What do you think?
Rate this book
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide
Book by Bat Yeor
528 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2001
2 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Bat Ye'or
23 books33 followersBorn Giselle Littman née Orebi, her pseudonym means Daughter of the Nile.
She has provided briefings to the United Nations and the U.S. Congress and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.
She acquired the English nationality by marrying an Englishman. Now she lives in Switzerland.
She has provided briefings to the United Nations and the U.S. Congress and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.
She acquired the English nationality by marrying an Englishman. Now she lives in Switzerland.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 14, 2015
We all know what Islam has been doing for the past few years. We probably all have at least a vague idea of the broad outlines of Muslim history. But why does Islam behave as it does? What motivates people who belong to what bills itself, at least in the west, as "a religion of peace," to attack Israeli civilians, fly airplanes full of innocent passengers into public buildings, blow themselves up on buses and in markets, and persecute Christians and Jews even unto death? Why did Islam spread out from Arabia in a fury of warfare, and why has its propagation always ben more a matter of force than of persuasion?
This book isn't strictly a history of Islam, nor is it strictly an explanation of Islam's warlike character, but these things converge to explain dhimmitude, the author's term for the condition of dhimmis.
We have to go back to the Arabic word dhimma to understand the matter. This is an agreement - perhaps we can think of it as a treaty of surrender - under which conquered Christians and Jews can live within a Muslim nation. The theoretical idea is that of protection, but it doesn't include the rights that are so prominent in western thinking. The framework of the dhimma obligates the Jews and Christians to submit to the Muslims - not merely to the government of the nation, but to Muslims as people, to each individual Muslim and to all Muslims - and to pay the jizya, which isn't a tax, but rather a ransom which procures the lives of those who pay. The Muslims in the equation have only one obligation - to leave the Jews and Christians alive rather than killing them.
And any failure of even one member of the dhimmi community to conform to the terms of the agreement renders the entire community liable to slaughter. There is no concept of rights here, except the rights of Muslims. This is a theological matter, Ye'or explains. Islam holds that it is superior to all other religions, and Muslims are, because they believe Islam, superior to all other people on earth. Those who, when they have the opportunity to convert to Islam, refuse to do so, are - in Muslim theology - choosing an inferior religion, a false religion, one which deserves abasement before Islam, and therefore they themselves merit humiliation at the hands of any Muslim who chooses to dish it out. And those who live thus - who live under a dhimma and are therefore dhimmis, endure a condition which Ye'or calls dhimmitude.
There are communities in the Arab world which have endured this condition for hundreds of years, since the first Arab conquests. And dhimmitude has reduced what once were overwhelming majorities in the conquered lands to persecuted minorities, who - rightly or wrongly - have largely concluded that the only way to survive is to toady to the Muslims. It's not merely that under the terms of the dhimma there can be no criticism of Islam, no matter how much the objective facts merit it, but that in an effort to placate the Muslims - who regard all dhimmis as inferior - with all sorts of flattery, even at the cost of dhimmi lives.
Those who are coming to this concept of dhimmitude for the first time will find it shocking, appalling, almost inconceivable. But it grows out of yet another point of Islamic doctrine. Islam divides the entire world into two spheres - the dar al-Islam, the region of Islam, and the dar al-harb, the region of war. All that is in the first is properly subject to God, and therefore to His people. All that is in the second is, according to Muslim doctrine, inherently at war with Islam, and all Muslims have an obligation to work toward the subjugation of the dar al-harb to Islam, by whatever means necessary. This is the foundation of jihad, which isn't merely war, but is a holy war, a war which will not end until it achieves its goal, which is the domination of all the world by Islam.
This is, in brief, the situation which Bat Ye'or lays out in this book. I freely admit that I'm not a historian, nor indeed a scholar of any kind. I am not competent to check her work, nor do I have the resources to do so. Some - and not all of them Muslims; there is a great sympathy for Muslims in the non-Muslim world today, even in the face of the manifold atrocities that the religion commits and has committed - may question Ye'or's facts and her conclusions. But if even half of what she says is even half right, then the entire non-Muslim world needs to carefully read this book, and take notice of its contents. And having done so, the world needs give serious consideration to its attitude toward Islam.
In the days when the United States still considered itself to be engaged in a War On Terror, there were many who insisted that we weren't at war with Islam, but with terrorists. At the time that seemed a strained position, for the terrorists we were fighting were all Muslims. They all came forth from a religion which has historically used the sword far more than the pulpit in its expansion. They were members of a religion which couldn't must so much as a hearty "I wish it hadn't happened" from Muslims who weren't committing terrorist acts. I remember vividly September of 2001, and the months immediately thereafter. I was on AOL then, and because I've long found Islam fascinating I was on a couple of AOL message boards which had Islam as the subject. And out of all the Muslims on those boards - scores of Muslims, if not hundreds - I couldn't persuade or provoke even one to condemn the terrorist attacks of September 11. The most I could elicit was a weak statement to this effect: "Well, I wouldn't do that..."
That was a caution to me, but it is only now that I've read Bat Ye'or's book that I understand why I couldn't get even one Muslim to condemn mass murder. The reason is simple - in Muslim theology, every part of the world should be under Muslim control, and that which isn't is the dar al-arb, which Muslims must conquer. There is an ongoing jihad to accomplish this, and though not all Muslims engage in violent acts, all Muslims are part of the jihad. It is impossible to condemn someone for doing what you firmly believe he was right to do, indeed which God had obligated him to do.
With all this in view, it is clear that there is a war between Islam and everyone else, a war between Islam and the world - but only Muslims really believe this, and act on it. Perhaps if presidents, prime ministers, kings and emperors, and politicians and statesmen of all stripes were to read this book, the world would see things as they are, and respond accordingly. Politically, that is, it seems to me, increasingly necessary. Jihad doesn't progress solely through the vicious massacres that the Islamic State perpetrates; the waves and waves of Muslim immigrants are part of it. They may perhaps be fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq, but when they enter Germany or France or Great Britain or the United States, they bring with them the ideas of jihad, dar al-harb and dar al-Islam, and dhimmitude that they held in their homelands. They are, de facto, an invading army, and while nations must certainly be compassionate toward the suffering, they need also to have a clear view of their own interests.
My own reaction to the facts in this book is twofold. First, there's my natural human reaction. Seeing that Islam considers itself to be at war with all that isn't Islam, I consider that we ought to respond something like this: "All right, you're at war with us. And if you want war, you'll get war. We'll defend ourselves, our families, our homes, our property, our rights, and our way of life just as vigorously as necessary, and if that means we have to obliterate Islam, then so be it. After all, the open goal of Muslim doctrine is to eliminate everything that isn't Islam."
But I'm not merely a human being. I'm not merely a non-Muslim, and I'm not merely a citizen of a country which, in Muslim thinking, is part of the dar al-harb. I'm also a Christian. By this I don't mean simply that I'm a member of a church, or that I've received baptism, though Ye'or (naturally, from her perspective as a Jew and a historian) uses the term "Christian" in just such a broad and undiscriminating way. When I say I'm a Christian, I mean that God has regenerated me - He has worked within me the birth anothen, meaning both "again" and "from above," and therefore I am fundamentally different in my spiritual being from what I was before. As a Christian, my calling is to be like Jesus, and that includes - among other things; to focus on just one aspect of Jesus' teaching and work is to distort Christianity, if not destroy it - compassion for others, indeed love for others. Jesus commanded Christians, which means He commanded me, to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is
yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to
treat you." (Luke 6:27-31 NASB)
In practical terms this means that instead of wishing for bombs and bullets to fall among the gathered Muslims of the world, I must pray, and as I can further the application of my prayers, that Christians will go to Muslims with the Gospel, their only weapon being "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." (Eph. 6:17) That is, as a Christian when I read this book, I react - I must react - with a desire to see the Gospel go to all Muslims, and to see all Muslims come to faith in the Lord Christ.
As you might conclude from my two reactions, this isn't an easy book for me. No doubt there are many who will find this a difficult book. But it is, I firmly believe, a necessary book. I go further: I hold that anyone who lives in this world today, who wants to know why things are going on as they are, and who wants to be prepared to deal with reality, needs to read this book.
This book isn't strictly a history of Islam, nor is it strictly an explanation of Islam's warlike character, but these things converge to explain dhimmitude, the author's term for the condition of dhimmis.
We have to go back to the Arabic word dhimma to understand the matter. This is an agreement - perhaps we can think of it as a treaty of surrender - under which conquered Christians and Jews can live within a Muslim nation. The theoretical idea is that of protection, but it doesn't include the rights that are so prominent in western thinking. The framework of the dhimma obligates the Jews and Christians to submit to the Muslims - not merely to the government of the nation, but to Muslims as people, to each individual Muslim and to all Muslims - and to pay the jizya, which isn't a tax, but rather a ransom which procures the lives of those who pay. The Muslims in the equation have only one obligation - to leave the Jews and Christians alive rather than killing them.
And any failure of even one member of the dhimmi community to conform to the terms of the agreement renders the entire community liable to slaughter. There is no concept of rights here, except the rights of Muslims. This is a theological matter, Ye'or explains. Islam holds that it is superior to all other religions, and Muslims are, because they believe Islam, superior to all other people on earth. Those who, when they have the opportunity to convert to Islam, refuse to do so, are - in Muslim theology - choosing an inferior religion, a false religion, one which deserves abasement before Islam, and therefore they themselves merit humiliation at the hands of any Muslim who chooses to dish it out. And those who live thus - who live under a dhimma and are therefore dhimmis, endure a condition which Ye'or calls dhimmitude.
There are communities in the Arab world which have endured this condition for hundreds of years, since the first Arab conquests. And dhimmitude has reduced what once were overwhelming majorities in the conquered lands to persecuted minorities, who - rightly or wrongly - have largely concluded that the only way to survive is to toady to the Muslims. It's not merely that under the terms of the dhimma there can be no criticism of Islam, no matter how much the objective facts merit it, but that in an effort to placate the Muslims - who regard all dhimmis as inferior - with all sorts of flattery, even at the cost of dhimmi lives.
Those who are coming to this concept of dhimmitude for the first time will find it shocking, appalling, almost inconceivable. But it grows out of yet another point of Islamic doctrine. Islam divides the entire world into two spheres - the dar al-Islam, the region of Islam, and the dar al-harb, the region of war. All that is in the first is properly subject to God, and therefore to His people. All that is in the second is, according to Muslim doctrine, inherently at war with Islam, and all Muslims have an obligation to work toward the subjugation of the dar al-harb to Islam, by whatever means necessary. This is the foundation of jihad, which isn't merely war, but is a holy war, a war which will not end until it achieves its goal, which is the domination of all the world by Islam.
This is, in brief, the situation which Bat Ye'or lays out in this book. I freely admit that I'm not a historian, nor indeed a scholar of any kind. I am not competent to check her work, nor do I have the resources to do so. Some - and not all of them Muslims; there is a great sympathy for Muslims in the non-Muslim world today, even in the face of the manifold atrocities that the religion commits and has committed - may question Ye'or's facts and her conclusions. But if even half of what she says is even half right, then the entire non-Muslim world needs to carefully read this book, and take notice of its contents. And having done so, the world needs give serious consideration to its attitude toward Islam.
In the days when the United States still considered itself to be engaged in a War On Terror, there were many who insisted that we weren't at war with Islam, but with terrorists. At the time that seemed a strained position, for the terrorists we were fighting were all Muslims. They all came forth from a religion which has historically used the sword far more than the pulpit in its expansion. They were members of a religion which couldn't must so much as a hearty "I wish it hadn't happened" from Muslims who weren't committing terrorist acts. I remember vividly September of 2001, and the months immediately thereafter. I was on AOL then, and because I've long found Islam fascinating I was on a couple of AOL message boards which had Islam as the subject. And out of all the Muslims on those boards - scores of Muslims, if not hundreds - I couldn't persuade or provoke even one to condemn the terrorist attacks of September 11. The most I could elicit was a weak statement to this effect: "Well, I wouldn't do that..."
That was a caution to me, but it is only now that I've read Bat Ye'or's book that I understand why I couldn't get even one Muslim to condemn mass murder. The reason is simple - in Muslim theology, every part of the world should be under Muslim control, and that which isn't is the dar al-arb, which Muslims must conquer. There is an ongoing jihad to accomplish this, and though not all Muslims engage in violent acts, all Muslims are part of the jihad. It is impossible to condemn someone for doing what you firmly believe he was right to do, indeed which God had obligated him to do.
With all this in view, it is clear that there is a war between Islam and everyone else, a war between Islam and the world - but only Muslims really believe this, and act on it. Perhaps if presidents, prime ministers, kings and emperors, and politicians and statesmen of all stripes were to read this book, the world would see things as they are, and respond accordingly. Politically, that is, it seems to me, increasingly necessary. Jihad doesn't progress solely through the vicious massacres that the Islamic State perpetrates; the waves and waves of Muslim immigrants are part of it. They may perhaps be fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq, but when they enter Germany or France or Great Britain or the United States, they bring with them the ideas of jihad, dar al-harb and dar al-Islam, and dhimmitude that they held in their homelands. They are, de facto, an invading army, and while nations must certainly be compassionate toward the suffering, they need also to have a clear view of their own interests.
My own reaction to the facts in this book is twofold. First, there's my natural human reaction. Seeing that Islam considers itself to be at war with all that isn't Islam, I consider that we ought to respond something like this: "All right, you're at war with us. And if you want war, you'll get war. We'll defend ourselves, our families, our homes, our property, our rights, and our way of life just as vigorously as necessary, and if that means we have to obliterate Islam, then so be it. After all, the open goal of Muslim doctrine is to eliminate everything that isn't Islam."
But I'm not merely a human being. I'm not merely a non-Muslim, and I'm not merely a citizen of a country which, in Muslim thinking, is part of the dar al-harb. I'm also a Christian. By this I don't mean simply that I'm a member of a church, or that I've received baptism, though Ye'or (naturally, from her perspective as a Jew and a historian) uses the term "Christian" in just such a broad and undiscriminating way. When I say I'm a Christian, I mean that God has regenerated me - He has worked within me the birth anothen, meaning both "again" and "from above," and therefore I am fundamentally different in my spiritual being from what I was before. As a Christian, my calling is to be like Jesus, and that includes - among other things; to focus on just one aspect of Jesus' teaching and work is to distort Christianity, if not destroy it - compassion for others, indeed love for others. Jesus commanded Christians, which means He commanded me, to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is
yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to
treat you." (Luke 6:27-31 NASB)
In practical terms this means that instead of wishing for bombs and bullets to fall among the gathered Muslims of the world, I must pray, and as I can further the application of my prayers, that Christians will go to Muslims with the Gospel, their only weapon being "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." (Eph. 6:17) That is, as a Christian when I read this book, I react - I must react - with a desire to see the Gospel go to all Muslims, and to see all Muslims come to faith in the Lord Christ.
As you might conclude from my two reactions, this isn't an easy book for me. No doubt there are many who will find this a difficult book. But it is, I firmly believe, a necessary book. I go further: I hold that anyone who lives in this world today, who wants to know why things are going on as they are, and who wants to be prepared to deal with reality, needs to read this book.
August 3, 2022
What a book! Again I am aghast at my own ignorance (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...) both as to the existence of churches I thought long gone and as to how exactly Islamic law deals with other so called People of the Book. As much as this book is depressing with regards to how Islam look at and treat others in Islamic countries, I will always hope that there are those moderate Muslims who does not want to convert or, worst, kill those who does not believe as they do. An unfortunate trend in history is that those in power oppresses those without power, and once those without power gain power they become the oppressors. Ye'or refuses to admit that Israel does also oppress those in the West Bank, it goes both ways. I am not against Israel's existence and at the same time hope that Palestine will also get their own piece of land... that said I do wish the whole idea of nationalism will die out. How is this for an idea - both Zionism and anti-Zionism is racist. I am glad that some Christians are trying to change the old anti-Semitic and deicide believes and repent for it, and sorely hope that Islam will follow in this. How we perceive history and interpret our symbols have massive impact on how we act towards others, there is wonderful freedom in change of perspective. The more I read about various religions and the history of religion, the more I think that most of us misunderstand each other and some of us plain refuse to understand. That last group, I am sure, are able to see what the other side mean in positive ways, but insist that their own way is the only way. Once we realize that none of us really know if we are on the right path (Muslims that insist that everyone from the beginning were Muslim and Christians that insist that they are absolutely sure of heaven) we can live and learn together. God is Great (Allah u akbar) - much greater that any one religion and any one person's understanding.
December 25, 2014
This has to be one of the best researched pieces on dhimmitude that exists in print today. THIS IS A MUST READ!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews