Here are some excerpts that say it all about why I am not enthused:
... "Bat Ye’or: No, [European] policies [vis a vis Islam] are not starting to change at all, because they cannot change, it is too late for them to change. It is not a question of criticising Islam, because this can be done in a very nasty way, and we should not consider that all Muslims are the same. I know Muslims who are absolutely wonderful, and they are fighting for the modernisation of their country and of Islam, and are persecuted and in danger. So it is not a question of just heaping the insult over a religion, because this religion has not changed since the 7th century."
... "Bat Ye’or: Yes, well now they have not so much reluctance. The decision will be taken at the top, and by the Commission, and the Commission wants Turkey to come. The population don’t want this, but the population didn’t want many things and was not aware." ...
Her work on dhimmis gained my respect for her, but she lost most of it from those interviews. Islam can change, there are wonderful muslims, she knows them, but Europe cannot stop Islamic immigration ever or stop Turkey from being let in the European Union. Disappointing.
Not fair. Historians' task is diligent accumulation of facts about the past, and intelligent arrangement of same for presentation - not to tell us all what to do next.
Phokas:
Whatever her interviewing faults, her seminal work on Dhimmitude and now Eurabia are commendable. She's done great service to mankind and that's that. Even Einstein had peccadillos, failed marriages and made some predictions in physics that ultimately didn't bear out - doesn't mean his work wasn't good. I wouldn't lose sleep over other things.
Mr. Spencer, Tks for posting the preface. Haven't had an opportunity to read her work yet.
Thanks for the link to the Bat Ye'or interview.
I think your criticism of her is valid as far as it goes. However, your conclusion that certain statements by her seeming to defend Islam indicate that she might not deserve much respect is totally unfounded.
Bat Ye'or's books are worth their weight in gold because they hold a conceit-shattering mirror up to Western policy-makers that exposes them (to themselves and others)as nothing more than a collection of traitors and fools who have capitualated to and collaborated with our mortal enemies, the jihadists.
I believe that her upcoming book will be a bomshell, and I agree with scaramouche that it will be banned in certain parts of Europe -- or, more accurately, Eurabia
"Her work on dhimmis gained my respect for her, but she lost most of it from those interviews. Islam can change, there are wonderful muslims, she knows them, but Europe cannot stop Islamic immigration ever or stop Turkey from being let in the European Union. Disappointing."
That's pretty much my impression, too. I find her books and her scholarship extremely useful, but her political views are something else. I still don't think Europe ending up as Eurabia is inevitable as she claims. That's not true.
I've quoted the following a few times before, but I think it deserves a reprint:
Adam Czerniakow, Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat president, 23 June, 1942, wrote:
"They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands. There is nothing left for me but to die."
You take your pick, friends. Bat Ye'or must know that quotation very well. What are you saying to yourself when you look in the mirror? Are you committed to stopping this fascist movement this time? Are you really with the programme? Of course you are, unless you're one of our Moslem cousins, in which case you're well organized, financed, and motivated. In the face of history, is it any wonder Ye'or is sick? Look what didn't happen last time. Look at what's not happening now. Where do you see the change coming from?
It must be clear by now that we're not doing enough to stop the flow of fascism over the lands of the formerly non-Moslem world. If we wait, if we feed the sick and the old to the killers to save the children for last, that time will come when we have to shoot ourselves rather than face the fact that we were disgusting and cowardly, and that even death in despair is far too good for us.
We have to pick our future and work toward it, even if that's total inactivity and neurosis ending in some squalid act of suicide because we can't live to bear the sight of our chidlren going to the gas-chambers.
The Preface to Eurabia proves as little as her articles about the thesis of this Eurabia book. What she is doing is being more of a gross Israeli and American nationalist than an observer of facts, which is odd since she is an Egyptian Jew who moved to Switzerland after becoming stateless. What made me lose respect for her is she thinks that Europe cannot change its pro-Arab policies, stop Islamic colonization, it is impossible, but the muslim world can change and she took great effort to defend muslims. For Europe to not change is to destroy its identity, for muslims to change will mean they will have to reject their identity. The answer is obvious as to what is easier, for the muslim world to reform or for Europe to defend itself from the unwashed Islamic hordes.
Bat Ye'or will eventually be understood to be one of the most important historians of the last and of this century. Her scholarship, both when it makes use of scandalously-ignored work of past scholars, and when it is original; her meticulous presentation of the evidence; the scrupulosity of her methods; her penetrating analysis of the psychology of dhimmitude (which explains both the failures over more than a millennium of dhimmis in the dar al-Islam to aid one another, and the present failure, in dar al-harb, of Infidels to exhibit much more than a dismal blend of confusion, denial, and diarray, only now beginning here and there to be swept away both by what is staring everyone in the face, and a greater attention to the work of, precisely, the few people, with Bat Ye'or at the head, who have refused to accept the work of the small army of apologists, or quasi-apologists.
A taxonomy of those apologists needs to be made. There are Muslims themselves whose major mode is that of defensiveness: Taqiyya and Tu Quoque. That is to say: We don't do all those things, but if we do, you Christians and Jews do them to (just let me read you this quote from Yitzhak Shamir, or let me tell you about the Crusades, or about Christian fundamentalist Ku Klux Klanners who used to stand around singing Christian hymns as they crucify blacks in the American South).
Then there are those who, while in name remain Christian, have come to so identify with the Muslim subjects of their putative study that they engage in deliberate desinformatsiya -- disinformation. For what else can one call those who prepare sanitized versions of the Qur'an and deliberately leave out all those parts -- including the last in time, and thereforethe most important, of the Suras -- Sura 9, which is one long recital of hatred toward the Unbelievers.
And what should one call a man like John Esposito, who sums up the first five centuries of Jihad-conquest, including what happened to the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria and North Africa (where both Tertullian and St. Augustine lived), in the following matter:
“Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial-papal power play led to centuries-long series of so-called holy wars that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and mistrust.”
Esposito here is attempting to elide, and hide, the five centuries of conquest, by war and massacre during and after war, of the Christians, and Jews, and Zoroastrians, in the lands conquered by Islam before the Crusades. His worldview is precisely that of Muslims: he wants us to believe that everything was fine, hunky-dory, full of “peaceful coexistence’ (only a fool, or an agent of Islam, could say that). Perhaps the real scholars in the world, those who for example subsribe to to the on-line Hugoye, or who are conversant with the history of, for example, the Christian populations of Mesopotamia and Syria, could set Esposito straight. For example, they could ask John Esposito what he knows about Edessa, that center of Christian world, and what happened, and when, and how, to the Christians of Edessa, and to their ancient libraries, and monuments? Or what happened throughout those lands to the Christians? What happened to the Copts?
And why were those horrible Christian Crusaders going crusading in the first place? Was it just one more early example of that apparently permanent and immutable need of Western (Christian) man, to create “the Other,” as such great scholars as Edward Said and Sheikh Fadlallah and Hamid Dabashi suggest? Was that it? And is there the teeny-weeniest evidence that perhaps in Islam there is something not quite nice about the discussion, or treatment, of “the Other” – that is, the Unbeliever or Infidel? Is there, in fact, some reason to believe that all of Islam as a belief-system rests on the division of the world, morally and geographically, between Believer and Infidel, dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, and on the uncompromising hostility between them, that must continue until all Believers triumph over all Infidels, and dar al-Islam swallows up dar al-harb? Does that strike John Esposito as a mistaken view of the tenets of Islam? An exaggeration? Does he wish to maintain that anyone who takes seriously what is in the Qur’an (the non-abrogated parts) and in the hadith, and in the sira (all of it, not just what Karen Armstrong or the Muslim Council wants us to hear about, or for that matter John Esposito), would arrive at a different view of what the Jihad is, or what the ultimate goal of Islam is, of what should be the proper place, the natural place, the place that it should have as of right, in the world?
And was it that kicked off those Crusades, which Esposito claims interrupted all that wonderful co-existence (would that co-existence have been around to save all the Christians in Toledo who were massacred? Or the entire Jewish population of Cordova, when they were massacred in 1066, several decades before the Crusades got started?) When exactly did Christians find themselves harassed, persecuted, and prevented from going to the Holy Land? Was it after the Crusades, or before? And since Youth Wants to Know, why did the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, Hakim (yes, I know he was “mad” but is that really enough of an explanation?) order the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009, nearly a century before the Crusades started? What could that have been about in the era of Good Feelings, Co-Existence, and so on and so idiotically forth)?
And along with the Espositos, there are those who are fearful of giving offense, the handful of scholars of Islam who, while they may have done good work, scanted the nature of dhimmitude, and are perplexed and flummoxed when confronted with the evidence of their own scanting, some of which may be attributable not to stupidity but to vanity, the vanity of those who enjoy being made much of in Istanbul or Amman, and long ago showed that they did not really understand the full burden that Islam placed on non-Muslim subjects. In some cases it may even reflect a greater resentment felt, for example, over the treatment of Jews in Western Christendom, than of the perceived “equal mistreatment” meted out to Jews under Islam. And a misreading of Islam can lead to all sorts of other enthusiasms at a level of policy, and have disastrous consequences. What would one say of a scholar of Islam, who supposedly understood fully that no permanent peace can be made between a Muslim state and an Infidel one, who nonetheless was wildly enthusiastic about the Oslo Accords? What can one say about someone who believes that creating in Iraq a “Light Unto the Muslim Nations” is doable, or desirable, or the best allocation of limited resources (resources are always limited), that is, of men, materiel, money, morale, and attention – all of which will be needed for a war of self-defense that has no conceivable terminus ad quem, and will require the husbanding, and careful use, of precisely those men, that money and material, that morale of those same men and of the people from whom they came, and of course attention.
Bat Ye’or’s work has put dhimmitude front and center, and her work cannot be ignored. Nor, for all the airy dismissals by those whom she frightens, has anyone shown where, why, how she has ever overstated or misstated. Not anyone. Not anywhere. And her work has done something else. She has helped others to turn to some of her sources, including Western scholars of Islam who, for more than half-a-century, have been overlooked, by accident or design, or insufficiently appreciated. English, American, German, Italian, Dutch, French (especially French), Bulgarian, Russian, Rumanian, Armenian, Serb scholars of dhimmitude are being looked at again. The scholarship about the treatment of Hindus under Muslim rule, for so long overlooked, regarded as something only fanatical BJP supporters, Hindutva madmen, would bother with – for weren’t the Mughal rulers fabulously rich, and didn’t they live in luxury, and weren’t their palaces practrically a stage-set, so who cares about the tens of thousands of temples, Hindu and Buddhist, that were destroyed, or the 60-70 million Hindus who, over 250 years, were massacred, or the enslaved villages (so casually described by Muslims themselves, as in the Rihla of Ibn Battuta). No, she did all this, and neither Esposito, nor Sells, nor Ernst, nor a few hundred other non-Muslim apologists for Islam, who have chosen to touch only very lightly (effleurer) or to smoke-over (sfumare) the history of a vast part of humanity, that which consists of the non-Muslims subjugated to Muslim rule, from Spain to East Asia, over 1350 years. She let the scholarly genie out, and no one can put it back in.
Any carping, any business that she speaks with the tones of a defeatist who believes that nothing whatever can be done, does more than violate the “galanterie-pas-morte” attitude one would expect. But it also entirely misses the thrust of her argument and her evidence. Wait, buy the book, buy it and then read it. Then, if you must, find fault. But there will be very little fault to find.
If she seems unduly pessimistic, or if her views trouble not because they are wrong, but because she doesn’t offer a Hollywood ending, that is not a fault. Where is life, there is the possibility of undoing folly. But as one looks around the Western world, from a court in Australia to a vote in Brussels, to the the lynch mob in Durban, or the permanent kangaroo court on the East River, or the Euro-Arab quislings well-ensconced not only at the E.U., but at the BBC, RFI, and so on – should one be cheerful?
Bat Ye’or is what might be called cautiously pessimistic. All is not lost. If she thought that, she would not bother to write, to lecture, to work day and night in her own European version of Paul Revere. Carping is uncalled-for by anyone at this website. Just imagine a world where not one of Bat Ye’or’s books had been written, and where the last word on “telling the truth about Islam” would be, say, fthe books of Bernard Lewis or Bassam Tibi. Then where would we be?
As Hugh has said, "as long there is breath in the body," change can occur, but little movement toward change is occurring, and talks have begun to combine the seasoned, battle-hardened Turkish army to French nuclear material, an concept that gives one pause.
Turkey is the gateway to Europe over which past hordes of Muslims streamed up through the Balkans and into Eastern Europe, only to be turned back at the gates of Vienna. Why do Europeans believe that this could not or will not happen again? Why do they trust the Muslims of Turkey? Are they more trustworthy than al Qaeda or Hamas? They trust them because their Muslim populations would be offended if they don't display a dhimmi attitude and would act as did the killer of Theo Van Gogh.
They trust them because Bat Ye'or is correct. They are either Islamized, dhimmis, or, unable to act, they waiting for a wave of a fairy godmother's magic wand to undo what is done.
I agree with Hugh (one of the most articulate voices in the blogoshpere). Bat Ye'or is one of the world's truth-tellers. She helps make sense of the most pressing issues we face today. Everything--from Jew-hatred to the EU's love affair with the Arabs to the recent law in the U.K. intended to expunge any and all criticism of Islam--can be explained by her studies on dhimmis and her theories on Eurabia and Palestinianism. We ignore her message at our peril. Literally.
A prudent man would consult J.J. Norwich before proceeding here, but what do I know? I'm not even sure that the complain against Ye'or is one of defeatism. I think so. Let me say that those I give copies of her interviews to, those who read them, are disgusted and angered, not by Ye'or but by the collaborators and dhimmis. Ye'or's work seems to terrify my friends out of their usual apathy. That, I suggest, is a good thing.
However, is it enough? Do my friends actually do the first thing to roll back the tide of Islamic fascism? No, of course not. To act at all requires not single men and women but a movement of people. It is to be hoped that Ye'or's work will raise enough concern that serious people will organize a front to resist and turn back Islam not merely from Western Europe but from Byzantium and beyond. No one man is going to do that alone, not even Hugh. But someone must act.
We are close to the beginning of a change, I believe, in how we act in the face of Islamic fascism, i.e., how we do not act in the face of Islamic fascism. Time will tell, but one would expect that Ye'or will fill the quiver with sharper points. And then?
We have, in this struggle, many generals. At some point we must have some backbone in this army: sergents, the backbone of any army. We need bodies on the streets. As is, our record of bodies on the street translates into Theo van Gogh. At some point, and I mean soon, we must have men and women willing to take the fight to the enemy. That time is coming. The men and women who will begin this fight aren't tiny Jewish intellectuals. Those people will be men and women from next door, even tiny Jewish intellectuals. They'll be people who are concerned enough to stand outside and raise an army of resistence. The only defeatism is our utter lack of movement onto the streets. Our generals can remain at their posts, but the army of men and women who will do the groundwork of this war have to go outside to meet the enemy as well as meeting their friends, because not one of us is going to make any difference alone. Private people must take up roles as privates.
Let us let the Moslems terrify our own, and if Ye'or helps, so much the better. If the Saracens are bombarding the walls of our civilization from areas that were ours, let us not sit in fear of their eventual coming, but let us take the fight to them. Let's think about how we can open our gates and drop our chains to meet the enemy on the field, and let's, this time, win.
I can't wait to read it all. She has done the world a great service, although many will attempt to discredit or dismiss her. The bearer of bad news is always despised. It will be very interesting to hear the reactions of European leaders after they read this book.
If it is banned it in Europe as hate speech, then the Qur'an should also be banned. If it doesn't qualify as the most venomous, evil hate speech ever written, then nothing can be designated as such.
I have only read one of Bat Ye'or's works: "The Dhimmis: Jews and Christians under Islam". This new work has not impressed me from her interviews.
Recently Dhimmiwatch linked to a transcript of a radio interview about her book Eurabia.
Here are some excerpts that say it all about why I am not enthused:
... "Bat Ye’or: No, [European] policies [vis a vis Islam] are not starting to change at all, because they cannot change, it is too late for them to change. It is not a question of criticising Islam, because this can be done in a very nasty way, and we should not consider that all Muslims are the same. I know Muslims who are absolutely wonderful, and they are fighting for the modernisation of their country and of Islam, and are persecuted and in danger. So it is not a question of just heaping the insult over a religion, because this religion has not changed since the 7th century."
... "Bat Ye’or: Yes, well now they have not so much reluctance. The decision will be taken at the top, and by the Commission, and the Commission wants Turkey to come. The population don’t want this, but the population didn’t want many things and was not aware." ...
Her work on dhimmis gained my respect for her, but she lost most of it from those interviews. Islam can change, there are wonderful muslims, she knows them, but Europe cannot stop Islamic immigration ever or stop Turkey from being let in the European Union. Disappointing.
Not fair. Historians' task is diligent accumulation of facts about the past, and intelligent arrangement of same for presentation - not to tell us all what to do next.
Phokas:
Whatever her interviewing faults, her seminal work on Dhimmitude and now Eurabia are commendable. She's done great service to mankind and that's that. Even Einstein had peccadillos, failed marriages and made some predictions in physics that ultimately didn't bear out - doesn't mean his work wasn't good. I wouldn't lose sleep over other things.
Mr. Spencer, Tks for posting the preface. Haven't had an opportunity to read her work yet.
Is this book going to be banned as "hate speech" in the U.K.?
Phokas,
Thanks for the link to the Bat Ye'or interview.
I think your criticism of her is valid as far as it goes. However, your conclusion that certain statements by her seeming to defend Islam indicate that she might not deserve much respect is totally unfounded.
Bat Ye'or's books are worth their weight in gold because they hold a conceit-shattering mirror up to Western policy-makers that exposes them (to themselves and others)as nothing more than a collection of traitors and fools who have capitualated to and collaborated with our mortal enemies, the jihadists.
I believe that her upcoming book will be a bomshell, and I agree with scaramouche that it will be banned in certain parts of Europe -- or, more accurately, Eurabia
"Her work on dhimmis gained my respect for her, but she lost most of it from those interviews. Islam can change, there are wonderful muslims, she knows them, but Europe cannot stop Islamic immigration ever or stop Turkey from being let in the European Union. Disappointing."
That's pretty much my impression, too. I find her books and her scholarship extremely useful, but her political views are something else. I still don't think Europe ending up as Eurabia is inevitable as she claims. That's not true.
Norwegian kafir--Eurabia is already a fait accompli: http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20041219&hn=14890
I've quoted the following a few times before, but I think it deserves a reprint:
Adam Czerniakow, Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat president, 23 June, 1942, wrote:
"They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands. There is nothing left for me but to die."
You take your pick, friends. Bat Ye'or must know that quotation very well. What are you saying to yourself when you look in the mirror? Are you committed to stopping this fascist movement this time? Are you really with the programme? Of course you are, unless you're one of our Moslem cousins, in which case you're well organized, financed, and motivated. In the face of history, is it any wonder Ye'or is sick? Look what didn't happen last time. Look at what's not happening now. Where do you see the change coming from?
It must be clear by now that we're not doing enough to stop the flow of fascism over the lands of the formerly non-Moslem world. If we wait, if we feed the sick and the old to the killers to save the children for last, that time will come when we have to shoot ourselves rather than face the fact that we were disgusting and cowardly, and that even death in despair is far too good for us.
We have to pick our future and work toward it, even if that's total inactivity and neurosis ending in some squalid act of suicide because we can't live to bear the sight of our chidlren going to the gas-chambers.
Hyperbole?
Litotes.
The Preface to Eurabia proves as little as her articles about the thesis of this Eurabia book. What she is doing is being more of a gross Israeli and American nationalist than an observer of facts, which is odd since she is an Egyptian Jew who moved to Switzerland after becoming stateless. What made me lose respect for her is she thinks that Europe cannot change its pro-Arab policies, stop Islamic colonization, it is impossible, but the muslim world can change and she took great effort to defend muslims. For Europe to not change is to destroy its identity, for muslims to change will mean they will have to reject their identity. The answer is obvious as to what is easier, for the muslim world to reform or for Europe to defend itself from the unwashed Islamic hordes.
Bat Ye'or will eventually be understood to be one of the most important historians of the last and of this century. Her scholarship, both when it makes use of scandalously-ignored work of past scholars, and when it is original; her meticulous presentation of the evidence; the scrupulosity of her methods; her penetrating analysis of the psychology of dhimmitude (which explains both the failures over more than a millennium of dhimmis in the dar al-Islam to aid one another, and the present failure, in dar al-harb, of Infidels to exhibit much more than a dismal blend of confusion, denial, and diarray, only now beginning here and there to be swept away both by what is staring everyone in the face, and a greater attention to the work of, precisely, the few people, with Bat Ye'or at the head, who have refused to accept the work of the small army of apologists, or quasi-apologists.
A taxonomy of those apologists needs to be made. There are Muslims themselves whose major mode is that of defensiveness: Taqiyya and Tu Quoque. That is to say: We don't do all those things, but if we do, you Christians and Jews do them to (just let me read you this quote from Yitzhak Shamir, or let me tell you about the Crusades, or about Christian fundamentalist Ku Klux Klanners who used to stand around singing Christian hymns as they crucify blacks in the American South).
Then there are those who, while in name remain Christian, have come to so identify with the Muslim subjects of their putative study that they engage in deliberate desinformatsiya -- disinformation. For what else can one call those who prepare sanitized versions of the Qur'an and deliberately leave out all those parts -- including the last in time, and thereforethe most important, of the Suras -- Sura 9, which is one long recital of hatred toward the Unbelievers.
And what should one call a man like John Esposito, who sums up the first five centuries of Jihad-conquest, including what happened to the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria and North Africa (where both Tertullian and St. Augustine lived), in the following matter:
“Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial-papal power play led to centuries-long series of so-called holy wars that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and mistrust.”
Esposito here is attempting to elide, and hide, the five centuries of conquest, by war and massacre during and after war, of the Christians, and Jews, and Zoroastrians, in the lands conquered by Islam before the Crusades. His worldview is precisely that of Muslims: he wants us to believe that everything was fine, hunky-dory, full of “peaceful coexistence’ (only a fool, or an agent of Islam, could say that). Perhaps the real scholars in the world, those who for example subsribe to to the on-line Hugoye, or who are conversant with the history of, for example, the Christian populations of Mesopotamia and Syria, could set Esposito straight. For example, they could ask John Esposito what he knows about Edessa, that center of Christian world, and what happened, and when, and how, to the Christians of Edessa, and to their ancient libraries, and monuments? Or what happened throughout those lands to the Christians? What happened to the Copts?
And why were those horrible Christian Crusaders going crusading in the first place? Was it just one more early example of that apparently permanent and immutable need of Western (Christian) man, to create “the Other,” as such great scholars as Edward Said and Sheikh Fadlallah and Hamid Dabashi suggest? Was that it? And is there the teeny-weeniest evidence that perhaps in Islam there is something not quite nice about the discussion, or treatment, of “the Other” – that is, the Unbeliever or Infidel? Is there, in fact, some reason to believe that all of Islam as a belief-system rests on the division of the world, morally and geographically, between Believer and Infidel, dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, and on the uncompromising hostility between them, that must continue until all Believers triumph over all Infidels, and dar al-Islam swallows up dar al-harb? Does that strike John Esposito as a mistaken view of the tenets of Islam? An exaggeration? Does he wish to maintain that anyone who takes seriously what is in the Qur’an (the non-abrogated parts) and in the hadith, and in the sira (all of it, not just what Karen Armstrong or the Muslim Council wants us to hear about, or for that matter John Esposito), would arrive at a different view of what the Jihad is, or what the ultimate goal of Islam is, of what should be the proper place, the natural place, the place that it should have as of right, in the world?
And was it that kicked off those Crusades, which Esposito claims interrupted all that wonderful co-existence (would that co-existence have been around to save all the Christians in Toledo who were massacred? Or the entire Jewish population of Cordova, when they were massacred in 1066, several decades before the Crusades got started?) When exactly did Christians find themselves harassed, persecuted, and prevented from going to the Holy Land? Was it after the Crusades, or before? And since Youth Wants to Know, why did the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, Hakim (yes, I know he was “mad” but is that really enough of an explanation?) order the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009, nearly a century before the Crusades started? What could that have been about in the era of Good Feelings, Co-Existence, and so on and so idiotically forth)?
And along with the Espositos, there are those who are fearful of giving offense, the handful of scholars of Islam who, while they may have done good work, scanted the nature of dhimmitude, and are perplexed and flummoxed when confronted with the evidence of their own scanting, some of which may be attributable not to stupidity but to vanity, the vanity of those who enjoy being made much of in Istanbul or Amman, and long ago showed that they did not really understand the full burden that Islam placed on non-Muslim subjects. In some cases it may even reflect a greater resentment felt, for example, over the treatment of Jews in Western Christendom, than of the perceived “equal mistreatment” meted out to Jews under Islam. And a misreading of Islam can lead to all sorts of other enthusiasms at a level of policy, and have disastrous consequences. What would one say of a scholar of Islam, who supposedly understood fully that no permanent peace can be made between a Muslim state and an Infidel one, who nonetheless was wildly enthusiastic about the Oslo Accords? What can one say about someone who believes that creating in Iraq a “Light Unto the Muslim Nations” is doable, or desirable, or the best allocation of limited resources (resources are always limited), that is, of men, materiel, money, morale, and attention – all of which will be needed for a war of self-defense that has no conceivable terminus ad quem, and will require the husbanding, and careful use, of precisely those men, that money and material, that morale of those same men and of the people from whom they came, and of course attention.
Bat Ye’or’s work has put dhimmitude front and center, and her work cannot be ignored. Nor, for all the airy dismissals by those whom she frightens, has anyone shown where, why, how she has ever overstated or misstated. Not anyone. Not anywhere. And her work has done something else. She has helped others to turn to some of her sources, including Western scholars of Islam who, for more than half-a-century, have been overlooked, by accident or design, or insufficiently appreciated. English, American, German, Italian, Dutch, French (especially French), Bulgarian, Russian, Rumanian, Armenian, Serb scholars of dhimmitude are being looked at again. The scholarship about the treatment of Hindus under Muslim rule, for so long overlooked, regarded as something only fanatical BJP supporters, Hindutva madmen, would bother with – for weren’t the Mughal rulers fabulously rich, and didn’t they live in luxury, and weren’t their palaces practrically a stage-set, so who cares about the tens of thousands of temples, Hindu and Buddhist, that were destroyed, or the 60-70 million Hindus who, over 250 years, were massacred, or the enslaved villages (so casually described by Muslims themselves, as in the Rihla of Ibn Battuta). No, she did all this, and neither Esposito, nor Sells, nor Ernst, nor a few hundred other non-Muslim apologists for Islam, who have chosen to touch only very lightly (effleurer) or to smoke-over (sfumare) the history of a vast part of humanity, that which consists of the non-Muslims subjugated to Muslim rule, from Spain to East Asia, over 1350 years. She let the scholarly genie out, and no one can put it back in.
Any carping, any business that she speaks with the tones of a defeatist who believes that nothing whatever can be done, does more than violate the “galanterie-pas-morte” attitude one would expect. But it also entirely misses the thrust of her argument and her evidence. Wait, buy the book, buy it and then read it. Then, if you must, find fault. But there will be very little fault to find.
If she seems unduly pessimistic, or if her views trouble not because they are wrong, but because she doesn’t offer a Hollywood ending, that is not a fault. Where is life, there is the possibility of undoing folly. But as one looks around the Western world, from a court in Australia to a vote in Brussels, to the the lynch mob in Durban, or the permanent kangaroo court on the East River, or the Euro-Arab quislings well-ensconced not only at the E.U., but at the BBC, RFI, and so on – should one be cheerful?
Bat Ye’or is what might be called cautiously pessimistic. All is not lost. If she thought that, she would not bother to write, to lecture, to work day and night in her own European version of Paul Revere. Carping is uncalled-for by anyone at this website. Just imagine a world where not one of Bat Ye’or’s books had been written, and where the last word on “telling the truth about Islam” would be, say, fthe books of Bernard Lewis or Bassam Tibi. Then where would we be?
Gratitude is called for.
As Hugh has said, "as long there is breath in the body," change can occur, but little movement toward change is occurring, and talks have begun to combine the seasoned, battle-hardened Turkish army to French nuclear material, an concept that gives one pause.
Turkey is the gateway to Europe over which past hordes of Muslims streamed up through the Balkans and into Eastern Europe, only to be turned back at the gates of Vienna. Why do Europeans believe that this could not or will not happen again? Why do they trust the Muslims of Turkey? Are they more trustworthy than al Qaeda or Hamas? They trust them because their Muslim populations would be offended if they don't display a dhimmi attitude and would act as did the killer of Theo Van Gogh.
They trust them because Bat Ye'or is correct. They are either Islamized, dhimmis, or, unable to act, they waiting for a wave of a fairy godmother's magic wand to undo what is done.
I agree with Hugh (one of the most articulate voices in the blogoshpere). Bat Ye'or is one of the world's truth-tellers. She helps make sense of the most pressing issues we face today. Everything--from Jew-hatred to the EU's love affair with the Arabs to the recent law in the U.K. intended to expunge any and all criticism of Islam--can be explained by her studies on dhimmis and her theories on Eurabia and Palestinianism. We ignore her message at our peril. Literally.
A prudent man would consult J.J. Norwich before proceeding here, but what do I know? I'm not even sure that the complain against Ye'or is one of defeatism. I think so. Let me say that those I give copies of her interviews to, those who read them, are disgusted and angered, not by Ye'or but by the collaborators and dhimmis. Ye'or's work seems to terrify my friends out of their usual apathy. That, I suggest, is a good thing.
However, is it enough? Do my friends actually do the first thing to roll back the tide of Islamic fascism? No, of course not. To act at all requires not single men and women but a movement of people. It is to be hoped that Ye'or's work will raise enough concern that serious people will organize a front to resist and turn back Islam not merely from Western Europe but from Byzantium and beyond. No one man is going to do that alone, not even Hugh. But someone must act.
We are close to the beginning of a change, I believe, in how we act in the face of Islamic fascism, i.e., how we do not act in the face of Islamic fascism. Time will tell, but one would expect that Ye'or will fill the quiver with sharper points. And then?
We have, in this struggle, many generals. At some point we must have some backbone in this army: sergents, the backbone of any army. We need bodies on the streets. As is, our record of bodies on the street translates into Theo van Gogh. At some point, and I mean soon, we must have men and women willing to take the fight to the enemy. That time is coming. The men and women who will begin this fight aren't tiny Jewish intellectuals. Those people will be men and women from next door, even tiny Jewish intellectuals. They'll be people who are concerned enough to stand outside and raise an army of resistence. The only defeatism is our utter lack of movement onto the streets. Our generals can remain at their posts, but the army of men and women who will do the groundwork of this war have to go outside to meet the enemy as well as meeting their friends, because not one of us is going to make any difference alone. Private people must take up roles as privates.
Let us let the Moslems terrify our own, and if Ye'or helps, so much the better. If the Saracens are bombarding the walls of our civilization from areas that were ours, let us not sit in fear of their eventual coming, but let us take the fight to them. Let's think about how we can open our gates and drop our chains to meet the enemy on the field, and let's, this time, win.
I can't wait to read it all. She has done the world a great service, although many will attempt to discredit or dismiss her. The bearer of bad news is always despised. It will be very interesting to hear the reactions of European leaders after they read this book.
If it is banned it in Europe as hate speech, then the Qur'an should also be banned. If it doesn't qualify as the most venomous, evil hate speech ever written, then nothing can be designated as such.