Muslims attack Coptic Church and people

spiridon · Post by **spiridon** » Sat 22 October 2005 6:13 pm

"In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
-- John 16:33

BREAKING NEWS: 10,000 LAY VIOLENT SIEGE TO COPTIC CHURCH

NEWS REPORT U.S. Copts Association

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PHONE: 202.737.3660

Web site: www.copts.com Email: copts@copts.com

        Alexandria, Egypt (10/21/05)—Over 10,000 Egyptian Muslim protestors and Egyptian police on Friday, October 21, 2005 surrounded the Mari Girgis (St. George) Coptic Orthodox Church in Muharram Bey street, Alexandria. The violent protestors were incited by October media reports alleging a church play had "offended Islam." 

 




        According to reports from U.S. Copts informants at the St. George Church, since 12:00 PM CMT over 10,000 Muslim protestors have flooded the streets outside the building, trapping inside the church three priests and 70-100 Coptic youth. The protestors, armed with Molotov cocktails and other weapons, brandished copies of the Qur'an and demanded that St. George priest Father Antonious convert to Islam. 

 




        Officials deployed approximately 1,000 soldiers from the Egyptian army and seventy armored vehicles to help subdue the mob. Soldiers released tear gas and fired live bullets to disperse the thousands chanting in the streets. 

 




        Friday's protests come after initial street protests one week earlier and the Wednesday stabbing of a Coptic nun by a Muslim student. 

        Protestors were responding to several inflammatory newspaper editorials alleging the St. George church had produced a stage play that "insulted Islam and the Qur'an." The production to which the articles referred was a church play staged once over two years earlier in 2003 for St. George's parishioners and which referred to the modern political problem of Islamic extremism, referencing neither the Qur'an nor Islamic theology. 

        Copts, the indigenous Christians of Egypt, number approximately 15 million people and constitute between 12-15% of the Egyptian population.

--
Chris Nawar

The greatest might of a man is to bring upon his soul his
transgression at all times before God, and he must expect temptation
until the end." - Abba Antony

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sat 22 October 2005 8:17 pm

http://www.copts.net/index.asp

http://www.copts.net/detail.asp?id=797
...As you may know, the Copts—Egypt’s indigenous, pre-Arab Christians—have suffered from recent escalations in militant Islamist violence, much of which has been underreported and glossed over by the Egyptian government. As of October 21, 2005, a mob of over 10,000 militants armed with explosives has surrounded the St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Muharrem Bey Street, Alexandria. The mob violence currently underway in Alexandria is only the latest in a string of attacks, including this week’s stabbing of a Coptic nun by an extremist student. ...

http://www.copts.net/detail.asp?id=798
...On Wednesday, a Muslim man stabbed a nun in protest at the sale of a DVD of the play, staged at the church in 2003. ...

http://www.copts.net/detail.asp?id=796
... According to reports from U.S. Copts informants at the St. George Church, since 12:00 PM CMT over 10,000 Muslim protestors have flooded the streets outside the building, trapping inside the church three priests and 70-100 Coptic youth. The protestors, armed with Molotov cocktails and other weapons, brandished copies of the Qur’an and demanded that St. George priest Father Antonious convert to Islam....

http://www.copts.net/detail.asp?id=792
...Cairo, 18 Oct. (AKI) - The Islamic group 'Egypt's Mujahadeen' - which claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks at Sharm el-Sheikh - has issued threats against the Coptic Christian community in Egypt, posting on the Internet "an urgent message to the followers of the cross living in Egypt". The message made specific reference to the 'crusaders' church' guilty, in its view, of staging a theatre performance offending the Prophet Muhammed. The church in the spotlight, now under state protection, is in the Muharram Bik area, near the town of Alexandria. ...

http://www.coptnews.com/

http://www.coptnews.com/fre.html
...Nearly 7000 Egyptian Christians demonstrated on Sunday at the patriarchal headquarters in Cairo, accusing police of complicity against them after a priest's wife disappeared and was reportedly forced to convert to Islam.
The demonstrators, mostly young people, called on police to return the woman to her husband and family.
Father Philamon, the Orthodox Coptic priest in Abul Matamir, near the northern city of Alexandria, said that Wafaa Constantine, the wife of another priest in the town, had disappeared on November 27.
He said the 48-year-old woman worked as a government agricultural engineer and that one of her Muslim colleagues had kidnapped her and forced her to convert to Islam.
The priest charged that two similar cases had taken place in the town in the past six months.
Philamon accused Abul Matamir police of "pretending that Christians were converting to Islam of their own free will, which is false". ...

http://www.coptnews.com/pop.html
...The head of Egypt's Coptic Church has holed himself up in a desert monastery to protest the arrest of Christians demonstrating against a reported attempt to forcibly convert a priest's wife to Islam. ...

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sun 23 October 2005 1:59 am

http://www.dhimmi.org/

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
The Middle Eastern Unit
and
The Faculty of Humanities
Chair: Dr. David Satran
(Department of Comparative Religion)
LECTURE: November 11, 1996
(5:00 pm, Room 104 of the Truman Institute)
by
BAT YE'OR
The Decline of Eastern Christian Communities
in the Modern Middle East

Ladies and gentlemen:

I have been asked to address you today on the decline of Eastern Christian communities in the modern Middle East. This process of Christian demographical declined has, however, been a permanent trend in Islamized lands, sometimes accelerated by specific events, sometimes stabilized. But the process of withering away has always been there from the beginning and, with the passing centuries, Christian populations that formerly constituted majorities dwindled to minorities - even disappearing from certain regions.

Here I wish to stress a point: When, in 1983, I coined a new term, "dhimmitude," all those processes by which a society - an ethnic collective group - either managed to survive, defending itself, or was ultimately destroyed. The study of dhimmitude is not the same as the study of the dhimmi condition itself, because dhimmitude concerns the inner politics and inter-relations of a collectivity, which coexists encapsulated within its Islamic environment.

A delicate equilibrium evolved during the centuries of resignation to spoliations and humiliations. But, in the Ottoman Empire, during the 19th century Tanzimat period, that equilibrium was suddenly broken by the immense challenges represented by the total modification of the relationship between the umma (the Muslim community) and the dhimmi populations. Because the Islamic state had granted Jews and Christians a protection in the context of jihad, a holy war, their whole legal status was thereby integrated into a warlike ideology linked with religion. We thus find three inter-related and inseparable elements: a legal status; a war; and a theology.

In the document section of my latest book in English, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude, I have published a text from al-Qayrawani, a Tunisian jurist, who died in 966. A brief passage from him will allow us to understand the traditional position on this question:

"Jihad is a precept of Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may dispense others from it. We Malikis (one of the four schools of Muslim jurisprudence) maintain that it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which, war will be declared against them. "

In the 19th century, when the emancipation of the dhimmis was envisaged in the Ottoman Empire, these three elements proved to be unsurmountable obstacles. By the end of the 18th century, the modernization of the empire had became a matter of urgency in order to maintain its territorial integrity against the annexionist ambitions of both Austria and Russia. Already in 1774, by the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarjdi, Russia had managed to obtain the right to intercede on behalf of all the Orthodox subjects of the Porte. Russia thereby became the champion of the Slavs and of Eastern Orthodoxy in general, while France defended the interests and privileges of Catholicism. This territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, first pledged by France, became the pivotal policy of Europe. It is within this context of territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire that the emancipation of the Christian rayas - or dhimmis -was envisaged by Europe. This policy was based on the hope that equal rights for all Ottoman subjects and the abolition of the oppression of the rayas would check the revolutionary national movements of the Greeks, the Serbs and other Slavic peoples.

The principle of equal rights was one of those liberal ideas bequeathed by the American and French revolutions. But in Europe the political context was totally different from that in Islamic lands. First, in Christendom the principle of the separation of powers - political and religious - had allowed the development of secularist and anti-clerical trends. The religious minorities: Protestants in a Catholic majority; Catholics in a Protestant majority; and the Jewish communities, were minorities persecuted on a theological basis. Here, the principle of equal rights was only possible through the elimination of theological pressures on European political and juridical systems.

Code: Select all

In the Islamic system, however, the situation was exactly the reverse since politics and religion are united. The definition given by the great 14th century historian, Ibn Khaldun, is worth quoting briefly:  "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and   (the obligation) to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. Therefore, caliphate and royal authority are united (in Islam), so that the person in charge can devote the available strength to both of them  (religion and politics) at the same time".

Secondly, the so-called "religious minorities" were still, in some regions, large majorities like the Greeks, the Slavic populations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria - and the Armenians in several provinces. But most important, these "religious minorities" in the Ottoman Empire were in fact the remnants of native ethnic majorities. Two firmans were proclaimed by Sultan Abd al-Majid in 1839 and 1856, promising new laws that would abolish religious inequalities. In the Islamic context, the policy of equal rights for all subjects raised many questions. I will mention a few which are still relevant today:

The right for Christians to hold freehold property. According to Muslim jurists, the land conquered by jihad should be considered as fay land, a land that in its totality belongs to the umma - the Islamic community - as a wakf, which the imam administers for the benefit of the umma. The scholar Qudama b. Ja'far (d. circa 932) wrote: "If the Imam distributes the lands amongst those who captured them, they become 'ushr lands, and their previous owners become slaves. If he does not distribute the lands but leaves them in whole, as a trust to the Muslims, then the poll-tax lies on the necks of their owners, who are free, while their lands are charged with kharaj tax."

This point is stressed in the 1988 Constitution of Hamas (art. 11), where it applies to any land conquered by Islam. In spite of reforms granting non-Muslims the right to buy land in the Ottoman Empire, they could rarely acquire it. In 1860, the British Consul in Sarajevo reported to the British ambassador at Constantinople: "Christians [dhimmis] are now permitted to possess real property, but the obstacles which they meet with, when they attempt to acquire it, are so many and vexatious that very few have as yet dared to brave them" . This situation continued till 1875, although in Egypt and Palestine special privileges were granted to Europeans.
The second point was the abolition of the Koranic tax, the jizya, which was paid in exchange for "protection" under the dhimma. Thus, the suppression of the jizya was considered as tantamount to the suppression of the protection itself, which left the dhimmis defenceless.

According to the Shafi'i jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058):
"The refusal of tributaries to pay the poll tax constitutes a violation of the treaty that was conceded to them. "

According to the 8th century jurist Abu Yusuf: "(...) their lives and possessions are spared only on account of the poll tax. "

At a time of great changes when foreign laws and customs imported from the West were contradicting the shari'a, questions were raised about the source of the law's legitimacy. Today, this question is still a burning issue for islamists: the choice between the Law of Allah - the shari'a - and the principle of secular, man-made, laws. Of course, for Muslim judges the shari'a law always prevails over any other law and therefore the system of dhimmitude was perfect and had to be maintained. Here, we should take a closer look at the principle of "rights" in general. From whom does a person's "rights" emanate? The rules of jihad state that the infidel who does not submit has no rights at all. The rights of Jews and Christians are only granted, and protected, if they have submitted to Islamic law.

According to an-Nawawi, a 13th century jurist: "One is not responsible for having mortally wounded an infidel who is not subjected to a Muslim authority, or of an apostate, even when either one of them recants of his errors before dying. "

In other words, it is the Islamic ruler who guarantees, and is the source of legitimacy regarding the rights of Jews and Christians. This is clearly in contradiction with Western conceptions of Human Rights, which declare that everyone is born free and equal in dignity and in rights. In this respect, too, article 31 of the Hamas Charter stresses the Islamic source of "rights" for Jews and Christians. President Sadat also confirmed this Muslim point in Washington in 1980. Shocked by the wide publicity given by American Copts to the persecutions of Copts in Egypt, he declared: "Islam is the best guaranty of security for the Copts in Egypt". Thus, it is Islam which is the source of rights - not the person's inherent rights.

Equality of rights for all would challenge the Islamic order that stressed the superiority of Muslims over infidels. Should a non-Muslim give orders to a Muslim? A 1993 fatwa, published in Saudi Arabia, dealt precisely with this problem. In a recent booklet, The Road to Victory, published by members of the London-based Hizb ut-Tahrir, one reads: "In its doctrine, Islam forbids the submission to unbelievers and to their rule." The question remains open: Should "ideas" be borrowed from Infidels? Should Muslims become friends with the People of the Book?
Testimony in court. According to Islamic law, when there is a conflict between a Muslim and a non-Muslim it has to be judged by a shari'a court, which automatically refuses the testimony of a non-Muslim. In 1875, civil courts were specially created in the Ottoman Empire where such cases might receive the testimony of Christians or Jews. But from the reports of British consuls in the Balkans, and in Syria and Palestine, we find even those courts refusing such testimony.
The problem of building new churches and synagogues, or repairing any part of them still applies today in certain Muslim countries.

This concept of equal rights was like a thunder-bolt that would shake and destroy the whole social and legal structure of Islamic society based on the shari'a. And Christians were to suffer from many brutal reprisals because of this evolution. Moreover, the 19th century was a century of genocidal massacres caused by many national uprisings against Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Those Christian revolts led to continual wars and reprisals - with tremendous sufferings on all sides, vast refugee problems, and an upsurge of much religious hatred.

During the Greek war of liberation in 1821, Sultan Mahmud II wrote to his vassal, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, that in the war against the Greeks he had to conform to the rules of jihad: "the slaying of the rebels and the plunder of their goods, and slavery for their wives and children." But three years later, a firman confirmed the aman, or protection, to the rebels who had submitted and forbade Muslims to attack them.

In Lebanon, Anglo-French rivalries in the context of the emancipation of the Christians provoked massacres of Christians in both Lebanon and Syria in 1841, 1842, 1845, and especially in 1860. More than 20.000 of them were killed, leaving 10,000 orphans, and 75,000 refugees, and 3.000 women were taken as slaves, not to mention forced conversions. This led to a European intervention and the creation of an autonomous Lebanese Ottoman province with a Christian Governor-General.

Toward the close of the 19th century, the sultan's Christian subjects had the choice between two different paths if they wished to liberate themself from dhimmitude:

1) Autonomy, leading to eventual independance when possible;

2) Integration, within the concept of a secular Arab nation.

The Armenians chose autonomy. They requested that where they were numerous in their ancient provinces, the reforms announced at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 should be applied: a wider representivity in the communal and provincial administration and the permission to build schools and use their own language. In 1892-1894 they suffered massacres that claimed 250.000 victimes; about 30,000 in 1909; and, then, the great genocide of 1915-1917 in the First World War. At that fateful period, many Jacobites, who were living alongside the Armenians in some regions, were also killed.

At the end of the war, the Armenians requested an autonomous region which was refused by the Allied Powers. The Assyrians, who asked for a small autonomous territory where they could feel safe, were also refused; they too suffered massacres in 1933, and again in 1937, in the Jazira region of Iraq. The Lebanese Christians obtained independance through an elarged French mandate.

Those Christians who chose integration were often from the refugee populations living in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. They thought that Arab nationalism or Syrian nationalism would help them to integrate into a secular Islamic society.

But there was also another aspect of Arab nationalism: this was the opposition to Zionism - the Jewish movement of national liberation - by a future Arab Empire comprising Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. As the American King-Crane Report argued in 1922: Arab nationalism would create a tremendous bond between Muslims and Christians by uniting them against Zionism. The same struggle, and the same hatred against Zionist Jews, would be the best means for the Christians to fully integrate into their Muslim environment. On 28 March 1921, the 3rd Palestinian Congress took place in Haifa. It was constituted mainly by Palestinian Christians. On meeting Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, they gave him a memorandum with arguments from The Protocoles of the Elders of Zion.

At the end of the 20th century, the instability in the Arab Muslim world; the catastrophic economic situation in so many regions; the general radicalisation of Islam; the failure of those Christian dreams for their autonomy, or for secularisation; and the fact that Europe abandoned them, has led to constant emigration. Moreover, the strong and proud Lebanese Christian community, after first being attacked by the PLO, disintegrated in the civil conflict that opposed those of them who were partisans of an independent Lebanon, to their coreligionists who had fought against a Christian political power.

One of the reasons for the indifference concerning the Eastern Christians was that in Europe their tragedy was replaced by that of the "Palestinian cause" - thanks to Christian mobilization for it. For the past thirty years and more, the "Palestinian cause", strongly backed by the Vatican, by various Churches, and by influential politians in Europe became the daily preoccupation of the media, and of governments. This cause served as a screen to hide the permanent deterioration of the situation of the Christians themselves in the Middle East and elsewhere: that of the Copts in Egypt; the jihad against Christians and Animists in Sudan; the tragic clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, the Philippines, East Timor, and other regions. This strange silence was integrated into a deliberate obfuscation of Eastern Christianity's dhimmi history. This history was replaced by the myth of a marvellous Islamic-Christian symbiosis that had existed for centuries before the advent of Zionism. And - it was suggested - since Israel was the cause of such evils, its demise would revive that Middle East "Golden Age".

This attitude was well expressed 20 years ago by Robert Brenton Betts in the conclusion to his book, Christians in the Arab East:
"For Israel itself, a successful Christian-Muslim experiment makes Lebanon the most dangerous of all enemies to Zionist survival, for it is a living example of the kind of society the Palestinians have lately advocated in place of the narrowly nationalistic and ethnically based state that is Israel today. (...) The success or failure of the Lebanese Christian communities in perpetuating and restructuring their national society in the coming decades will irrevocably be shared by all Arabic-speaking Christians throughout the Middle East, and will in large part determine the outcome of their centuries-old striving to achieve a truly integrated and egalitarian Arab nation."

Muslim and Christian writers, priests and politicians again and again repeated this point on the sybiosis. Hence, the importance of "concealing" history - what the late Jacques Ellul called "carefully concealing" ; and what a Syriac scholar, Prof. Ben Segal, called "a conspiracy of silence" by Western academics. Jean-Marie Fiey, a Jesuit scholar, did however write in one of his books on Syriac history that, "as it is not prohibited", he will neverless say that Assyria is like a big Christian cemetary; and Father Michel Hayek declared in 1967: "Why not admit clearly - so as to break a taboo and a political proscription - what is so resented in the flesh and in the Christian conscience: that Islam has been the most dreadful torment that ever befell the Church. Christian sensibility has remained traumatized to this day."

And, thus, this "Palestinian cause", which was an euphemism for the eventual destruction of Israel, prevented a correct historical analysis of religious, political and sociological realities. But the years, and the decades, went by and Israel did not disappear, whereas the Eastern Christian communities crumbled away through a "conspiracy of silence".

Now, if we examine quickly the 19th and 20th century struggles of the dhimmi peoples against their condition of dhimmitude in the Balkans and the Middle East, we see that those populations who chose territorial autonomy or independence were always opposed by jihad. They include the Greeks and the Slav peoples in the European dar al-Islam, and the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Israelis and the Lebanese. The others who chose integration, and an egalitarian Arab nation through Arabism, are today faced with the re-Islamization of Muslim society.

During this century, those Christians Arab nationalists tried by every means to assimilate into their Islamic environment. They fought bravely to retain their political power in Lebanon, and they fought with determination for secularization. Actually, Arab Christian nationalists didn't defend their own rights as Christians, but as Arabs - and, of course, to be an Arab is synonymous with being a Muslim for traditionalist Muslims. The secularist Christians and Muslims now feel threatened by declarations such as that by the late Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Ghazali in 1992: "Anyone resisting the imposition of the shari'a was an apostate, who deserved death by the state, or by the hand of a devout Muslim."

I think that Israel has much to learn from the sad experience of Eastern Christianity, because for centuries Jews shared with Christians the dehumanizing condition of dhimmis. Secondly, Israelis should reflect on Europe's conscious abandonment of the Lebanese Christians, and of its cynical choice between moral principles, on the one hand, and oil and Arab markets on the other. Israelis might reflect on how easily foreign states can provoke internecine strife when wishing to destroy a country. And moderate Muslims, who rarely bother to fight for the defence of the "rights" of their Jewish and Christian persecuted countrymen, are now being aggressed by the same forces of extremist obscurantism that previously targeted the dhimmis - as in Egypt, Algeria, and other Islamic lands.

One can only hope that the ongoing Middle East Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians, and with the neighbouring Arab states, will benefit all the peoples of the region, although that will depend on the final peace conditions. If the Palestinian Christians - about 2% of the population in all the autonomous territories, though playing internationally a political role disproportionate to their numbers - continue, as in the past, to seek Israel's demise, they will only encourage the most radical anti-Christian Islamists. And the same can be said about the basic anti-Zionist policy of some European states. But if, as a result of peace with Israel, the Muslims peoples will renounce the ideology of jihad; if they will acknowledge the long history of dhimmitude - and especially the fact that Jews and Christians are their equals in rights and dignity - then a future Middle East, built on peace and reconciliation, will indeed have been built on solid foundations. Real peace, to endure, must rest on a total change of mentalities on all sides, and a refusal of jihad ideologies that debase the human being. This is the challenge of the future, which should unite everyone today: Jews, Christians and Muslims. (END)

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sun 23 October 2005 2:09 am

http://www.dhimmi.org/

THE LORD BYRON FOUNDATION FOR BALKAN STUDIES
THE INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES ASSOCIATION

SYMPOSIUM ON THE BALKAN WAR
(Ramada Congress Hotel - Chicago, Illinois)

YUGOSLAVIA: PAST AND PRESENT

Dinner Address delivered on 31 August 1995 by

BAT YE'OR *

MYTHS AND POLITICS
THE TOLERANT PLURALISTIC ISLAMIC SOCIETY:
ORIGIN OF A MYTH

Ladies and gentlemen:

My subject this evening is "Myths and Politics: Origin of the Myth of a Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society".

Ten years ago when I came to America for the launching of my book The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, I was struck by the inscription on the Archives Building in Washington: "Past is Prologue". I had thought - at least at the beginning of my research - that my subject related to a remote past, but I realized that contemporary events were rapidly modernizing this past. Muslim countries, where Islamic law - the shari'a - had been replaced by modern juridiction imposed by the European colonizing powers, were abandoning the secularizing trend, replacing it with Islamization in numerous sectors of life. This impression of the return of the past became even more acute when I was working on my next book, published in 1991, whose English edition will appear in early 1996 under the title: The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam - 7th to 20th century: from Jihad to Dhimmitude (Associated University Presses).

Author of Le Dhimmi, Profil de l'Opprimé en Orient et en Afrique du Nord depuis la conquête arabe (Paris, Anthropos, 1980). Enlarged English edition, The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians under Islam, preface by Jacques Ellul (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses, Cranbury, N.J./London/ Toronto, 1985); Les Chrétientés d'Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude: VIIe-XXe siècle, préface de Jacques Ellul (Paris, Le Cerf, 1991) English edition, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude, AUP, 1996; Juifs et Chrétiens sous l'Islam: les dhimmis face au défi intégriste (Paris, Berg international, 1994)

In this study, I tried to analyze the numerous processes that had transformed rich, powerful Christian civilizations into Islamic lands, and their long-term effects, which had reduced native Christian majorities into scattered small religious minorities, on the way to total disappearence. This complex Islamization process affecting Christian lands and civilizations on both shores of the Mediterranean - and in Irak and Armenia - I have called: the process of "dhimmitude"; and the civilization of those peoples who underwent such transformation, I have named the civilization of "dhimmitude". The indigenous native peoples were Jews and Christians (Orthodox, Catholics, or from other Eastern Christian Churches). They are all referred to by Muslim jurists as the "Peoples of the Book" - the Book being the Bible - and they were subjected to the same condition according to Islamic law. They are called by the Arabic term, dhimmis: "protected peoples", because Islamic law protects their life and goods on condition that they submit to Islamic rule. But it is this very Islamic law that generates the processes of dhimmitude and of self-destruction.

I will not go into details here for this is a very long and complex subject, but in order to understand the Serbian situation one should know that the Serbs were treated during half a millenium just like the other Christian and Jewish dhimmis. They participated in this civilization of dhimmitude. It is important to understand that the civilization of dhimmitude grows from two major and interconnected religious institutions: jihad and shari'a, which establish a particular ideological system that makes it mandatory - during the jihad operation - to use terror, mass killings, deportation and slavery. And the Serbs - because I am speaking of them tonight - did not escape from this fate, which was the same for all those peoples around the Mediterranean basin, vanquished by jihad. For centuries, the Serbs fought to liberate their land from the laws of jihad, and dhimmitude, which had legalized their condition of oppression on their own lands.

So while I was analyzing and writing about the processes of dhimmitude and the civilization of dhimmitude - while listening to the radio, watching television, reading the newspapers - I had the uncomfortable feeling that the clock was being turned back. Modern politicians, sophisticated writers - using phones, planes, computers and all the modern techniques - seemed to be returning several centuries back, with wigs or stiff collars, using exactly the same corrupting arguments, the same tortuous short-term politics that had previously contributed to the gradual Islamization of numerous non-Muslim peoples. I had to shake myself in an effort to distinguish the past from the present.

So, is the past always prologue? Are we doomed to remain perpetually prisoners of the same errors? Certainly, if we do not know the past. And this past - the long and agonizing process of Christian annihilation by the laws of jihad and dhimmitude - is a taboo history, not only in Islamic lands, but above all in the West. It has been buried beneath a myth, fabricated by Western politicians, religious leaders and scholars, in order to promote their own national, strategic, economic and personal 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 Mediterranean. To justify the maintenance of the Turkish yoke on the Slavs, this yoke had to be presented to the public opinion as a just government. The Ottoman Empire was painted by Turkophiles as a model for a multi-ethnical, multi-religious empire. Of course, the reality was totally different! First the Ottoman Empire was created by centuries of jihad against Christian populations; consequently the rules of jihad, elaborated by Arab-Muslim theologians from the 8th to the 10th centuries, applied to the subjected Christian and Jewish populations of the Turkish-Islamic dominions. Those regulations are integrated into the Islamic legislation concerning the non-Muslim vanquished peoples and therefore they present a certain homogeneity throughout the Arab and Turkish empires - and, apparently, in Muslim Asia too.

The civilization of dhimmitude, in which the Serbs participated, had many aspects that evolved with changing political situations. They suffered from the same oppressive laws and prejudices that concerned all Christians and Jews in the Islamic Empire. From the 1830s, the Ottomans embarked on reforms (Tanzimat), aimed at the emancipation of their Christian raya (dhimmi) populations. They didn't act on their own volition, rather they were forced to accept them by the European powers. It was not out of humanity that European politicians wished to abolish the degrading condition of the Christians; they promoted these reforms in order to prevent their seeking Russian help to liberate themselves from Ottoman oppression.

In the Serbian regions, the most fanatical opponents of Christian emancipation were the Muslims Bosniacs. They fought against the right of Christians to possess lands, and - in legal matters - to have rights equal to theirs. They opposed these reforms on the bases that under the old system, which gave them full domination over the Christians rayas, Muslims and Christians had lived for centuries in a convivial fraternity. And this argument is still used today by Bosniac President Izetbegovic, and others. He repeatedly affirms that the half millenium of Christian dhimmitude was a period of peace and religious harmony.
Let us now confront the myth with reality. I shall now quote a few facts from some of the documents in my forthcoming book.
A systematic enquiry into the condition of the Christians was conducted in the 1860s by British consuls throughout the Ottoman Empire. Britain was then Turkey's strongest ally; it was in its interest to see that oppression of the Christians was eliminated, in order to prevent Russian or Austrian interference.
On July 22, 1860, Consul James Zohrab sent a lengthy report from Bosna-Serai (Sarajevo) to his ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Bulwer, in which he analyzed the administration of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He stated that from 1463 to 1850 the Bosniac Muslims enjoyed all the privileges of feudalism: "During a period of nearly 300 years Christians were subjected to much oppression and cruelty. For them no other law but the caprice of their masters existed."

Here we should remember the devshirme system, which is well known. Initiated by the Ottoman Sultan Orkhan (1326-1359), it existed for about 300 years. It consisted of a regular levy of Christian children from the Christian population of the Balkans. These youngsters, aged from fourteen to twenty, were Islamized and enslaved for military purposes. The periodic levies, which took place in contingents of a thousand, subsequently became annual. To discourage runaways, children were transferred to remote provinces and entrusted to Muslim masters, soldiers who treated them harshly, as slaves. Another parallel recruitment system operated: It provided for the levy of Christian children aged six to ten (ichoghlani), reserved for the sultan's palace. Entrusted to eunuchs, they underwent a tyrannical training for fourteen years. In Africa, a system of enslaving Black Christian and Animist children, similar to the devshirme existed, as is shown from documents to be published in my book. A sort of devshirme system still exists today in the Sudan and has been described and denounced by the United Nations Special Rapporteur Mr Gaspar Biro in his 1994 report, and by an article in The Times of London (Sudanese Christians 'sold as slaves', August 25, 1995)
In 1850, the Bosniac chiefs opposed the authority of the Porte and the reforms. They were defeated by the Sultan's army commanded by Omer Pasha, aided by the Christians. The corvées imposed by the Bosniac lords over their subjected Christian populations were abolished, as well as their feudal privileges. The Christians hoped that the direct administration of the Porte would ameliorate their position, but they hardly benefited from it. Moreover, in spite of their assistance to the sultan's army they were disarmed, while the Muslims who fought the sultan could retain their weapons. Christians remained oppressed as before, although it was not permitted to treat them as formerly. Referring to the reform, Zohrab states: "I can safely say, (it) practically remains a dead letter".

Discussing the impunity granted to the Muslims by the sultan, Consul Zohrab writes in the same report:
"This impunity, while it does not extend to permitting the Christians to be treated as they formerly were treated, is so far unbearable and unjust in that it permits the Mussulmans to despoil them with heavy exactions. False imprisonments (imprisonment under false accusation) are of daily occurence. A Christian has but a small chance of exculpating himself when his opponent is a Mussulman (...) Christian evidence, as a rule, is still refused (...) Christians are now permitted to possess real property, but the obstacles which they meet with when they attempt to acquire it are so many and vexatious that very few have as yet dared to brave them."
"Such being, generally speaking, the course pursued by the Government towards the Christians in the capital (Sarajevo) of the province where the Consular Agents of the different Powers reside and can exercise some degree of control, it may easily be guessed to what extend the Christians, in the remoter districts, suffer who are governed by Mudirs (governors) generally fanatical and unacquainted with the (new reforms of the) law."

Concerning the acquisition of land - a new right for the Christians - he states:
"(Although) a Christian can buy and take possession; it is when he has got his land into order, or when the Mussulman who has sold has overcome the pecuniary difficulties which compelled him to sell, that the Christian feels the helplessness of his position and the insincerity of the Government. Steps are then taken by the original proprietor, or some relatives of his, to reclaim the land from the Christian, generally on one of the following pleas: (...) that the deeds of transfer being defective, the sale had not been legally made. Under one or other of these pleas the Christian is in nineteen cases out of twenty dispossessed, and he may then deem himself fortunate if he gets back the price he gave. Few, a very few, have been able to obtain justice; but I must say that the majority of these owe their good fortune not to the justice of their cause, but to the influence of some powerful Mussulman."
"Christian evidence in the Medjlises (provincial councils) is occasionally received, but as a rule is refused, either directly or indirectly, by reference to the Mehkemeh. Knowing this, the Christians generally come forward prepared with Mussulman witnesses. The cases in which Christian evidence has been refused are numerous". But, comments Zohrab, "twenty years ago, it is true, they had no laws beyond the caprice of their landlords (...) Cases of oppression are frequently the result of Mussulman fanaticism, but for these the (Turkish) Government must be held responsible, for if offenders were punished, oppression would of necessity become rare."

By proclamation, in the spring of 1861, the sultan announced new reforms in Herzegovina, promising among other things freedom to build churches, the use of church bells and the opportunity for Christians to acquire land. Commenting on this from Bosna-Serai, Consul William Holmes wrote to Sir Henry Bulwer on May 21, l861, that those promises had been given often, without being applied. He mentions that the Serbs, the largest community, were refused the right to build a church in Bosna-Serai.
Concerning the right to buy land, he wrote:
"Every possible obstacle is still thrown in the way of the purchase of lands by Christians, and very often, after they have succeeded in purchasing and improving land, it is no secret that on one unjust pretext or another, it has been taken from them."
From Belgrade, Consul Longworth wrote to Sir Henry Bulwer on July 14, 1860: "The Government may by its Edicts and Hatti-humayouns hasten and advance such a reform; but I question very much whether more evil than good will not arise from proclaiming a social equality which is, in the present stage of things and relations of society, morally impossible."

"Equality before the law is that which must be first established; the only sort of equality, in fact, which can under existing circumstances, be realized. And in connection with this, we come to the complaint in the petition - the only tangible point in it - relative to the rejection of Christian evidence in the Ottoman tribunals. In this respect, it cannot be denied there is room for amendment, not only at Widdin, but in every province of the Empire."

He then comments on "(...) the lax and vicious principle acted upon in the Mussulman Courts, where, as the only means of securing justice to Christians, Mussulman false witnesses are permitted to give evidence on their behalf. The abolition of this practice would do more than anything else to purify these tribunals; but this can only be effectually accomplished by the admission of Christian evidence, instead of Mussulman perjury, as a matter of legal necessity."

He goes on to say that the forcible abduction of Christians girls by Mahometans, "and the question of Christian evidence are the two main points to which, as sources of bitter feeling and discussion, the attention of the Porte should now be directed."

Comparing the condition of Christians in the different provinces, he states, " but in Bosnia the question of privilege was complicated by religious considerations, the nobles having, at a former period, embraced Mahometanism to preserve their estates, which were thus conditionally assured to them. Each of the other provinces had passed through its peculiar ordeal."

From Consul Blunt - writing from Pristina on July 14, 1860, to his Ambassador, Sir Henry Bulwer, about the condition of the province of Macedonia - we learn that: "For a long time the province (of Uscup:Skopje) has been a prey to brigandage: Christian churches and monasteries, towns and inhabitants, are not now pillaged, massacred, and burnt by Albanian hordes as used to be done ten years ago." (...) "They (the Christians) are not allowed to carry arms. This, considering the want of a good police, exposes them the more to attacks from brigands."
"Christian evidence in law-suits between a Mussulman and a non-Mussulman is not admitted in the Local Courts."
With a few examples, he then illustrated the consequences of such a system in everyday life:
"About seventeen months ago a Turkish soldier murdered a Mahometan, an old man, who was working in his field. The only persons, two in number, who witnessed the deed are Christians. The Medjlis of Uscup would not take their evidence."
"About the same time, a Zaptieh (soldier) tried by force to convert a Bulgarian girl to Islamism. As she declared before the Medjlis of Camanova (Kumanovo, near Skopje) that she would not abjure her religion, he killed her in the very precincts of the Mudir's house. This tragedy created great sensation in the province. The Medjlises of Camanova and Prisrend (near Kosovo) would not accept Christian evidence, and every effort was made to save the Zaptieh."
"Six months ago a Bulgarian in the district of Camanova was attacked, without provocation on his part, by two Albanians. They wounded him severely; on the case being referred to Prisrend, the Medjlis refused to take congnizance of it, as the only evidence produced was Christian."

Ten years ago, writes the consul: "Churches were not allowed to be built; and one can judge of the measure of toleration practised at that time by having had to creep under doors scarcely four feet high. It was an offence to smoke and ride before a Turk; to cross his path, or not stand up before him, was equally wrong."
In his report from Constantinople of October 10, 1873, Sir Henry Elliot wrote to Foreign Secretary Earl Granville, "that the nominal equality of Mussulmans and Christians before the law, which had never thoroughly existed in practice, was now in most provinces more illusory than it had been a few years ago."

In another report from Consul Edward Freeman in Bosna-Serai, dated December 30, 1875, we learn that the Bosnian Muslims had sent a petition to the sultan stating that, before the reforms, "they lived as brothers with the Rayah (Christian) population. In fact their aim appears to reduce the Christians to their former ancient state of serfdom." So once again we are brought back to the myth. The situation didn't change, and in 1875 the Grand Vizier Mahmed Pasha admitted to the British ambassador in Constantinople, the "impossibility of allowing Christian testimony at courts of justice in Bosnia." Thus, the ambassador noted: "The professed equality of Christians and Mussulmans is, however, so illusory so long as this distinction is maintained."

This juridical situation had serious consequences due to the system of justice, as he explained: "This is a point of much importance to the Christians for as the (Muslim) religious courts neither admit documentary nor written evidence, nor receive Christian evidence, they could hope for little justice from them."

The difficulty of imposing reforms in such a vast empire provoked this disillusioned comment (December 12, 1875) from Sir P. Francis, consul-general and judge at the British Consular Court in Constantinople: "Indeed, the modern perversion of the Oriental idea of justice is a concession to a suitor through grace and favour, and not the declaration of a right, on principles of law, and in pursuance of equity."

When reading the literature of the time, we see that the obstruction to Serbian, Greek and other Christians movements of liberation was rooted in two main arguments:

1) Christian dhimmis (rayas) are congenitally unfitted for independance and self-government. They should therefore remain under Islamic rule.

2) The Ottoman rule is a perfect model for a multi-religious and multi-ethnical society.

Indeed, these are theological, Islamic arguments that justify the jihad, since all non-Muslim peoples should not retain political independance because their laws are evil and must eventually be replaced by Islamic rule. We find the same type of reasoning in the Palestinian 1988 Covenant of the Hamas movement, which affirms that only Islamic rule can give peace and security to Jews and Christians. Those arguments are very common in legal and theological literature and are advanced by modern Islamists.
We have seen the origin of the myth, its political function and usefulness - and we have confronted this myth with the reality, described by contemporary observers in the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note the collusion between - on the one hand, the European powers defending the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, for their own national interest; and on the other hand, the Muslim policy aiming at keeping under subjection the Christian population.

The myth didn't die with the collapse of the Turkish Empire after World War I. Rather, it took another form: that of the National Arab Movement, which promoted an Arab society, in which Christians and Muslims would live in perfect harmony. Once again, this was the fabrication of European politicians, writers and clergyman. And, in the same way as the myth of the Ottoman political paradise was created to block the independence of the Balkan nations, so the Arab multi-religious fraternity was an argument to destroy the national liberation movements of non-Arab peoples of the Middle East (the Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, as well as that of the Jews).

And although from the beginning of this century until the 1930s, a stream of Christian refugees were fleeing massacres and genocide on the roads of Turkey, Irak and Syria, the myth continued to flourish, sustained mostly by Arab Christians writers and clergyman. After the Israelis had succeeded in liberating their land from the laws of jihad and dhimmitude, the myth reappeared in the form of a multi-cultural and multi-religious, fraternal Palestine which had to replace the State of Israel (Arafat's 1975 UN speech). Its pernicious effects led to the destruction of the Christians in Lebanon.
One might have thought that the myth would end there, but suddenly the recent crisis in Yugoslavia offered a new chance for its reincarnation in a Muslim-dominated, multi-religious, multi-ethnic state. What a chance! A Muslim state again in the heartland of Europe. And we know the rest, the sufferings, the miseries, the trials of the war that this myth once again brought in its wake. The 1992 UN decision to recognize a "multi-ethnic", "multi-religious", Muslim state in the former Yugoslavia appears to have been a compensation offered to the Islamic world for the devastating 1991 Gulf War. The destruction of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and bacteriological arsenal, as well as its economic infrastructure, appears to be "equitably" counterbalanced by NATO's massive bombing of the Bosnian Serbs, even though the two situations cannot be compared.

To conclude, I would like to say a few last words. The civilization of dhimmitude does not develop all at once. It is a long process that involves many elements and a specific mental conditioning. It happens when peoples replace history by myths, when they fight to uphold these destructive myths, more then their own values because they are confused by having transformed lies into truth. They hold to those myths as if they were the only garantee for their survival, when, in fact, they are the path to destruction. Terrorized by the evidence and teaching of history, those peoples prefer to destroy it rather than to face it. They replace history with childish tales, thus living in amnesia, inventing moral justification for their own self-destruction.

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sun 23 October 2005 2:11 am

http://www.dhimmi.org/

U.S. Congressional Briefing (Open)
Human Rights Caucus
Subject: The Persecution of Christians Worldwide
Guest Speakers:
Bat Ye'or
The Baroness Cox
The Revd. Canon Patrick Augustine
1st Event: Tuesday, 29 April 1997 (2:00-4:00pm)
Opening Statement
Bat Ye'or

PAST IS PROLOGUE
The Challenge of Islamism Today

Basic text used by Bat Ye'or for the above event, and also for a Briefing Seminar Freedom House (30 April). With her oral statement at a Congressional Hearing Ceremony on Capitol Hill, this written text was incorporated into the Congressional Record of that day, Thursday, 1 May.

SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

Headline: TESTIMONY: BAT YE'OR. Author (Geneva, SWITZERLAND)

Thursday, 1 May 1997, 10:00 AM SD-419

BODY: SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE; SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS; HEARING ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Witnesses:

Panel 1: The Honorable Frank Wolf (R-VA). U.S. House of Representatives

Panel 2: Mr. Steven Coffey (Principal Deputy of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor)

Panel 3: Bat Ye'or; Ms. Nina Shea (Freedom House); Dr. Walid Phares, (Prof. International Relations, Florida Atlantic University, Miami, FL.)

Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen:

PAST IS PROLOGUE. These words are engraved on the pediment of the Archives building in Washington. The English source is probably Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the original perhaps Ecclesiastes (1:9). I have chosen this motto for my Statement today and shall first give

An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians under Islam.

To fully understand the present tragic situation of Christians in Muslim lands, one must comprehend the ideological and historical pattern that is conducive to violations of human rights, even though this pattern does not seem to be a deliberate, monolithical, anti-Christian policy. However, as this structure is integrated into the corpus of Islamic law (the shari'a), it functions in those countries that either apply the shari'a in full, or whose laws are inspired by it.

The historical pattern of Muslim-Christian encounters developed soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. Muslim-Christian relations were then regulated by two legal-theological systems: one based on jihad, the other on the shari'a. A Jihad should not be compared to a Crusade - or to any other war. The strategy and tactics of jihad are minutely fixed by theological rules, which the calif or ruler, wielding both spiritual and political power, must obey. The jihad practiced now in Sudan is conducted according to its traditional rules. One could affirm that all "jihad" groups today conform to these decrees.
It is an historical fact that all the Muslims countries around the southern and eastern Mediterranean were Christian lands before being conquered, during a millenium of jihad under the banner of Islam. Those vanquished populations - here I am referring only to Christians and Jews - were then "protected," providing they submitted to the Muslim ruler's conditions. Therefore, "protection" in the context of a conquest is the consequence of a war, and this is a very important notion.

In April 1992, for instance, religious leaders in Sudan's Southern Kordofan region - who were "publicly supported at the highest government level" - issued a fatwa, which stated: "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." This fatwa appears in a 1995 Report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Sudan, Dr. Gaspar Biro. (ECOSOC, E/CN.4/1996/62, para.97a) This religious text gives the traditional definition of a harbi (someone living in the Dar al-harb, the "region of war"), an infidel who has not been subjected by jihad, and therefore whose life and property -according to classical texts of Islamic jurists - is thus forfeited to any Muslim. (It also gives a definition of an apostate who can be killed - the cases of Salman Rushdie in 1989, Farag Foda in 1992, and Taslima
Nasreen in 1994 are other examples where the death sentence was decreed)

Non-Muslims are protected only if they submit to Islamic domination by a "Pact" - or Dhimma - which imposes degrading and discriminatory regulations. In my books, I have provided documents from Islamic sources and from the vanquished peoples, establishing a sort of classification so that the origins, development and aims of these regulations can be recognized when they are revived nowadays. I am only referring to Christians and Jews, because they share the same Islamic theological and legal category, referred to in the Koran as "People of the Book" - the word "people" is in the singular. If they accept to submit to a Muslim ruler, they then become "protected dhimmi peoples" - tributaries, since their protection is linked to an obligatory payment of a koranic poll-tax (the jizya) to the Islamic community (the umma).

This protection is abolished: - if the dhimmis should rebel against Islamic law; give allegiance to non-Muslim power; refuse to pay the koranic jizya; entice a Muslim from his faith; harm a Muslim or his property; commit blasphemy. Blasphemy includes denigration of the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, the Muslim faith, the shari'a by suggesting that it has a defect, and by refusing the decision of the ijma - which is the consensus of the Islamic community or umma (Koran III: 106). The moment the "pact of protection" is abolished, the jihad resumes, which means that the lives of the dhimmis and their property are forfeited. Those Islamists in Egypt who kill and pillage Copts consider that these Christians - or dhimmis - have forfeited their "protection" because they do not pay the jizya.

In other words, this "protector-protected" relationship is typical of a war-treaty between the conqueror and the vanquished, and this situation remains valid for Islamists because it is fixed in theological texts. But it should be emphasized that other texts in the Koran stress religious tolerance and peaceful relations, which frequently existed. Nonetheless, early jurists and theologians - invoking the koranic principle of the "abrogation" of an earlier text by a later one - have established an extremist doctrine of jihad, which is a collective duty.

The protection system presents both positive and negative aspects: it provide security and a mesure of religious autonomy. On the other hand, dhimmis suffered many legal disabilities intended to reduce them to a condition of humiliation and segregation. Those rules were established as early as the 8th and 9th centuries by the founders of the four schools of Islamic law: Hanafi, Malaki, Shafi'i and Hanbali.

The shari'a is a complete compendium of laws based on theological sources, principally the Koran and hadiths - that is, the sayings and acts of the Prophet. The shari'a comprises the legal status of the dhimmis: what is permitted and what is forbidden to them. It sets the pattern of the Muslims' social and political behavior toward dhimmis and explains its theological, legal, and political motivations.

It is this comprehensive system, which lasted for up to thirteen centuries, that I have analysed in my last book, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, as the "civilization of dhimmitude." Its archetype - the dehumanized dhimmi - has permeated Islamic civilization, culture and thought and is being revived through the Islamist resurgence and the return of the shari'a.

The main principles of "dhimmitude" are:

1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis;

2) the social and economic discrimination of the dhimmis;

3) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis.

Numerous laws were enacted over the centuries in order to implement these principles which remained in practice throughout the 19th century, and in some regions into the 20th century.

Code: Select all

Arab-Islamic civilization developed in conquered Christian lands, among Christian majorities which were eventually reduced to minorities. The process of the Islamization of Christian societies appears at all levels. It is part and parcel of the Christian suffering embodied in laws, customs, behavior patterns, and prejudices that were perpetuated during many centuries. Christianity could survive in some countries like Egypt and the Balkans where their situation was tolerable, but in other places they were wiped out physically, expelled or forced to emigrate.

During the whole of the 19th century, European governments tried to convince Muslim rulers - from Constantinople to North Africa - to abolish the discriminations against dhimmis. This policy led to reforms in the Ottoman Empire from 1839 - known as the Tanzimat - but it was only in Egypt, under the strong rule of Mohammed Ali, that real progress was made. Improvements in the Ottoman Empire and Persia, imposed by Europe, were bitterly resented by the populace and religious leaders.

European laws were introduced in the process of Turkish modernization, and in some Arab countries, but it was only under colonial rule that Christian and Jewish minorities were truly liberated from centuries of opprobrium. Traditionalists however resented the Westernization of their countries, the emancipation of the dhimmis and the laws imported from infidel lands. The fight for decolonization was also a struggle by the Islamists to re-establish strict Islamic law.

Why is this persecution ignored by the Churches, governments and media?

The 19th century - and even after World War I - was a traumatizing period of genocidal slaughter of Christians, spreading from the Balkans (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria) to Armenia, and to the Middle East. In this context of death, the doctrine of an Islamic-Christian symbiosis was conceived toward the end of the 19th century by Eastern Christians as a desperate shield against terror and slavery. This doctrine - which also inluded anti-Zionism - had many facets, both political and religious. In the long term, its results were mostly negative.

It is this doctrine - still professed today - that is responsible for the general silence about the ongoing tragedy of Eastern Christians. Any mention of jihad and of the persecutions of Christians by Muslims was a taboo subject, because one could not denounce persecution and simultaneously proclaim that an Islamic-Christian symbiosis has always existed in the past and the present. It is in this cocoon of lies and of a deliberatly imposed silence, solidly supported by the Churches, governments and the medias - each for its own reasons - that persecution of Christians could develop freely, during this century, even until now, with little hindrance. Moreover, this doctrine also blocked the memory of dhimmitude, leaving a vacuum of thirteen centuries whose emptiness was filled with a myth that was useless as a means to prevent the return of old prejudices and persecutions.

For this reason, dhimmitude - which covers several centuries of Christian and Jewish history, and which is a comprehensive civilization englobing legislation, customs, social behavior, and prejudices - has never been analysed, nor publicly discussed. It is this silence - for which academia in Europe and America bear much responsibility - that allows the perpetuation of religious discrimination and persecution today. There are many factors that explain this silence of governements, Churches, acedemia, and the media on such a tragic issue concerning persecuted Christians in the Muslim world; they are interrelated and, although their motivations are different, they have solidly cemented a wall of silence that has buried the historical reality.

Proposals for redressing these violations of fundamental human rights:

I. To define the ways and means to end this tragedy:

1) Not to foster an anti-Islamic current which would be wrong, as the vast majority of Muslims are themselves victims of Islamists in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, etc.

2) Christians must continue to live in their historical lands because it is their right, and only they can transform traditional Muslim mentalities. These dwindling communities should be encouraged to stay, as their presence will signify that Muslims have accepted that Jews and Christians also possess the right to life and dignity in their ancient homelands - and not under a dhimmi protection, but with human rights equal to those of Muslims. If they fail, it will be our loss in the West too. Islamic countries that once had a Judeo-Christian culture should not become monolithically Islamic - that is, Christianrein, as they have become virtually Judenrein - through a policy of ethnic cleansing that followed a long historical period of discrimination.

3) If the human rights - and the minority rights - of Christians are not respected in those countries that formerly had Christian majorities, then the rights of all non-Muslims will be challenged by the Islamists' resurgence. It is for Christians worldwide - particularly in America and Europe, and for the international community also - to assure that the human rights for all religious minorities are respected worldwide.

II. We should realize that those populations are in grave danger and that even Muslim governments cannot protect them from mob violence - sometimes they pretend to be unable to do so, in order to stop foreign pressure or public campaigns. We should also remember that, from the late 1940s, the Jewish communities in the Arab-Muslim world - then more than a million, now less than 1% of that number, under 10,000 and fast dwindling - were the victims of persecution, terrorism, pillage, and religious hatred that forced them to flee or emigrate. Christians were left as the only non-Muslims on whom religious fanaticism and hatred could be focused. Each Christian community tried to resist the return of the old order, following the path of secularism or communism.

The Islamists reproach Christians in their countries of:

1) being against the implementation of the shari'a;

2) demanding equal rights, basing themselves on International Covenants;
3) seeking foreign help to achieve equality with fellow Muslim citizens.
For the Islamists, these three accusations alone are tantamount to rebellion. It was these same motives that had justified the first great massacres of the Armenians a century ago in 1894-96, punished for having rebelled and for claiming the reforms that were promised.

This is why dhimmis communities were always careful to proclaim their enmity to Europe. An outward oppositon to Christian countries being their life-saving shield against threats from their environment, they have interiorized this animosity to the point that they often strive for the triumph of Islam, some of them even becoming the best and most perfect tools of Islamic propaganda and interests in Europe and America. (The late Father Yoakim Moubarac and Georges Corm in France, and Edward Said in America, are but three examples out of many.)

III. In order to avoid mistakes and be more effective, one has to realize the difference of contexts between the campaign for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s, and the promotion of human rights for Christians in Islamic lands today. The main difficulty arises because the discrimination or persecution in some countries cannot be ascribed to a deliberate government policy. It is rather a fact of civilization: the traditional contempt for dhimmis - not so different from that of African Americans in the past - and irritation because they are outstepping their rights and must be obliged to return to their former status.

Sometimes, however, it is imposed by the Islamists, and a weak government doesn't dare to protect the Christians, fearing to become even more unpopular, because anti-Western and anti-Christian prejudices have imbued Muslim culture and society for centuries.

1) There are many ways to persecute Christians; some are by legal means, like the laws concerning the building or the repair of churches; others, by terror. A Christian can be killed, not because he committed a crime, but simply because he belongs to a group of infidels, who, allegedly, are in rebellion. Or for reasons of "spectacle-terrorism" that can serve as a deterrent policy to fulfill the terrorists' aims.

2) Another point concerns the use of a fatwa. If a fatwa is decreed against an individual, any Muslim is authorized to kill him, and by so doing he is the executor of what is considered the sentence of Allah.

IV. The problem is multifarious; it is not only religious but also cultural. This aspect is more acute with Christian, than with Jewish, communities because Muslims conquered Christian lands and civilization that were then subjected to a deliberate policy of Arabization and Islamization. Take, as an example, Christian pre-Islamic Coptic history: language and culture are a neglected, if not a forbidden, domain because it would imply that Muslim history had been imperialistic. But culture and history are important elements of a group's identity and there are many Muslims intellectuals who are proud of Egypt's Pharaonic and Coptic past. It is the Islamists who reject this past, as an infidel culture -a part of the jahaliyah, what existed before Islam, considered taboo.

Therefore, I would also suggest further goals, such as:

1) Recovering "Memory," the long history of the dhimmi peoples, of dhimmitude - the collective cultural patrimony of Jews and Christians -for without their memory, and their history, peoples fade away and die.

2) Preventing the destruction of Christians historical monuments, either by local governments, or by UNESCO, as was done with Abu Simbel, and other sites that now belong to the World's cultural legacy.

V. Discussing "dhimmitude" in academia and elsewhere. This is a Judeo-Christian historical patrimony and those whose heritage it is are entitled to know about it. The discussion of dhimmitude with Muslims, however, is fraught with difficulties. In the eyes of Islamists, any criticism of Islamic law and history is assimilated to a blasphemy. For a dhimmi, it is forbidden to imply that Islamic law has a default, or to contradict the ijma, the consensus. Moreover, the court testimony of a dhimmi against a Muslim is not accepted. Therefore, as dhimmitude is the testimony of dhimmi history - of Christians and Jews - under Islamic oppression, it would not be considered valid in traditionalist circles. Besides, the unification of religious and political power transfers the political domain into the religious one, and therefore any criticism of Islamic civilization may become, for Islamists and others, a blasphemy.

The case of Farag Foda, an Egyptian Muslim intellectual, who defended the Copts and strongly criticized some Muslim religious authorities was exemplary: he was assassinated in June 1992 after a fatwa. In giving his testimony in an Egyptian court of law, the late Sheikh Muhammad El-Ghazali implicitly justified his assassination on the grounds of apostasy; he stated that anyone opposing the shari'a was an apostate, and thus deserved death.

VI. Encourage Muslim intellectuals to strive in their own countries, and in the West, for the defense of equal human rights for Christians and others. The 1981 UNESCO Declaration on Islamic Human Rights and that of Cairo in 1990, both conditional on the shari'a, are insufficient.

VII. Creation of a team of experts and lawyers - and not apologists - in order to discuss the problem, always stressing that the aim is not to foster anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic feelings, but to create peace and reconciliation between religions and peoples, without which the next century will become a bloodbath and a clash of civilizations. (END)

Bat Ye'or is the author of The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (1985/1996) and The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude: 7th to 20th Century (1996) Both books published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses.

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sun 23 October 2005 2:14 am

http://www.dhimmi.org/

Persecution of Jews and Christians
Testimony vs. Silence
Bat Ye’or

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 (Respondents: George Weigel and Paul Marshall)

Ethics and Public Policy Center 2 April 1998
(President: Elliott Abrams)
1015 Fifteenth St., N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005

"...I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked;
but that the wicked turn from his way and live..." (Ezekiel 33:11)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

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 I wish to thank Elliott Abrams for giving me the privilege of sharing with you some reflections on the meaning of Testimony vs. Silence. But we must first ask ourselves - testimony about what? And also - testifying for which purpose?  
 To answer the first question, we can say that the Bible - to mention but this aspect - testifies to a supra-human and an immanent order of values or, more simply, to a divine presence within the universe and humanity. The divine spirit abolished chaos, fixed the limits in human behavior of what is allowed and what cannot be transgressed on the base of the universal sanctity of the human being, as announced in Genesis 1:27: "in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The immanence of the divine in man creates an alliance, a partnership between God and man, a dual responsibility freely accepted by man, for keeping or testifying to these supreme ethical norms based on the sanctity of all humans, which cannot be transgressed. The Bible illustrates the constant struggle between the testifier, and the destroyer of life or the hater of man.  
 In the context of my remarks today, the meaning of "testimony" is to stand up against a tyrant, to denounce injustice and to proclaim the dignity of all humanity. Although the testifier gives testimony because he has to do so and cannot escape from this duty, his act implies an inherently optimistic hope and faith in man - the hope that the heart of the tyrant will change. With the words in the Psalm: "I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed." (119:46)  
 In the long, sad, and painful history of the Judeo-Christian relationship, the people of Israel has always assumed the role of the witness or testifier, not because it is any better than others, but because history made them victims of dehumanizing laws. This is the well-known status of Jewry in Europe that was abolished at the French Revolution of 1789, and later, in the 19 century, throughout Western Europe. Because of the Jewish roots of Christianity, this tradition of dialogue and of the contestation of power was integrated into the dynamic of history. The emancipation of European Jewry was a Christian political decision, made on humanitarian principles - the Jews later joining in the fight for the equality of civil rights. Because Jews and Christians claim the same ethical values of the Bible, Christians raised their voices against the deliberate dehumanizing policy of the people who had first proclaimed their knowledge of God. Jewish testimony was joined, promoted, and sustained by a Christian engagement. Before, during and after the Shoah, this partnership held firm despite overwhelming hatred and cruelty. Since then, Christian engagement in a redemptive work within the Church has become more forceful. 
 But testifying is no easy task, as it also brings persecution, loneliness and despair. Challenging "Evil," unveiling it from behind its ubiquitous masks is dangerous, an unending life struggle. For the lonely, surviving, remnant of Israel, constantly bearing testimony to the Shoah in an indifferent world was an agonizing process. In a world of ashes, Jews unceasingly proclaimed the dignity and sanctity of man. And they were not alone in testifying. Many Christians joined them: writers, theologians, and anonymous voices too. Jews and Christians testified together. The result of this common action, what I consider as a common prayer - by acts and deeds - led to the revolutionary theological transformation of Church dogma concerning the Jews. By testifying together, Jews and Christians initiated profound spiritual changes. One might even say that through the very act of the rehumanization of the Jewish victim, the Church rehumanized itself in an internal process of humility, thereby deepening its own theological reflexion.

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Now, if we turn to the Islamic lands, we found a very different situation, where Jews and Christians often declare their "gratitude" to the Islamic society, and yet few Jews exist today in Arab-Muslim lands and the Christians are on that same road of exile. By the early 19th century, Judaism was nearly extinguished in Palestine, the very cradle of Jewish history and civilization. A similar historic process was at work for Eastern Christianity, whose roots are in the Middle East, nowadays usually referred to as Arab-Muslim lands. Except for the Copts of Egypt who still form a sizeable minority, Christianity would hardly have survived in its Oriental homeland - especially in Palestine - without the permanent support and protection of Europe.  
Islamic law, the shari'a, provides "protection" and security for the People of the Book - the Bible; it is indeed a basic theological principle. However, Muslim theologians and jurists attached so many conditions and humiliations to this real protection that the status of the protected Jews and Christians - the dhimmis - soon became a status of oppression, deprivation and insecurity.  
This status was regulated by several laws that bound them within a social pattern of discriminations and insecurity. Instead of "Islamic tolerance," or of "toleration," I have called this vast political, religious and cultural world - from Arabia to Spain and the Balkans, including for some time, part of Hungary and Poland - the realm of "dhimmitude," from the Arabic word dhimma: a treaty of submission for those peoples conquered by jihad. The laws that were applied to the dhimmis, I have called the laws of "dhimmitude," and the special type of civilization that dhimmis developed, I have call the civilization of dhimmitude.  
 The civilization of dhimmitude is based on two main elements: jihad - that is, a compulsory religious war of conquest that brings non-Muslim lands into the realm of Islam; and the subjugation of its native populations. In other words, the choice is between perpetual war or submission. The civilization of dhimmitude developed in the context of subjugation and insecurity. Its main features were the payment of the jizya, a koranic tribute that became a poll-tax. For early Muslim jurists, the jizya had two purposes: to enrich the umma, the Islamic community; and a symbolic meaning: it suspended the jihad threat, which was death, slavery or the expulsion of non-Muslims. The payment of the jizya procured for the dhimmi the security for his life, his family and his personal possessions. One important aspect of dhimmitude is the principle of the dhimmi's inferiority to Muslims in every walk of life. This civilization of dhimmitude expanded on three continents, representing millions of peoples. Over the centuries, populations and entire civilizations disappeared, or barely survived. The civilization of dhimmitude is composed of numerous ethnic groups, mainly Christian, and rival Eastern Churches. Documentation abound, and a few sources may be found in my books.  
The civilization of dhimmitude is based on the principle of "protection," which is the security for life and property pledged by a Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, who are subjected to certain conditions - tribute money, or as a temporary protection (aman). This concept implies that the right to security of life and property are denied to non-Muslims and are only granted by the Muslim community according to its own conditions. In other words, the principle of natural rights for all human beings is denied. The civilization of dhimmitude is engendered by wars and conquest.  
Today, Eastern Christianity looks as if it will disappear from the very cradle of its birthplace, the Middle East, and one may well ask: Is there an adequate Christian "testimony" of this drama? Let us see how the various peoples of dhimmitude conceive their own history. The Greeks recounted their trials under the Turkish yoke; Serbs did the same in the pre-communist era, as well as Hungarians, Bulgarians and other Balkan peoples. The Armenians have written abundantly on the Armenian genocide. Yet, the Chaldean Assyrians of Iraq have hardly protested against their tribulations. Although the Copts testified from the beginning of the century, few in the West paid much attention to their grievances. Recently, Coptic Associations in America and Canada have succeeded in having their courageous protests published in the national press about the sufferings of their people and the abuses of their fundamental human rights. Lebanese Christianity fought, suffered and succumbed with little protests coming from Europe or America. The Sudanese Christians still suffer from an Islamic regime: jihad and slavery, abduction, force conversions and destruction have been their lot for decades and only recently have their cries bess heard. Last year, a Christian Coalition for the defence of oppressed Eastern Churches began a human rights campaign here in Washington. Only last week, Paul Marshall, my husband, and I were in Columbia, South Carolina, participating with others at the First National Conference on the Persecuted Church, titled "Shattering the Silence," which drew an audience of several hundreds nationwide.   So we see that there are peoples who are still subjected nowadays to dhimmitude. A whole Judeo-Christian, Aramaic civilization from pre-Islamic times is slowly agonizing, while a profound silence prevails. Recently, a handful of books have been written on the subject in French, but generally there is an unwritten consensus to praise the historico-religious record of "Islamic tolerance" toward non-Muslims. Let me ennumerate some of the reasons that have lead to this:

Causes related to the Muslim society:
1. The idea that Jews and Christians have suffered under Islamic law is totally rejected by the dominant group - the Muslims, and this for several reasons based on theological grounds:
a) Islamic law cannot be defective since it must be perfect, being considered a divine law. Therefore it cannot be unjust and the suffering of infidels under that rule is deserved since it represent the justice of Allah.
b) The shari'a should not be criticized, and Christians and Jews cannot say it has any defect whatsoever.
c) While, in the Bible, the religious function should be separated from the political one, in Islam political and religious power must be united. The non-separation of politic and religion confer a fixed religious and sacred caracter to politics.
d) An absence of Muslim support on behalf of dhimmis since the conception of their relations with non-Muslims is determined by the principles of jihad and protection, which granted to the Muslims the feeling of being generous. Without this "passport" of protection (aman), no harbi - the name for all non-Muslims from the dar al-harb, the region of war - could enter the dar al-Islam, the region of Islam, unless he accepted to become a dhimmi.

Causes related to the dhimmis:
The divisions and conflicts between the diverse dhimmi churches. Any protests against the oppression of the laws implies a minimum of consensus between Armenians, Maronites, Assyrians, Copts, Melchites, Greeks and the Slavonic Churches. Since the laws of "dhimmitude" applied equally to Jews and Christians, this also required a consensus with the Jews, and this was impossible for the Eastern Churches.
There are other reasons to explain this political impotence: the vulnerability of small, insecure, Christian communities; the religious leadership's subserviance to the Muslim power; their economical interests; the total and deliberate obfuscation of their dhimmi past.

Causes related to the Western powers:
Here we can mention the pro-Islamic policy of the Western powers; their economic interests in the Muslim world; the all-too-frequent concealement of the truth by the media and Western governments; and their deliberate refusal to transmit this local reality to the public for fear: 1) of Muslim terrorism; 2) anti-Islamic reactions in the West; 3) economical and political retaliations from Muslim countries.

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Denouncing the injustice of dhimmitude meant a feeling of solidarity with all its victims - Christians of all denominations, and with Jews. It meant having the profound conviction that all men are equal, and that no one should be demonized. Laws that were unjust for Christians cannot be considered "just" for Jews - unless Jews had first to be demonized. Testifying to the great tragedy of dhimmitude implied a sense of togetherness that never existed. 
I am convinced that Christian involvement in the Arab-Islamic jihad, first against Zionism in the late 19th century, and then against Israel - throughout this century - was the main cause for the obfuscation of dhimmi history and the lack of testimony about the sufferings of Christian dhimmis. The source of all Evil had to be projected onto Zionism and Israel, whereas it is an historic fact that the causes for Christian oppression in the East are rooted in the doctrine of jihad and in the laws and civilization of dhimmitude. Because the trials and tribulations of Christians in Islamic countries and their causes - the rules of dhimmitude - had to be hidden, dhimmi Christian history became a well-guarded secret, a secret that had to be concealed and never revealed. The Islamic-Christian alliance in an anti-Zionist Crusade led the Christians to testify against Israel. And because the significance of the restoration of Israel in this region of the world symbolizes the abolition of jihad and of the laws of dhimmitude, the engagement of Christians in the anti-Israel jihad has contributed to the decline of Christianity itself. 
Let me conclude these brief remarks on a complicated subject. It is this lack of testimony that has brought back the evils and the prejudices of the past - the jihad mentality, and the laws of dhimmitude that were only abolished by the colonial European powers. And now, more and more, because of this lack of testimony, we see moderate Muslims themselves being persecuted. Because they were indifferent to the humiliation of Jews and Christians, because they remained silent and aloof, they now find themselves - in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere - suffering from cruel injustices and barbarism. Testifying together, giving testimony against dhimmitude, would have allowed Muslim intellectuals to rethink their whole relationship with the People of the Bible - and with all non-Muslims, and this without renouncing their faith. Such an attitude would have brought all of us together in the fight against tyrannical oppression, against the process of dehumanization. This is what could had been done and what was not done.

Bat Ye'or is the author of The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam (1985, 4th pr. 1996) & The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude. 7th to 20th Century (1996) Email aup440@aol.com

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Sun 23 October 2005 2:16 am

http://www.dhimmi.org/

CONTEMPORARY ARAB AND MUSLIM
PERCEPTIONS OF THE OTHER
Bat Ye’or

[Presentation to the the International Conference at the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris, on Monday 11 June 2001]

The perception of the Other in contemporary Arab and Muslim societies is very differentiated; the situation in Turkey can not be compared with the situation in Afghanistan. Perception of the Other is clearly influenced by history and culture, and if traditional prejudices have never been condemned in a society, they will be all the more meaningful, particularly if they are justified by religious interpretations

At the end of the twentieth century the spiritual leader of the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ movement, Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi - interviewed after the visit by Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Israël Lau, to Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Sheikh of al-Azhar, on 15 December 1997 - said in a reply that Islamic law divided the People of the Book – Jews and Christians – into three categories:
1) non-Muslims in the lands of war;
2) non-Muslims in lands of temporary truce;
3) non-Muslims protected by Islamic law, that is to say, the dhimmis. (1)

The Sheikh made it clear that Islamic law had established different rules for each of these categories. In a few words the Sheikh had thus summarized the theory of jihad which regulates the relations of Muslims w ith non-Muslims. This theory was codified and institutionalized as early as the eighth century by Muslim theologians and jurisconsults. Now, as we see from innumerable calls for jihad and by the day-by-day situation, this ideology impregnates currrent thinking and conduct.

The inhabitants of the lands of war are people to be fought because they oppose the introduction of Islamic law to their country. These infidels have no rights, their person and their posessions are licit – to employ the usual formula – for any Muslim whomsoever he may be. This explains the murders and assassinations of civilians on the roads when occasion presents itself. Their very existence is considered illegal.
The infidels from a land of temporary truce are in a state of a respite between two wars.

The dhimmis are former harbis who have moved from one category - the domain of war (the dar al-harb) - into the category of being a ‘protected’ people (within the dar al-Islam). They have brought the jihad which threatened them to an end thanks to the magic formula: ‘land in return for the peace and security of dhimmitude’. They have ceded their land in exchange for protection. Islamic law defines their rights which it protects under certain specific conditions (by the dhimma). This means that the non-Muslim has no rights beyond those specified and protected by Islamic law. This law is the source of non-Muslim rights. Today, in all the societies mobilized by jihad, this is the interpretation which prevails – and even in Egypt.

Jihad is a war which would be described as genocidal today, since it orders men to be massacred and women and children to be enslaved, if there is resistance. These rules were applied during the twentieth century and continue up to the present day in Southern Sudan with the enslavement of the wives and children of rebels.

The laws of ‘dhimmitude’ – that is to say the relationship with non-Muslims – obey three basic principles:

The inferiority of non-Muslims in every domain. This situation exists today in practically all the Arab countries, in Iran, in Afghanistan, and other countries.
The vulnerability of the infidel, achieved in the past by the prohibition on his bearing arms and of testifying against a Muslim - which involved a mortal danger in the case of an accusation of blasphemy, a situation which still exists, particularly in Pakistan, and which has caused the assassination of innocent Christians. John Joseph, Bishop of Faisalabad, chairman of the Human Rights Commission establsihed by the Catholic Bshops’ Conference of
Pakistan, committed suicide on 6 May 1998, in order to draw the injustice of these blasphemy laws to the attention of the world.
The humiliation and degradation of the non-Muslim, imposed by a very precise body of rules.

Apart from the military, juridical and social domains just mentioned, which have formed the basis of Muslim and non-Muslim relations for more than a millennium, the divergences also appear in the theological domain, particularly between Jews and Christians on the one hand, and Muslims on the other. The Islamists believe , on the basis of numerous verses in the Koran, that Islam appeared at the beginning of the Creation and therefore preceded Judaism and Christianity. Adam, Eve and Noah, regarded as the progenitors of mankind, were Muslims and professed Islam. It follows from this that mankind is Islamic and, according to a hadith, all children are born Muslim. This belief authorized the abduction of children from dhimmi communties, a scourge which was endemic throughout the dar al-Islam.

According to this interpretation, the prophets and personalities mentioned in the Koran, in a version which differs from the Biblical account - are Muslims. Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus and the apostles, are revered as Muslims and prophets who professed Islam. It follows from this that the Bible is a falsiified account and that the whole salvific history of Israel, on which Christianity also depends, is an Islamic history.

That is why the rights of Israel in its country are not recognised. The Jews do not have a history. The Bible is only a collection of stories. The history of Israel can be found in the Koran and it is an Islamic history. In this context, it is clear that references by Israel to Biblical history as being their own, to their kings, to their towns and villages, and to the Jewishness of Jesus, of Mary, and the apostles can only exasperate Islamists. Naturally, this Islamization of the Bible concerns Christians as much as Jews.

There is obviously a real problem in the acceptance of the Other, that is to say of otherness. Mankind is Muslim – although one can find an acceptance of diversity and pluralism in the Koran. But the theory of jihad has structured the relations with the Other, either through hatred, or in a latent hostility toward the people living in the domain of truce, or the contempt inherent in the condition of dhimmitude.

Every society and religion has developed its own form of fanaticism. In the Judeo-Christian societies, however, the separation of politics and religion – sometimes, it is true, entirely theoretical - has permitted intolerance and oppression to be challenged. This is the case in secular Turkey. The men who fought for the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the Jews were Christians. Jews and Christians struggled side by side for the recognition of human rights. This challenge does not appear in the Muslim world. There has never been that generosity of spirit toward the oppressed dhimmi, that vision of a brotherhood of man in which the degradation of the dhimmi would represent a crime against mankind. The Muslim intelligentsia has never condemned jihad as a genocidal war which has exterminated entire peoples - nor dhimmitude as a dehumanizing and exploitive institution which has given rise to expropriation, slavery, and the deportation of populations whose cultural and historic heritage has been totally destroyed. As long as this process of self-criticism of its own history remains unaccomplished, it will be impossible to rehabilitate the Other in a human dimension, and past prejudices will continue to be rampant. It is within this context of jihad and dhimmitude that the Arab-Israeli conflict is situated, because Israel represents the liberation of its country from the laws of dhimmitude.

(1) Saut Al-Haqq wa Al-Huriyya, 9 January 1998 (MEMRI, 8 Feb. 1998 (Special Report: Meeting between the Sheikh of Al-Azhar and the Chief Rabbi of Israel).

Bat Ye'or is the author of The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam (1985, 4th pr. 1996) & The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude. 7th to 20th Century (1996) Email aup440@aol.com

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