Andrew Bostom writes in FrontPage on what is certain to be the most important book of 2005 and possibly of the entire decade: Bat Ye'or's Eurabia.
The importance of Bat Ye'or's work cannot be overestimated. She is the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude — indeed, she coined the term. And now her work on the suicide of Europe is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in defending what remains of Western civilization before it's too late.
On a recent trip to Switzerland, I encountered a gigantic mural in the Zurich Airport which depicted a proto-typical Swiss goat and sheep herder leading his flocks over an Alpine mountain pass, meeting a fully cloaked and turbaned Arab camel herder. Below the mural, a caption read, "You never know who you'll meet in Switzerland." This bucolic image struck me as bizarre, not having been personally conditioned to Western Europe's deliberate sociopolitical transformation over the past 30 years. I was reminded of these prescient words, written a quarter century ago by the great historian of Medieval European Islam, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, who was concerned (even then) that historical and cultural revisionism might precipitate a recurrence of"...the upheaval carried out on our continent (i.e., Europe) by Islamic penetration more than a thousand years ago...with other methods."Within a decade after Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq's death in 1982, the historian Bat Ye'or (from a 1991 French interview, published in English translation in 1994) echoed his intuitive concerns about Europe's re-Islamization, and warned more broadly,
"I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years..."Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis portrays Western Europe's recrudescent dhimmitude, chronicled in real time, by our most knowledgeable contemporary scholar of the dhimmi condition, Bat Ye'or. Living as an eyewitness in Geneva, a major European center influencing this phenomenon through NGOs and other international fora, Bat Ye'or describes in painstaking detail, the ongoing transformation of Europe into "Eurabia," a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world.
Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" clearly transcends attempts to analyze the same contemporary phenomena by pundits such as Robert Kagan and Bernard Lewis. This remarkable book is the product of her serendipitously apposite prior expertise, painstaking new research, brilliant insight, and intellectual courage. Bat Ye'or's analyses have profound implications for Western Europe which may be incapable of altering its Eurabian trajectory; her research may be even more important for the United States if it wishes to avoid Europe's fate.
The whole article by Andrew Bostom should be read, digested, and then sent on to others. Many of the observations made en passant -- including those on how Bernard Lewis has, or has not, dealt with dhimmitude -- are themselves mini-essays. There is so much packed into this article-review, which is the first on "Eurabia" out of the starting-gate, and will remain one of the most thorough and significant, no matter how many others are written.
It must terrify the members of Mesa Nostra that, out of nowhere, so many well-informed people -- because a doctorate nowadays in Middle Eastern studies guarantess absolutely nothing, nor does a tenured post (for if a member of Mesa Nostra is pushed and promoted by other members of Mesa Nostra, while those who give some sign of independent thought and real scholarship are kept out or down, then what you get, of cousrse, is what you have -- Mesa Nostra!).
But what can you do when all the canonical texts of Islam, all the Muslim commentators, all the evidence from history as carefully accumulated by hundreds of careful scholars -- how the hell is someone like Rashid Khalidi or Laurie Brand or Joel Beinin going to impugn Joseph Schacht, or David Margoliouth, or Snouck Hurgronje (a propos: one of his books was on Aceh), or Vajda, or Abel, or Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq when they refuse to stay buried, but are being triumphantly revived, read, studied, and found --not wanting, but thoroughly relevant to explaining the evidence of the Jihad and dhimmitude that are everywhere around us.
Mesa Nostra, and its European equivalents, and all the attempts to thuggishly silence truthful discussion about Islam, from Said's Orientalism to the latest lawsuit by CAIR or latest phony "Dialogue of Civilisations" or conference on "The Need for the 'Other' in Western Civilization": The Case of Islam" and so on and so obviously forth, are now coming to naught.
The evidence from 1350 years, and from today's newspaper, is just too great. And you cannot hide the Qur'an, the hadith, and the sira forever from the Infidels. Some of them actually know how to read. Some of them, believe it or not, refuse to accept John Esposito's version of reality, or that of Tariq Ramadan, or Hamid Dabashi, or George Saliba, or a thousand others. They don't have the evidence. They don't make sense.
And even that seeming embodiment of au-dessous-de-la-melee scholarship (in reality someone eager to influence policy, and in supporting both the Oslo Accords, and the "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project in Iraq, even going to far as to co-write a political advertisement for Prince Hassan as a Hashemite king of Iraq), Bernard Lewis -- is shown up, as both deploring the islamization of Europe, which does not quite jibe with his sanitized version, at times a seeming celebration, of Ottoman history or of modern Turkey. Lewis uses words like "envy" of the West, without relating the distemper of that "envy" to the fact that the West's superiority is not merely a question of envy,but a question of disorder in the Islamic world picture -- where "Islam must dominate and is not to be dominated." But we who three years ago thought that Lewis was le dernier cri now know better.
Bat Ye'or, on the other hand, and Dufourcq, and the reviewer in question, manage to make sense, of the texts, of history, and of the present threat. They make sense of reality, in a way that does not do any violence to that reality, or to history. And that is why you should go out and buy as many copies as you can of "Eurabia." Keep one for yourself. You know what to do with the others.
Seems people can write about it.
What will it take for people to take action ?
What does it take to discredit or character assassinate an author?
This will be the 'story' about the 'Jewish' 'Woman'
'Bat Ye'or' (funny name, mark that down for mockery) and her 'racist' diatribe.
The text of EURABIA and its thesis (slo-mo conquest) will vanish like a run-aground treasure under the tidal sands of sloth, slander and smarmy stupidities that pass for journalism at present.
Others - guys with less cartoonish names- will need to publish the same essential work, from various polemical angles, for it to get through the fog of entertainment guarding the truth.
To quote Napoleon:
"The art of the police consists in not seeing what there is no use seeing."
People generally feel the same way with such hard truths as the Islamitization of Europe, and sefdom of its present peoples.
They will wait until something can be DONE with the knowledge.
Those carrying on from Bat Ye'or will need to remember this requirment: useful advice over historicity and bombast.
One good lithe metaphor can accomplish the work of an etire encyclopaedia of lame data.
I applaud her effort, and advise good security.
There are nuts on the trees of every land (as Pim Fortuyn found.)
I personally found Bat Ye'Or's works very enlightening. Reading the original interview at FP presented a "Eureka" moment for me . . .where all the European nonsense finally started to make sense.
I contacted Associated University Presses, the publisher of "Eurabia" inquiring about the anticipated date of release. Here is the reply:
"We expect finished books week of January 24 - and expect to ship orders week of February 7."
With any luck, the publication of "Eurabia" will stir HUGE amounts of controversy.
Controversy is NOTICED; controversy leads to DEBATE; debate leads to CURIOSITY; curiosity leads to KNOWLEDGE; knowledge leads to ACTION (God knows, we need a lot of that!).
The short series on Fox about Muslim troublemaking all over the world got just a bit of attention, and now we're already having just a tiny bit of controversy about the upcoming 24.
Let's hope CAIR gets all hot and bothered by it and sues. Sueing a news organization is bound to bring the whole issue to the attention of a whole bunch of people.
Bring it out into the open, expose it for what it is: A med-evil bloodcult based on conquest and booty, no less. Incompatibel with any of our values!
If they swear an oath to the constitution they are comitting perjury: Islam does not allow them to accept any higher authority than Islam. On these grounds they should be deported, in masses!
Turn the mosques into disco's and supermarkets!
It could stirr up controversy.
But then the media would simply invite people who oppose it to slander and attempt to destroy it.
Even if there is someone to defend the work, they'll make sure the political-correct position is greater in numbers and louder.
Those that might defend the work, could be sued for racism and others if the work goes 'too far' according to the law.
I hope there will be an online example spread around the world. It will reach more people, but it will require a program that would prohibit printing the work.
Something that is missing....serious knowledge spread out on websites which are easily accessible.
Like Spencer's book...if they'd be online, I'd download a copy immediately. For now, I'm looking around in this banana country for a printed example.
Perhaps I'll find one at Waterstones....but at a price ...that could drown my wallet..since my wallet is being used to buy survival gear and other literature related to my studies (political science).
Well, my friends... I tried, several times, to raise awareness for the threat islam poses by posting on a German Newspaper Forum. I admit that it's probably not a clever approach to compare the German left to the German right (and the similarities - the hatred of the US and Israel) but the responses my postings got speak for themselves. I've finally given up on this country for good. Germany is doomed because the mindless are the majority.
Even people who are against EU membership for Turkey still don't see that Israel is being threatened by muslim terrorists. They obviously still want to embrace the islamic "faith" and that's good enough for me. What we need to do is be aware of apologists over here (Europe) and make sure they're never allowed into the US. Once they find out that their right to free speech under Sharia law has come to an end they will try and flock to the US and they need to be stopped. Otherwise they will bring their leftist ideas with them and that can't be good for any non-islamic country.
Another thing. A lady friend of mine who has supposedly studied islam for a long time gave me the following URL: http://www.islamicperspectives.com/SocialProjectsAndMuslims.htm
Now is that typical muslim propaganda or what?
Oh, I forgot... A Happy New (Sharia free) Year 2005 to all of us!