|
Dhimmitude for Dummies
Dear James,
By
Victor Sharpe
Front Page Magazine
Ask one hundred people in the United
States what a dhimmi is and perhaps two or three might
know. In Western Europe the number would be slightly higher
because of latent memories of battles fought against invading
Moslem armies over hundreds of years.
In 732, Charles Martel led his Frankish forces at Tours to
victory against an Islamic invasion of France, which nearly
destroyed Christian Europe. Similarly, Islam was ousted from
Spain in 1492 after an occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by
the Moslems for hundreds of years. Sadly, the Spanish Christian
monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, and the Portuguese a few years
later, also expelled the Jewish community although the Jews had
lived in Spain and Portugal for many centuries and had never
posed a threat to either Moslem or Christian sovereignty.
In Italy, Islamic power was brought to an end when the heavy
Turkish galleys were defeated by Venetian galleasses at the
great naval battle of Lepanto in 1571. And the Moslem Ottoman
power, which at its height again threatened all of Western
Europe, was barely turned back at the gates of Vienna on 11
September 1683 by a coalition of European armies. Incidentally,
could there be a connection between 9.11.1683 and 9.11.2001, or
is it just coincidence?
These were four major defeats by Europe of Islamic attempts of
conquest and subjugation set against a history of victorious
Moslem invasions and conquests that had been the hallmark of
Islam since its founding in the seventh century.
But what of the peoples and nations that fell under Islamic
occupation? For them the story was one of forced conversions to
Islam, slavery, death and the Islamic institution of
dhimmitude.
This is the word that describes the
parlous state of those who refused to convert to Islam and
became the subjugated, non-Muslims who were forced to accept a
restrictive and humiliating subordination to a superior Islamic
power and live as second class citizens in order to avoid
enslavement or death. These peoples and populations were known
as dhimmis, and if such a status was not humiliating
enough, a special tax or tribute, called the jizya, was
imposed upon them and upon all dhimmis.
Dhimmitude
is the direct outcome of jihad, which is the military conquest
of non-Islamic territory mandated by Allah as a spiritual
obligation for every individual Moslem and Moslem nation.
From its beginnings in the seventh century, Islam spread through
violent conquest of non-Moslem lands. In the eighth century, a
formal set of rules to govern relationships between Moslems and
non-Moslems was created based upon Moslem conquests of
non-Moslem peoples. These rules were
based upon jihad, which established how the Moslems
would treat the conquered non-Moslems in terms of their
submission to Islam.
Jihad can be pursued through force or other means such
as propaganda, writing, or subversion against the perceived
enemy. The so-called enemies are those
who oppose the establishment of Islamic law or its spread,
mission, or sovereignty over them and their land.
Propaganda and subversion are the very
means now being employed against the West and Judeo-Christian
civilization, and Islamists
have shown themselves to be brilliantly adept at manipulating
the gullible and uninformed western media in pursuit of their
aims of world domination.
As I have written in previous articles, non-Islamic lands are
considered the dar al-harb, the "house of war," until
they submit to Islamic rule and enter the dar al-Islam.
The 'infidel' falls into three
categories: those who resist Islam with force, those living in a
country that has a temporary truce with Islam, and those who
have surrendered to Islam by exchanging land for peace.
Since the Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have been
guilty of the now thoroughly discredited notion of "land for
peace" in which Israel gives away land but never receives peace.
Even the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan are cold at best
and the lands given away to Lebanon and the Arab Palestinians
has been a calamitous error. The
belief that Moslem Arab powers respond to overtures of peace by
ending their aggression is but a mirage in the desert.
This is proven time and again to be a
delusion and is, in fact, a classic example of the mindset and
behavior of the dhimmi.
A non-Moslem community forced to accept
dhimmitude is condemned to live in a system that will
only protect it from jihad if it is subservient to the
Moslem master. In return, it is guaranteed limited rights under
a system of discriminations that it must accept, or face forced
conversion, slavery, or death.
In the early years of the Islamic conquests, the "tribute" or
jizya was paid as a yearly poll tax, which symbolized the
subordination of the dhimmi. Later, the inferior status
of Jews and Christians was reinforced through a series of
regulations that governed the behavior of the dhimmi.
Jews and Christians were awarded a different status than other
faiths. They were considered to be under protection as "people
of the book." People of non-monotheistic faiths, pagans, or
atheists were simply to be exterminated.
According to Mitchell G. Bard, who has written extensively on
the subject and produced the excellent rebuttal to Arab and
pro-Arab propaganda in his book, Myths and Facts, "...
dhimmis, on pain of death, were forbidden to mock or
criticize the Koran, Islam or Muhammad, to proselytize among
Moslems or to touch a Moslem woman (though a Moslem man could
take a non-Moslem as a wife).
"Dhimmis were excluded from public office and armed
service, and were forbidden to bear arms. They were not allowed
to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller
than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims
or to drink wine in public. They were not allowed to pray or
mourn in loud voices as that might offend the Moslems.
"The dhimmi had to show public deference toward Moslems,
always yielding them the center of the road. The dhimmi
was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Moslem, and
his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court. To defend himself
the dhimmi would have to purchase Moslem witnesses at
great expense. This left the dhimmi with little legal
recourse when harmed by a Moslem.
"Dhimmis were also forced to wear distinctive clothing.
In the ninth century, for example, Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil
designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that
would be followed centuries later."
By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in
Moslem lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young,
British Vice-Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:
"The attitude of the Muslims toward the
Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom
he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep
their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly
repressed."
The concept of jihad is not something now discarded by
Islam as a quaint belief appropriate to the distant past. On the
contrary, it is a cardinal belief in the 21st century for
Moslems based upon Koranic injunctions. It is believed in by
millions of Moslems around the Third world, as much as by
Moslems living in America, Britain, Europe, Australia, New
Zealand and Canada. It is a belief, passionately held, that one
day the entire world will become Islamic and accept completely
the will of Allah.
It is vital, therefore, that the
general public in every non-Moslem country be made aware that
Moslems consider themselves in a perpetual state of war with
their non-Moslem neighbors. If Islamic armies are unable to
defeat what they consider the "infidels," (that's you and me),
then a period of "truce" exists, which has several conditions.
These include allowing Islam to be propagated, and if a
non-Moslem nation forbids it or rejects mass proselytizing to
Islam, then that nation will be considered as subject to holy
jihad.
Sheikh Zayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaida's second in command,
recently invited America to embrace Islam. The invitation is
always given, according to some experts, prior to a major
assault upon the "infidel nation," because any rejection is
considered by Moslems as an empirical reason to wage war upon
the non-Moslem state; in this case the United States of America.
It is nearly impossible for sophisticated and
secularized Western and European elites to understand or accept
such medieval concepts, let alone the idea that a religious war
is being waged against them. But their dismissal and amused
disregard of what is taking place is as calamitous as that
exemplified by the myopic politicians in Britain and America
before the Second World War.
The lone voice in the wilderness at that time, Winston
Churchill, appealed in vain to the political leaders who had not
the ears to hear or the eyes to see the growing fascist menace
during the 1930s posed by Germany and Italy. He called one such
British politician an "epileptic corpse," and reached back
through his prodigious memory to find a poem, which
characterized the failure of the Baldwin government in 1935 to
re-arm. The apt poem was, The Clattering Train, which could
equally be applied to the later appeasement of Hitler by Neville
Chamberlain and Lord Halifax.
"Those in charge of the clattering train, the axles creak and
the couplings strain.
The pace is hot and the points are near and sleep has deadened
the driver's air.
The signals flash in the night in vain, for death is in charge
of the clattering train."
Western notions of peaceful
co-existence between states, human rights and liberal democracy
are all alien to the bin-Ladens and Zawahiris of the Islamic
world. Hizbullah, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hamas,
Al Qaida, ad nauseum, all reject Judeo-Christian civilization as
being in theological error. For them, the entire human race must
embrace Allah's pre-eminence and the Moslem believer is the
divine instrument to bring about the "Umma" (worldwide
Moslem community) in whatever way possible, including
warfare and terror.
Jihad has reappeared as a way of wiping out the
humiliation the Arab and Moslem world has felt as Western power
became ascendant, especially after the defeat of the Ottoman
Turkish Empire at the end of the First World War.
With a fabulous and never ending flow
of petrodollars pouring into Arab and Moslem coffers, the belief
among Moslems is that the time is now right for Islam to
reassert itself in dominating the world and bringing it to Allah
through all out war, including nuclear war, if necessary.
The corollary to jihad is dhimmitude. This is
what appeasement by non-Moslems to Islamist threats and terror
leads to. Winston Churchill would have been shocked but not
surprised at the craven appeasement displayed by today's
elitists in the European political echelons.
It is in marked contrast to the manner in which their ancestors
confronted an earlier existential Islamic threat when they
defeated decisively the Moslems at Tours, Iberia (Spain and
Portugal), Lepanto and Vienna.
But without a similarly decisive defeat
of present day Islamist aggression and Islamo-fascism we may all
be faced, sooner than we think, with the choice of forced
conversion to Islam or subservience and wretchedness as
dhimmis.
Better, therefore, for us all to be aware of the facts and not
also be dummies.
This message has been processed by
Firetrust Benign.
|
