Listen online: Bat Ye'or interview on "Eurabia"

This interview is now available online through little green footballs:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=14305_Interview_with_Bat_Yeor&only=yes

Interview with Bat Ye'or

Here’s a fascinating and disturbing audio interview (Real and Windows Media formats) with Bat Ye’or, author of the forthcoming book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis: Crosstalk Programs.

Lgf link takes you to this site:

http://www.vcyamerica.org/crosstalk/programs.cfm

01/13/2005 Ingrid Schlueter: Arab Influence on Europe RealAudio Windows Media
Guest: Bat Ye'Or
Bat Ye'Or is the author of the forthcoming book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.

In spite of 9-11 and themselves being the recipient of terrorist activities; Europe, in many ways is embracing Islam and the Arab world while at the same time forgetting its Judeo-Christian history.

Bat describes the dynamics that are changing Europe's attitude in relation to Islam, the Palestinian factor, why the Islamic concept of conquest known as Jihad is being aimed at the West, the affect this is having on the values, culture and politics of Europe and the tie-in between Arab emergence and the growing reemergence of Jewish hatred in Europe.
Tapes Available

Great interview! Burn it and pass it around.

This from Bat Ye'or's "Dhimmitude and Marcionism":

"Islam and Islamism

Untruths and taboos form a psychological net of lies and traps. For the past thirty years Europe has refused to see the global jihad in action at the four corners of the earth and to recognize the sources of Islamist terrorism. Bin Laden’s declarations emerge from an exclusively religious context and fit in with narratives of wars against the infidels to impose Islamic supremacy. It is not Israel and the West that is humiliating the Arab-Muslim world; what is humiliating is the very existence of these nations, their freedom and sovereignty that contradict the Islamist view of the natural order in which Islam must dominate and not be dominated. It is the frustration of this will to power that feeds the humiliation and violence, and not poverty or economic disparities which exist all over the world without provoking this type of hatred and terrorism. This jihad is nothing but nostalgia for the mental universe of the dhimmitude of infidels, fashioned by insecurity, debasement, and servility as means of survival. The dhimmi is guilty of existing; he has to pay for his existence by tributes, services, and flattery. The expressions of his identity must be secret and humble; he has no history, no culture, no civilization and must be
pardoned for his accomplishments by putting them in the service of his oppressor."

Perhaps too many people have visited the audio links because neither the real audio nor the windows media streaming links work. It's too bad, because I wanted to hear this.

She did not do a good job of describing the problems Europe is facing or backing up some of her views with facts. Instead she prefers lately to draw barriers that do not exist between Europe and the US; Europe being a typtrich of Islam and the US being the imaginary opposite. She said that Europe was abandoning Judeo/Christian values for Islamic values, which is an amazing statement to make and she probably cannot back it up because that is not what is happening, because Islamic values are not being adopted. Europe, Israel and the United States are a victim of their own successes, people are becoming less religious. I am atheist and as such I have rejected Christianity, just like every other atheist in the Western world, but they have not de jure rejected Islam, because they were not raised in an Islamic background. The West with its lessening religious values has reneged a part of its identity. What needs to happen is for atheists to reject Christianity but not to the point where they cringe like modern European leftists about rejecting Turkey simply on the grounds that is not Christian(which makes it not part of European identity). What needs to happen is for Western atheists to become like Orianna Fallaci, who while atheist does not go to the point of denying the place of Christianity in her or Italy's development. In the Islamic world even the seeming majority of the self proclaimed atheists are the defenders of Islamic historical development and do not reject honestly concepts like jihad and dhimmitude.

Ye'or is defacing the word dhimmi by using it as a kind of rhetorical device against Europe. She would likely be offended that Palestinians sometimes use the word Holocaust as an even worse rhetorical device against Israeli policies. To equate France agreeing to Arab terms of sacrificing Israel to Arab policies or opposing the American war in Iraq, is not a sign of France's dhimmitude.

In one of her papers Bat Ye'or writes:

... "Thus, from the 1970s the immigration policy integrated into the economico-political conception of the EAD (1973) did not envisage scattered immigration by individuals wanting to integrate into the host country. It planned a homogeneous implant of foreign collectivities numbering in the millions, into the European Communities. It facilitated the creation of groups who were hostile to their secular European environment, coming not to integrate but with the intention and with the right to impose their own civilization on the host country, while rejecting its secular institutions, considered inferior to those of the shari'a given by Allah. Whereas the EAD claimed for the Arab immigrants the rights conferred by the European legal institutions, the latter despised these institutions since they availed themselves of their own Arab-Islamic culture based on the shari'a. Thus, right from the start of the immigration, integration was excluded." ...

That is her reading into the situation and I agree with it, but it is giving politicians too much credit. Statesmen and high politicians meet with other statesmen and politicians. When Bush or Chirac goes to Algeria they meet not average Algerians, but Algerians likely educated in European or American universities who can couch their Islamic society in terms to make a modernized mirage. She needs to stop anaylzing European politicans from the position of a scholar of dhimmitude, but needs to view them more from their own situation, that they probably are not very religious, they believe in multiculturalism to a failing and that most of the muslims they meet are atypical. Then it becomes understandable why they agreed to Arab demands because the Arab world does not have the power diplomatically, economically or militarily to bully Europe. She is trivalizing the whole concept of the dhimmi, you cannot equate France one of the most powerful countries in the world to a dhimmi living under Islam, existing only because they pay the jiyza, of all people Ye'or should know this.

Just stop being like those overly ideological people seeing the world through the catarct of extreme ideology. The uber patriot Americans on LGF and Jihadwatch who are likely of European descent but bash Europe at every chance, the atheists who deface Christianity to the point of not being able to claim it as part of their identity, the Bible thumper station that interviewed Ye'or running a commercial for Creationism. Think for yourselves, abandon rigid ideologies and allegiances.

Hey Nikephoros,

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Nikephoros-

Isn't "atheism" a form of certainty as absurd as any belief not based on facts? Epistemology, pal.

Agnosticism allows all believers their due, but wants a secular rule of law to prevent them from forcing their ideologies- whether Moloch or Quetzecoatl or Yaweh or Allah or Pan Buh or The Great Spirit- from that old familiar routine of Absolutist Despotism on Earth under their Deity's smiling gaze (usually Masculine in features).

Taoism and Buddhism ('infidel'enemies of Islam, especially... VIZ- the former Buddha statues of Afghanistan) are unwilling to presume that they know the exact identity of the Ineffable, or give it a personal name, but do not deny its existence. Or forbid anyone from daring to show their sacrosanct arrogance by presumptiously assuming their semi-conscious primate brain can grasp the Infinite like a grape.

Bat Ye'Or may exaggerate Europe's supine position in relation to invasive Islam, but you don't get your point across by being "modest". Ask Jonathan Swift.

I applaud her courage in the face of this Mind Doom calling itself a faith.

May she hit the Amazon best seller list and may the homelands of the jihadis ban BatMan comics in confused response.

Profit's Beard:
Atheism is the rejection of any belief system. By "Belief System" I mean any thing that requires faith or a belief in the unknowable, untestable, invisible, and that which cannot be proved by using your senses. It is the belief in the arbitrary.

You should keep in mind that there are three categories of a statement about a thing's existence.

i) The statement is true.
ii) The statement is false.
iii) The statement is abitrary.

There are things we know that are true, like the sky is blue or the air has nitrogen in it.
Some things are false, like the moon is made of green cheese or I can fly by flapping my arms.
Other things are arbitrary, like whether aliens exist. We know that life exists, but we have no proof that it exists on other planets, so belief in aliens is arbitrary. There is no sensory data pointing to the existence of life on other planets or intelligent life. People believe in the arbitrary when it suits them. Some religions are arbitrary, like they postulate the existence of things that can exist, like aliens, but there is no evidence of them.

Most atheists treat religion as arbitrary and want proof and reject faith as a means of knowledge.

Faith is not a means of obtaining knowledge. Your emotions are not tools of cognition. Just because you feel a presence and sense that there is a higher power, does not mean that it exists. It comforts you greatly that this higher power exists, but there is no proof of it and your belief and the belief of billions of people in this higher power is no proof of its existence. The fact that many people have the same wish as you does not mean that wish will come true or that it can be wished into existence.

People can treat faith as a shortcut to knowledge. It is not. More cynical people treat faith as a shortcut to political power. In some societies, especially Islamic ones, faith is a shortcut to political power. Maybe that's what they mean by "Higher Power."

By "rejecting any belief system" you are caught in another belief system. Endless intellectual regress....

Isn't such a 'suspension of belief' more aptly considered under the name "a-gnosis" (not-certain of knowledge) and not under the word "a-theism" (no-god exists/ against theism)? Atheism is the mirror image of what it professes not to believe in, curiously. It says: "I know you don't know."
Silliness... considering that we barely know what happens when we sleep, or the 90% of the mind's 'iceberg' floating in the shadowy sea of the Id.

Atheism is not "the rejection of any belief system", it is the rejection of the deistic belief system. There are others.

And the emotions ARE a means of cognition. Not necessarily "rational" cognition, but without emotions, we are de facto robots, and the universe has no meaning at all, since all meaning is FELT. (The "beauty" of theories in science is an ecstasy of its own kind, and affirms our understanding in a different mode.)

Knowledge and faith are paths to different places.

Faith, as Mark Twain put it, is : "believin' what you know ain't so".

Knowledge is the painstaining architecture of consciousness built up against the strictures and censorship of Absolutist Dogma.

Believe me, I know. (sic)

Criticism above suggests that Bat Ye'or is to be connected to what are described as "uber patriot Americans on LGF and Jihadwatch who are likely of European descent but bash Europe at every chance" and "the atheists who deface Christianity to the point of not being able to claim it as part of their identity."

Who are these "uber patriots" at Jihadwatch? Most posters are well aware that there is much to be deplored in the United States and in the Western world, but that at this point, to stop to join in the chorus of those exaggerating American faults, would be silly. In the middle of World War II one did not stop to bemoan segregation in the south, or a failure to electrify rural areas. Civilization was under attack. "Bash Europe at every chance" -- quite the contrary, for it is not with grim satisfaction, but rather with anguish that the islamization of Europe is being observed.

"The atheists who deface Christianity to the point of not being able to claim it as part of their identity"? For this point, Oriana Fallaci is adduced as a welcome counter-example, an atheist who recognizes the role of Christianity in the formation of Europe. Oriana Fallaci is the first to declare her complete admiration for, and reliance upon, the work of Bat Ye'or. Bat Ye'or is also a strong supporter of Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Barnabas Fund. One wonders what caricature here of Bat Ye'or is being offered.

She is meticulous, thorough, scrupulous, and unanswerable. After you have read Eurabia, see if the characterization above, which seeks to cast doubt on Bat Ye'or's contention that the current appeasement of the Arabs and Muslims in Europe is not somehow accidental, or reflects some innate interest from below, but rather is a systematic, and formal effort, from above, which has its origins in the post-1973 desire to curry favor with the Arabs and Muslims, out of some misguided belief that this was the only way to keep access to oil (there was no need to do favors to get oil -- all anyone ever has to do is to pay the market price), and, in much more sinister fashion, to "recycle petrodollars" by behaving as proper Arab hirelings, dutiful and eager to please in every way. If the belief that non-Muslims must dance to a Muslim tune is not dhimmitude, what is?

finally, the lone critical poster above poohpoohs the notion that France, "one of the most powerful nations" on earth, would stoop to appeasement. The French ruling elite has been, and remains, terrified of the Muslim population in France. It shouldn't be, but it is. Once it realizes it can behave in quite a different way, and win popular support, and by systematically creating an Islam-hostile environment, unravel a situation that had become more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous for indigenous Infidels.

Bat Ye'or's book, if read, understood, and thoroughly assimilated, will be appreciated as possibly the important work on geopolitics since the the no-nonsense days of Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan. But with less about brute force, and more about an ideology that, because its main texts are immutable, itself has remained immutable over 1350 years. And that is why such words as "Jihad" and "dhimmi" do not change over time, even if the instruments of Jihad may change, and the ways in which dhimmitude is imposed, or willingly self-imposed, may change over time and through space.

Criticism above suggests that Bat Ye'or is to be connected to what are described as "uber patriot Americans on LGF and Jihadwatch who are likely of European descent but bash Europe at every chance" and "the atheists who deface Christianity to the point of not being able to claim it as part of their identity."

Who are these "uber patriots" at Jihadwatch? Most posters are well aware that there is much to be deplored in the United States and in the Western world, but that at this point, to stop to join in the chorus of those exaggerating American faults, would be silly. In the middle of World War II one did not stop to bemoan segregation in the south, or a failure to electrify rural areas. Civilization was under attack. "Bash Europe at every chance" -- quite the contrary, for it is not with grim satisfaction, but rather with anguish that the islamization of Europe is being observed.

"The atheists who deface Christianity to the point of not being able to claim it as part of their identity"? For this point, Oriana Fallaci is adduced as a welcome counter-example, an atheist who recognizes the role of Christianity in the formation of Europe. Oriana Fallaci is the first to declare her complete admiration for, and reliance upon, the work of Bat Ye'or. Bat Ye'or is also a strong supporter of Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Barnabas Fund. One wonders what caricature here of Bat Ye'or is being offered.

She is meticulous, thorough, scrupulous, and unanswerable. After you have read Eurabia, see if the characterization above, which seeks to cast doubt on Bat Ye'or's contention that the current appeasement of the Arabs and Muslims in Europe is not somehow accidental, or reflects some innate interest from below, but rather is a systematic, and formal effort, from above, which has its origins in the post-1973 desire to curry favor with the Arabs and Muslims, out of some misguided belief that this was the only way to keep access to oil (there was no need to do favors to get oil -- all anyone ever has to do is to pay the market price), and, in much more sinister fashion, to "recycle petrodollars" by behaving as proper Arab hirelings, dutiful and eager to please in every way. If the belief that non-Muslims must dance to a Muslim tune is not dhimmitude, what is?

finally, the lone critical poster above poohpoohs the notion that France, "one of the most powerful nations" on earth, would stoop to appeasement. The French ruling elite has been, and remains, terrified of the Muslim population in France. It shouldn't be, but it is. Once it realizes it can behave in quite a different way, and win popular support, and by systematically creating an Islam-hostile environment, unravel a situation that had become more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous for indigenous Infidels.

Bat Ye'or's book, if read, understood, and thoroughly assimilated, will be appreciated as possibly the important work on geopolitics since the the no-nonsense days of Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan. But with less about brute force, and more about an ideology that, because its main texts are immutable, itself has remained immutable over 1350 years. And that is why such words as "Jihad" and "dhimmi" do not change over time, even if the instruments of Jihad may change, and the ways in which dhimmitude is imposed, or is voluntarily self-imposed, as in much of Europe over the past 30 years, may differ, ever so slightly, in time and through space.

Atheists do not believe in God. Agnostics miss the plot entirely and think it is a question of whether god exists or not, so they say it is impossible to know if God exists or not. Since I have no proof of his existence I do not believe in him, just like when I read Beowulf I never believed in Grendel or a dragon. For a good reading on this subject look up "Critiques of God" edited by Peter Angeles. Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1976. The religious faithful take atheism as denying God exists since they take it as an a priori assumption he exists. (Do not hijack the thread with this offtopic nonsense, I just brought up my atheism for a point. The increasingly atheist Christian world has rejected Christianity, while the Muslim world has not done the same with Islam.)

.... "This briefly summarized structure established a symbiosis, an inter-penetration of Arab and European policies, requiring the involvement of the European states at the highest level. It is clear that Europe's hostile policy to Israel standardized by the structures of the EEC is not the result of mistaken judgements, of prejudices capable of being corrected. It rests on a politico-economic construction, meticulously prepared down to the smallest detail, and rooted in its multiform symbiosis with the Arab world." ...

From the essay the Euro-Arab dialogue.

The above quote is an example of her going to far. Is she an oracle? Policies are as easy to alter as they are to make.

... "It was during 2000-2002 that Eurabia has perhaps erased Europe." ... "After almost three decades, one may ask: what was the impact on the European continent of this policy, which brought theoretically independent sectors the economy, immigration, politics and culture into one single block linked to the Arab world and its anti-Israeli/antisemitic paranoia?" ...

The way she talks at times, if all the info coming from Europe you received was from Bat Ye'or you would think that at the box office Germans, Greeks, Italians would be watching the Arab cinema and Europe no longer existed. She is making some big claims that Europe is being dictated to by Arab states, that is playing the dhimmi, but you cannot equate surviving conquered under Islamic law, to the Great Powers of Europe sacrificing Israel and American foreign policy in the Mideast to Arab wishes. Great Powers, American included do not care about Islam, because Islam is too weak to be a threat. Recently the non-official American embassy, protested about Cuban dissidents and how they were treated by Havana, the same American embassies that do not speak about the treatment of non-muslims under muslim rule, except in diplomatic tones. As if this fossil of the Soviet bloc treats its dissidents as bad as muslim states treat their vanquished subjects. She is presenting things such that everything in those Euro-Arab dialogues are implemented, if they mention a cultural symbiosis that is how it is. It is more like a Euro-American culture is developing. In Greece you see more American movies with subtitles on TV than Greek movies, shitty American mystery novels in translation like the Da Vinci Code are on the bestseller list, American movies take in bigger box offices than Greek, English is the most learned foreign language, etc. Of course if you are an American super patriot you may be happy to believe there is a Euro-Arab culture, that Eurabia exists, but I do not see it emerging as a culture for anything but Islamic migrants.

I lack access to book sales figures but I do have anecdotal evidence of the popularity of her works. "The Dhimmi : Jews and Christians under Islam" is available in 1 county library, on inter-library loan 4 copies are available. Not a single copy is on loan out of a library. On interlibrary loan one copy of "Islam and Dhimmitude : where civilizations collide" is available. If this Eurabia book becomes popular it will probably be for the wrong reasons, for fuel to burn Old Europe with if you are a Republican, not out of sudden interest in what she has been studying for years.

Much as it would please Hugh for me to sacrifice a lamb on the temple of Bat Ye'or I will pass. She is not a divinty above criticsm. In her interview if you actually listened which I am not even sure(you give no evidence you read it from your post) she said that Europe is adopting Islamic and reneging Judeo-Christian culture. This is why I brought up atheism and Orianna Fallaci. I do not drop names to impress people and dizzy people with names. In the "Rage and the Pride" she never mentions Bat Ye'or as being the reason why she is atheist but still respects the Christian heritage of her past and Italy's past, her fondness of Cathedrals. In my post I reference several things that show I actually listened to the audio, like the Creationism commercial that aired while she was interviewed. I am glad Hugh knows what most of us are "well aware of" or how Fallaci is atheist but not displaying a blind hatred for all things Christian as some atheists tend to do, because of Bat Ye'or. As I have no way of knowing what most of you are thinking I just know there exists a certain class of "Freedom Fry Eaters" in the United States and that some of them do post here, but more are at LGF.

On page 193 of "Onward Muslim Soldiers" Spencer cites the following essay by Bat Ye'or in regard to the myth of Islamic tolerance: Origin of the Myth of a Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society

... "It has been buried beneath a myth, fabricated by Western politicians and religious leaders, in order to promote their own national strategic and economic interests.

"Curiously, this myth started in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 19th century. It alleges that Turkish rule over Christians in its European provinces was just and lawful. That the Ottoman regime, being Islamic, was naturally "tolerant" and well disposed toward its Christian subjects; that its justice was fair, and that safety for life and goods was guaranteed to Christians by Islamic laws. Ottoman rule was brandished as the most suitable regime to rule Christians of the Balkans.

"This theory was advanced by European politicians in order to safeguard the balance of power in Europe, and in order to block the Russian advance towards the Mediterannean. To justify the maintenance of the Turkish yoke on the Slavs it was portrayed as a model for a multi-ethnical and multi-religious empire. Of course, the reality was totally different!" ...

Policy Goal= detain Russian influence
Muslim ally= Ottoman Empire
Lamb= Ottoman non-muslims especially Serbs

Euro-Arab dialogue
... "After World War II, France humiliated by the Vichy collaborationist government and the loss of its colonial empire saw any ambitious role it may have had as a great power sharply reduced. The Franco-German union provided Charles de Gaulle with the means to ensure peace in Europe by reconciling traditional enemies, while in the 1960s the alliance with the Arab world enabled France at an international level to challenge American power. De Gaulle's economic and strategic policy aimed at uniting the countries around the Mediterranean in an inter-dependent industrial bloc opposed to America. To achieve this plan, France strove to build an alliance with the Arab states." ...

Policy goal= detain American influence
Ally= Arab world
Lamb= Everyone not muslim near Arab states but especially Israel

Great powers for their foreign policies do not care about philanthropy. Now it is nothing different. This is not dhimmitude here. Is it worth it to deface dhimmitude for cheap rhetorical points, to deface jihad by talking of "Euro-arab" jihad? Being the lone dissenter is not a insult, if anything must be said about being the majority, the most favorite, it is that Tom Clancy and Dan Brown are two of the world's greatest men of letters. People who blaze their own trail are alone, only people walking on the trails already made are in company. Bat Ye'or in our times and a handful of others are reblazing a trail that used to exist before the modern historians buried the realization obvious to every traveler to Islamic lands in the 19th Century and before, that they were the borders of another civilization. Now they are just a growing vacation spot, competing with Greece, Spain, France, Italy, and Israel for tourists.

Nikephoros-

Hate to mention it but "the increasingly atheist Christian world" is a myth of your own making. Except perhaps in (Wicca/Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh/demi-communist-loving) Europe.

Pentacostal Christianity is the fastest growing creed in the world besides the birthrate- promulgated Islam. (And Hinduism.)

"Eurabia" will succeeed where Bat Ye'Or's earlier works did not for two reasons:

The title is catchier. (Never underestimate it.)

and:

The stakes are becoming clearer as famous names like Theo Van Gogh are publically slaughtered.

However she gets the message out (on Bible-thumping stations, or wherever) is more the point than the mere medium. Since the jihad she warns of is after atheists first, agnostics second, pagans third, and will allow the "peoples of the book" a crappy little ghetto to be nice in.

Europe is being eroded by demographics more than proselytizing.

"Be fruitful and multiply" was not for fun, but for dominion.

It failed the Hebrew Deity's people because they hadn't grasped the universalism that Mohammad borrowed from the gnostic/Pelagian/Arrian 'Christian' exiles in 600 A.D. Arabia.

P.S.-

Your certainty about the non-existence of something you can't prove one way or the other is more instructive of temperament than argument.

Read some Xenophon, or Jiddu Krishnamurti, or Henri Bergson.

Me, I always loved the last word of a book by Neitzsche that says it all:

"Or."