three categories: enemies, temporarily reconciled, or subjected.
Because neither jihad nor dhimmitude have been critically analyzed, we can
say today that the Islamist mentality - currently predominant in many Muslim
countries - establishes relations with non-Muslims in the traditional jihad
categories of war, truce, and submission/dhimmitude.
In our times dhimmis are found among the residues of indigenous populations
of countries that were Islamized during a millenium of Muslim conquests:
Christians, Hindus, and a scattering of Jews and Zoroastrians. Christians
would seem to be the most familiar group, closer to Westerners by proximity,
culture, religion, and subject to the same status under Islam as the Jews,
the other ahl al-Khitab, "people of the Book" - the Bible. But this
impression is often deceiving as the reassuring appearance of similarity is
misleading.
The behavior of Christian dhimmis varies according to the country, the
social category, and their association with the ruling classes as, for
example, their participation in the Iraqi or Syrian Baath parties or the
PLO, a militarist organization engaged in the Arab jihad against Israel.
Christian dhimmis appointed to important positions by Muslim rulers have
often served as agents between the Arab world and strategic centers in the
West: churches, governments, industries, universities, media, etc.
Because Christian dhimmi populations are on the whole highly skilled and
better educated than the surrounding population, they often suffer from
malicious jealousy coupled with the traditional anti-Christian prejudices of
the Umma. The persistence of Christianity in Muslim environments testifies
to qualities of endurance and adaptability. Yet survival in dhimmitude had
its price: the dhimmi pathology.
Briefly summarized, Christian attitudes can be classified in three
categories: active resistance, passive resistance, and collaboration. These
three attitudes are manifest within one and the same population, but certain
geographical or historical situations favor one or another.
ACTIVE RESISTANCE
Recent examples of active resistance are noteworthy. The repression of the
Christian rebellion against the establishment of sharia in the Sudan in 1983
caused more than two million dead and over four million displaced. Lebanese
Christians fought against the Islamization of their country during the civil
war that began in 1975. At the dawn of the 20th century, Armenian and
Assyrian Christians were punished by genocide for their attempts at
independence. In the present day, active Christian resistance against
Islamization in Indonesia, Nigeria, and other African countries is manifest
in the massacre of Christian civilians, the burning of villages, the flight
of populations. Westerners, and especially Europeans, turn a deaf ear to the
sufferings of Christians who actively resist Islamization, frequently
blaming them for their own misfortunes.
PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Examples of passive resistance can be found in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran.
Egyptian Christians denounce the violence of which they are victims and
strive to protect their dignity, reduce legal and professional
discrimination, and secure basic rights such as permission to build or
renovate churches. Here again, the West prefers to ignore their dire
situation or underplay it with episodic attention. Christians engaged in
active or passive resistance exhaust their meager resources in vain efforts
to alert their fellow Christians and enlist their help.
COLLABORATIONIST CHRISTIANS
Collaborators are recruited among Christians who identify themselves as
Arabs. This type of collaboration, which caused endless fratricidal battles
over the centuries, has been denounced by dhimmis struggling for centuries
against an Islamic domination that progressed with the help of Christians.
Christian collaborationism has taken different forms in the course of
history, according to circumstances and political opportunity. It is
expressed today in a two-pronged political and theological project. The
political project is implemented in a trans-Mediterranean fusion, with the
construction of an economic, cultural, political, geographical entity
composed of the European Union and Arab and African countries. This policy
of association and integration, active in all international forums, works to
counterbalance American policy, under cover of a notion of "international
legitimacy," albeit a legitimacy of sanguinary totalitarian Arab dictators.
Collaborationist Christian dhimmis function as the intellectual and economic
mechanism of this project because they belong to both worlds. Their role is
to invent the idyllic Islamic-Christian past that upholds the political
construction of a future Eurabia and to dissimulate the anti-Christian
foundations of Islamic doctrine and history.
Dhimmi collaboration on the theological level is oriented in two directions:
toward Christianity and toward Islam. It finds its most radical _expression
in the "Palestinian Liberation Theology," meaning nothing less than the
liberation of Christianity from its Jewish matrix. The spiritual center of
this theology is the al-Liqa institute in Jerusalem, created in 1983 for the
study of the Muslim and Christian heritage in the Holy Land. This strongly
politicized institute, sponsored by international Christian organizations,
specializes in disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda through its
international religious and media channels.
Uniting Marcionist and Gnostic theological currents, this Palestinian
theology strips away Jesus's Jewishness and turns him into a sui generis
Arab-Palestinian Jesus, a twin of the Muslim Jesus (Isa). Christianity, thus
liberated from its Jewish roots, can be transplanted in Arab-Islamism. This
would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making
Israelis usurpers of the Islamic-Christian Palestinian homeland. This theory
denies the historical continuity between modern Israel and its biblical
ancestor, the locus of nascent Christianity.
The theology of Palestinism, integrating all the anti-Jewish themes of
replacement theology, is reworked to fit the new Palestinian fashion and
addressed to Christians all over the world, inviting them to gather together
around an Arab-Palestinian Jesus, symbol of a Palestine crucified by Israel.
The theme goes back to the 19th century. However, in those days when the
idea of an Arab-Palestinian entity differentiated from the Arab world did
not even exist, the unifying role of Palestine was assigned to Arab
nationalism.
Palestinist theology shores up the Euro-Arab policy of Christian-Muslim and
European-Arab fusion: the modern state of Israel - considered a temporary
accident of history - is bypassed and Europe's Christian origins are
anchored in an Islamic-Christian Palestine. Having fulfilled its historical
role of uniting the two enemies - Christianity and Islam - opposed to its
very existence, Israel can now disappear, sealing the fusion between Europe
and the Arabs. The unifying role devolves on Islamic-Christian Palestine;
the reconciliation of Islam and Christianity can finally be consummated on
the ashes of Israel and its negation. This is why the European Union - and
especially France - designates Israeli "injustice" and "occupation" as the
unique sources of conflict between Europe and the Arab/Muslim world, and the
cause of international, anti-Western Islamist terrorism.
The contribution of dhimmi Christian collaborationism to Islam is even more
important. It satisfies three objectives: 1) its propaganda shores up the
mythology of past and present peaceful Islamic-Christian coexistence and
confirms the perfection of Islam, jihad, and sharia; 2) it promotes the
demographic expansion and proselytism of Islamic propaganda in the West; 3)
in the theological sphere it eliminates the Jewish Jesus and implants
Christianity in the Muslim Jesus, in other words it facilitates the
theological Islamization of all Christendom.
According to Islamic dogma, Islam encompasses Judaism and Christianity, both
of which are falsified posterior expressions of the first and fundamental
religion, which is Islam. All the characters of the Bible, from Adam to
Abraham, Moses to David, the Hebrew prophets, Mary, Jesus, and the apostles,
were Muslim prophets who preached Islam, and it is only in their quality as
Muslims that they are recognized and respected. They belong to the Koran,
not to the Bible. From this viewpoint the bond between Judaism and
Christianity is a falsification, because the filiation of Christianity is
Islamic, not Judaic. Christianity descends from Islam, the first religion of
all humanity (din al-fitra). Christianity is a falsified _expression of
Islam, and belongs to Islam. According to a hadith, when Isa, the Muslim
Jesus, returns, he will break the cross, kill the pig, abolish the jizya
(poll tax for infidels), and money will flow like water. Exegetes interpret
the destruction of symbols attached to Christianity - the cross and the
pig - as the extinction of that religion; the suppression of the jizya means
that Islam has become the only religion; and the abundance of wealth refers
to the booty taken from infidels. In other words the return of the Muslim
Jesus could lead to the destruction of Christianity.
The global jihad has made the problems of dhimmitude a worldwide reality.
Europe's creeping dhimmitude, expressed in a refusal even to mention in its
proposed constitution the "Judeo-Christian" values of its civilization, is
one of the major elements of the current European-American divide.
- Bat Yeor is the author of The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam:
From Jihad to Dhimmitude. Her latest book, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where
Civilizations Collide, has just been reprinted. A version of this article
was first published in French and is translated by Nidra Poller in
collaboration with the author.
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