Book Review: 'The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam.' Bat Ye'or.

Islam is only at peace when it rules. When Muslims reign supreme over a state, there is a hierarchy, as outlined in the Koran. Arab male Muslims are at the top, and females and slaves at the bottom. Dhimmi's are Jews and Christians who are second class citizens; tax-slaves; and social inferiors – though accorded a status higher than that of a slave in a Muslim state. Dhimmis have very limited legal rights. Humiliation of the Dhimmis in every way possible is mandated by the Koran, by Mohammed, and by the 1400 year history of Islamic Jihad and imperialism. Dhimmitude is thus not some multi-cultural nirvana and paradise of earnest, peaceful Muslim-Jew-Christian inter-faith harmony and hand-holding. It is simply a feudal system of Muslim power, in which Jews and Christians are tax slaves; scorned, derided and if they break the Dhimmi-contract, oftentimes killed.

All of this is proven by Ye'or's book on how Dhimmis – Jews and Christians – were really treated under Muslim rule and oppression. While most Westerners and subscribers to cultural relativity and neo-Marxism, wax-hysterical with exaggerated piety about Western slave trading, colonialism, and war mongering; very little is said about the 1400 year Muslim Jihad; the 10 million or more Whites taken as slaves; and the limitless degradations of tens of millions of Jews and Christians under the Muslim system of apartheid, which is how Islamic society and imperialism was built. Islamic supremacism and racism is simply ignored by the really smart people.

Ye'or is probably the world expert on Dhimmitude. She has studied the topic for over 40 years. She was born in Egypt; fled to France; left Islam; pursued an academic career and has focused in part on the plight of the conquered Jewish and Christian populations which suffered dramatically under Islamic rule. She is recognized as being the most original and thorough writer on the subject and her analysis blows apart and completely effaces the myth, that Islam in any of its forms, anywhere where it has conquered, was a multi-cultural paradise of benign inter-faith love and perfection. Islam was spread by war, and as common-sense would indicate, the conquered peoples were treated as second-class inferiors, liable to excruciating taxation; social humiliation; sexual predations; and often-times, death.

Ye'or's research for this book was performed in the mid 1970s and was published in 1985. It is remarkable how true all of it still is, 25 years later. For Europe Dhimmitude might be its future – 100 million Muslims will be living in the post-Christian heartland of the progenitor of Western civilization by 2050. Nothing much good can come from that. Europeans might want to acquaint themselves with the world of Dhimmitude:

“The dhimmi condition, which is a direct consequence of jihad, is connected with this same contract [that Mohammed made with the Jews of Khaybar]. It suspends the conqueror's initial rights over the adherents of the revealed religions on payment of a tribute such as the jews had agreed to give the Prophet at Khaybar.” [p. 46]

Jihad is of course the 6^th pillar of Islam, and a duty for all true Believers. [p. 46] Islam is by genetic make-up an intolerant expansionary political program. The role of the conquered subjects is to serve their Muslim masters. It does the Arabs and Muslims no good if all the potential tax payers are slaughtered, or converted to Islam. Someone needs to pay for the state; till the fields; produce product; teach; work; and administer the Islamic state. This was a fact recognized by Mohammed as he strove to conquer Arabia and rid it of Jews:

“The fate of the Jews in Arabia foreshadowed that all of the peoples to be conquered. The primary guiding 'principle of the jihad was to summon the non-Muslims to convert or accept Muslim supremacy, and, if faced with refusal, to attack them until they submitted to Muslim domination.” [p. 45]

Once dominated the Dhimmi could be accorded some 'rights'. But as Ye'or rightly states, slavery is still slavery and historically we know that during the first century AD as an example, Roman slaves enjoyed a remarkable position within the Roman empire, owning assets and properties, leading armies, and engaged in all the higher professions [p. 33 and 49]. Dhimmitude certainly was not an improvement on what already had existed within both halves of the Roman world for centuries.

The key for Mohammed and the Muslims would be to set up a social structure in which the Dhimmi is completely humiliated but still able to support the Muslim state. The surest way to vanquish and degrade a people is to defeat them in war:

“it is clear that the dhimmi peoples bore the role of victim, vanquished by force; and indeed, it is after a war, a jihad, and after a defeat, that a nation becomes a dhimmi people.” [p. 36]

A conquered people is a Dhimmi people. Slavery is slavery, no matter what propaganda, rhetoric or creative use of words is employed.

The contract between the conquered Dhimmis and their Muslim masters is called the dhimma [p. 50]. Jews and Christians had the right to collect taxes for their own communal institutions; the right to administer justice in matters of personal law, and the right to exercise freedom of religious education and worship. But they were second class citizens with few real legal rights within the Muslim state, and subjected to a bizarre array of humiliating laws. Clothing and social regulations for instance were legion and burdensome – Dhimmis had to wear certain clothes, carry heavy crosses, not travel by mule or horse; go barefoot; walk on certain sides of the streets; and not look a Muslim in the eye. Dhimmis were tortured, beaten or killed for breaking such statutes. [p. 65] As well places of dhimmi worship were often ransacked, attacked, burnt, or demolished under some pretext [p.58].

The Dhimmis were also tax into subsistence – or at the very least kept in a state of not being able to accrue wealth. They could not own property or businesses. Profits and production was heavily taxed. Manufactured output of all variety had a tax rate of some 50-70%. A Dhimmi for instance could cultivate his land only as a tenant and pay a production tax or Kharaj to the Muslims [p.52]. They also had to pay a poll tax or jizya [Koran 9:29] with some such as women, minors and the sick being perhaps excluded. [p. 53] Avariz or irregular taxes were extorted for things like travel, commerce or property taxes [p. 54]. In aggregate the Dhimmi was paying an income tax rate of close to 80%. This is extortive.

“However, the oppressive fiscal system provoked revolts and peasant insurrections that were harshly repressed by the Arab colonialists. The insurgents were put to the sword, large sections of the local populations....were reduced to slavery, and many were deported.” [p. 51]

So much for inter-faith love and commitment.

Jihad is of course only possible, if you dehumanize the opponent. The Koran is full of hate, bile, racism, and supremacism. The Dhimmis are described as stupid, vulgar, hypocritical, little better than pigs, barnyard animals or apes. The Arabs and Muslims truly despised and in today's Jihadic environment, must still hate, the Dhimmi. Jihad mandates a true and open revulsion for the lowly, inferior, stinking Dhimmi -- bred by Islamic law and Koranic teachings [p. 125]. As Ye'or relates;

'Uncleanness and impurity are attached to the dhimmi condition. This physical repugnance leads to the death penalty for sexual relations between dhimmis and Muslim women......motivates the numerous meticulous laws governing the clothes, segregation, and movement of dhimmis, as well as the vexations and humiliating prescriptions restricting their religious and social activities.” [p. 128]

So much for cultural integration and respect.

The value of this book is beyond the scope of a short review. But it is a work which people need to read. It dispenses with the blather and cultural relativity lies, that Islam is somehow a friendly, inclusive, happy and ideal theology of brotherhood and group hugs. It can't be. Jihad is the very essence of Arab and Muslim imperialism. A totalitarian philosophy, as one finds in the Koran and in the life and words of Mohammed, cannot be anything other than intolerant, dominate and racist. There is no possibility that the Dhimmis – or slaves of the book – would have experienced anything other than oppression, sur-taxation, denigration and social inequality.

As usual Ye'or's book is impeccably sourced and researched. She provides Arab and Muslim documents translated from the originals, to support her findings. These informational sources cover half the book. They are well worth reading. They are shocking, revealing and disturbing. The intent of Arab and Muslim dhimmitude is clearly stated in these artefacts – the Jews and Christians are to be dominated, humiliated and tax-farmed. That is the social contract or dhimma and that is what many in the Western world apparently desire to experience.