Fremtidsutsikter? Eurabia?

Som innleder på temaet velger jeg en ikke-norsk.  Vi lever i en tid der debatten kan ha godt av det.  Isteden velger jeg å gi ordet til en kunnskapsrik på dette tema dame - Bat Ye'or.

Ifirst encountered Gisèle Littman, better known as "Bat Ye'or," through her book, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam while browsing through a Judaica section of a Barnes & Noble book store in Westport, Connecticut in 1985.  Reading it opened my mind to the historical evidence of the subjugated treatment of Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims under shari'a in the wake of Islamic Jihad over conquered lands. Her book threw into considerable doubt the then fashionable medievalist commentary that Jews and Christians had been well treated in Al Andaluz, Muslim Spain and in the far reaches of the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire. Bat Ye'or's penetrating historical analysis in The Dhimmi was followed by further investigations into the plight of Christians under the system of Islamic shari'a  "dhimmitude."  Dhimmitude as an historical concept, was coined by Bat Ye'or in 1983 to describe the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule. The word dhimmitude comes from dhimmi, an Arabic word meaning "protected." Bat Ye'or, through her latter writings plumbed the depths of Islamization of Europe with her major work, Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis and the recently published, Europe Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate. See our review in this edition.

Fra et lengre intervju med Jerry Gordon sakser jeg følgende utdrag:

Først begrepet "Dhimmitude":

Gordon:  What is Dhimmitude and how did the term originate?

Bat Ye'or:  The term originated when at the request of Lebanese Christian friends, I extended my research from the condition of the Jewish dhimmi to the Christian.  I realized then that I had to deal with a total different situation. The impact of Islam on Christianity triggered mechanisms in every sector of the Christian state, demography, culture and society that aimed at transforming a Christian country, population and culture into an Islamic society. The phenomenon started always with a Muslim minority within a Christian majority and ended with a Muslim majority governing a Christian subdued minority on the way of its extinction. I studied the religious, juridical, demographical factors of these evolutions over 13th centuries and called these encompassing well structured mechanisms "dhimmitude." Hence dhimmitude is a complex historical evolution linked to Islam's relations with non-Muslims. It is correlated to the jihad ideology and jurisdiction and integrated into the shariah. It is rooted into the Koran, the Sunnah and the biographies of the Prophet Muhammad. In other words it is within the very core of Islam.

While I was doing my research, I was looking for a term that would contain all those complex interactions of correlated factors. I founded the word dhimmitude and I discussed it with my Lebanese friends without daring to write it in articles since I was so much abused just in using the word dhimmi. My friend spoke about this word to Bashir Gemayel who used it in his last speech before his assassination. Years later a Lebanese Christian told me that because Gemayel spoke of dhimmitude, Christians would then accept it, but that they would never had accepted it from me. I thought then that chance favored me because dhimmitude is the most important concept to understand in order to face the XXI century’s challenges.

Gordon:  Over four decades you have published seminal works in the study of Dhimmitude, beginning in 1971 with  Les Juifs en Egypte and The Dhimmi, translated into English in 1985, that established you as an international scholar. Could you outline the major historical themes of these works on Dhimmitude and the controversies they spawned?

Bat Ye'or:  The major themes consist in studying the various and different levels of the process of religious, social and political Christian disintegration linked to dhimmitude. I also added the psychological elements which were not considered before. Countless works analyzed or just mentioned among other topics, the condition of Jews and Christians in Islam. My contribution into this domain was to make it into a special discipline and to give it a name. Naming objects or concepts provides the minds with conceptual tools allowing the classification of elements; they can then be recognized and placed into a structure.

I had already done this work with the dhimmi, and I was attacked because I made of the dhimmi condition a special category. For me it enters into a social, religious, legal category among others developed by human societies because it had a legal structure. It is not happening by chance. The dhimmi condition is integrated into a determined policy with its ideological and legal structure like the system of slavery or apartheid. Its constitutive elements can be recognized unchanged throughout the centuries and the lands where Islamic law is implemented.

Other critics were scandalized because I had put Jews and Christians together into the same dhimmi category. This was of course a political and racist view rooted in the conviction that Christians couldn’t be in the same category of the devilish Jews. The proponents of this opinion militated for a Christian-Muslim alliance against the Jews, whom they accused to cause conflicts between Muslims and them. My view on the dhimmi, a common condition for Jews and Christians together oppressed by the same Muslim law, followed by my conceptualization of dhimmitude, couldn’t be for them more horrific to them.

I also underlined the fact that the so-called protection granted to the dhimmi was a protection against the threats of jihad: death, slavery or forced conversion imposed by Muslim law on non Muslims. Hence the toleration came within a condemnation. Such protection does not deserve any admiration or gratitude from its victims, because it belongs to an unjust system that denies to non-Muslims the right to live. It is tolerant only in the Islamic conception of justice. If we say that it is tolerant, it implies that we agree with the first condition: the condemnation.

My discussion on the specificities of Islamic tolerance clarified the fallacies of this notion and its superficiality. This point also brought me many enemies since the belief in the justice of Islamic law and therefore in the justice of the system of dhimmitude is a religious obligation for Muslims and therefore for the cohorts of their supporters in the West. I recognize of course that my researches are far from being perfect and should be improved and corrected, but the controversies were more spawned by politics or antisemitism than by historical arguments.

My books also demonstrated that slavery was not practiced only by the West; Islam practiced it on a much larger and longer scale. Likewise the wars of conquest, colonialism and imperialism were much more pursued by Muslims than by Christians. Those historical facts were acrimoniously opposed by Europeans. My publications on the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries, raised suspicion and hate from Christian pro-palestinian sectors. All in all, my work couldn’t be more opposed to the European policy of alliances and integration with the Muslim world, based on a common Euro-Arab hatred of Israel. Europe was involved in the creation of Palestine and the weakening, the demise of Israel

Med dette som bakgrunn går intervjuet over til temaet - Eurabia:

Gordon:  You published an essay in the National Review in 2002 that led to a major work, Eurabia: The Euro –Arab Axis published in 2005. Could you tell us the origins of the term, your book's principal thesis and its implications for the future of the EU, UK and even America?

Bat Ye'or:  This term Eurabia was created by European politicians and intellectuals that militated from the late 1960s for the Palestinians and a Euro-Arab rapprochement, and even a Euro-Arab symbiosis around the Mediterranean. This movement was antisemitic and anti-American, it gathered many former Nazis and their supporters and collaborators in European countries. It was supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1973 it became an unofficial but organized policy of the European Community and its executive office, the European Commission, together with the Arab League.

My book examines the numerous official texts, policies and decisions generated by the ideology of Eurabia and their consequences in the countries of the European Community, on their domestic and international affairs. I analyze these transformations within the dhimmitude historical framework since the Muslim world’s relations with the non-Muslim world has not changed. The implications for the West are its Islamization and the destruction of the Judeo-Christian civilization, the phenomenon that I have examined in its historical development since the seven century in its various modalities throughout numerous lands.

Gordon:  What do you believe is behind the condonment of Islamic doctrine, adoption of shariah, Islamic law, in Western legal systems and the rise of de facto self-governing Muslim areas in the EU and UK?

Bat Ye'or:   There are many factors. First, Western demography is weak and our population are aging and rich. Moreover Westerners abhor wars. Two world wars produced genocides, hecatombs and incommensurable sufferings. Our Western leaders know perfectly well the history of jihad and its consequences on non-Muslims. Precisely for this reason, they chose a policy of appeasement and rapprochement with the Muslim world, taking also in consideration the economic and energy factors, as well as tactical alliances against other states. I do not think that the Eurabian project had foreseen the consequences of a massive Muslim presence in the West, but now our leaders cannot conceive another policy than submission, dhimmitude and Islamization of their own countries by multiculturalism and globalization. This policy adheres to materialist and opportunist considerations under the guise of humanitarian aims; it is devoid of any ethic and morality.

Gordon:   How dangerous do you believe are those Stealth Jihad threats to the future of Western civilization and Judeo-Christian values?

Bat Ye'or:  Stealth Jihad exists in every sectors of Western society, in law, culture, schools, universities, policies, banking, economics, medias. The aim is to destroy the Judeo-Christian values and to Islamized Western societies, following the thousand years of Islamic conquest of Christian lands. They are help in the West by the promoters of multiculturalism and the Left.

Gordon:  Why in your view have EU elites and mainstream media dismissed the threats implied by Eurabia?

Bat Ye'or:  Some dismissed them by personal political interests and lust; others because they wanted like the Nazis, to destroy the Christian civilization rooted in Judaism and loved Islam. Christian traitors joining and supporting the Muslim forces against their own people represent a permanent and strong current in the Muslim-Christian interactions and wars throughout history. Now, they are deadly afraid of terrorism if they dare change policy. As for the media, I consider that it obeys the orders of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that represents the Ummah, the universal Muslim community. The OIC is working at all levels with European leaders and Western leaders. The blasphemy laws punishing the criticism of Islam are implemented in the West at the request of the OIC. Likewise European countries adopted a recent decision to teach religions in schools because the OIC insisted upon it.

Gordon:   Who do you consider as allies in the EU and Americain furthering your Eurabia thesis of the threat of Islamization to the future of the West?

Bat Ye'or:   Every European is aware of Europe's transformation under the pressure of massive Muslim immigration. Some Muslims are perfectly integrated and oppose the Islamization of European school teaching, culture, law, society. No European or American well integrated in its Western and Judeo-Christian culture could possibly welcome its replacement by a Koranic shariah society, imposing its religious conception of history which affirms that jihad is just and resistance to jihad is aggression. Nor could he accept the discriminated condition of the women, the denial of the equality of human beings, and the restrictions on knowledge. Hence, to answer your questions, I would say that this problem, that has been obfuscated by our leaders for so long, is not my problem but a worry to all Westerners.

Intervjuer vil så ha en utdyping av hva hun legger i begrepet "Palestinism":

Gordon:   You have developed the term "Palestinism?" Could you explain that term and why it is at the root of Europe's decline and the isolation of Israel?

Bat Ye'or: Palestinism is a world policy initiated and imposed by the OIC and its Western allies that aims to transfer to Palestinian Muslims the history, and the cultural and religious heritage of the Jewish people. The origin of this belief is in the Koran which states that the Bible is a falsification and that the biblical figures, including Jesus and the apostles were all Muslim prophets who preached Islam. This theory suppresses Jewish and Christian history and legitimacy. Palestinism struggles to eliminate Israel and replace it by a Muslim Palestine since it is based on the Islamization of the Bible.

Palestinism is also a political and theological current working for the Islamization of Christianity by replacing its Jewish biblical roots by the Koranic interpretation of the Bible. The promoter of such theology is the Sabeel Christian Center in Jerusalem that teaches Christians the Islamic interpretation of the Bible.

Palestinism is at the base of the whole Eurabian construct, European dhimmitude and the submission of Western leaders. Palestinism encompasses all Western-Muslim relationships, this is the reason why the West has made the creation of Palestine and the destruction of Israel the most urgent topics of the planet. This is also in obedience to the OIC who made of Palestinism/antisemitism the base of its policy with the West and its subjugation. Support for the Palestinians is the guaranty for Europe’s security. Westerners have paid billions of jizya (tribut) to the Palestinians as a protection from terrorism. The OIC obliges the West to deny Israel’s rights and adopt the Islamic conception of history where Jewish and Christian rights to their history and culture are denied as we have seen recently with the Islamization of the Hebrew Patriarch tombs in Hebron by UNESCO.

Palestinism makes the destruction of Israel a universal duty.

Intervjuet avsluttes med betraktninger om sharia, the Arab Spring og fremtiden:

Gordon:  In the United States a grass roots movement has arisen seeking to bar adoption of Shariah Law in our American Legal system. Three States, Arizona, Louisiana and Tennessee, have enacted anti-Sharia laws. Other State legislatures are considering similar legislation. Do you view that as a positive sign, despite objections raised by Muslim Brotherhood front groups and civil liberties allies in the US?

Bat Ye'or:  It is a positive sign because Shariah Law follows Koranic values that are opposed to ours and applies the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which are in many ways contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Gordon:  Given the eruption of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, what do you see as the ultimate outcome?

Bat Ye'or:  I am quite pessimist. There is no base or structure in any Arab country for democratic governments. The extremists and the Muslim Brotherhood will control the whole area and will work to re-establish the 7th century caliphate and its jihadist ideology of world conquest. Shariah and democracy are antinomic.

Gordon:  How imperiled do you believe is America's long term support for Israelin the wake of the Arab Spring?

Bat Ye'or:  The enemy Israel is facing is America's enemy, and if American do not understand it, America will disappear.

Gordon:  Your new book, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate, expands upon your original thesis of Eurabia. Can that dark prospect somehow be reversed, and defeated?

Bat Ye'or:  It can if the West understands the complex and various aspects of this confrontation, but we are far for that.

Legger inn en link til hele intervjuet som ihverfall ga meg tanker om at det er ikke likegyldig hvilken individuell og subjektiv historie hver og oss har med oss når tankegods formes og utdeles

[ http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/98500/sec_id/98500 ]