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State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians, Jews

State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians, Jews

Author: Julia Duin
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 30, 2002
URL: http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021030-10490720.htm

Egyptian-born historian Bat Ye'or and her husband, David  Littman, have been making the rounds of several campuses this month  to lecture on "dhimmitude," a word she coined to describe the status  of Christians and Jews under Islamic governments.

Muslims have visited exile, persecution, deportations, massacres  and other humiliations on non-Muslims for almost 1,400 years, she has  told students at Georgetown, Brown, Yale and Brandeis universities.

Muslim armies steamrolled over North Africa, the Middle East and  Spain for five centuries after the death of Muhammad in 632, says Bat  Ye'or, a pen name meaning "daughter of the Nile." In her two most  recent books, "Islam and Dhimmitude" and "The Decline of Eastern  Christianity Under Islam," she describes how magnificent basilicas  and monasteries of Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia were left in smoking  ruins by Muslims from the eighth to 10th centuries.

Spain, she says, was pillaged and devastated many times: Zamora  in 981, Barcelona in 987, Santiago de Compostela in 997. In 1000,  Castile was ravaged, its Christian population either killed or  enslaved and deported. In 1096, Pope Urban II set the Crusades in  motion by calling on Christians to take back the conquered lands.

The golden age of Muslim rule in Spain from the eighth to the  15th century was largely myth, Bat Ye'or says, and dhimmitude is in  effect today in Islamic-ruled Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, parts of  Indonesia and northern Nigeria.

Bat Ye'or has had hearings in some quarters, including her 1997  and 2001 appearances before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee  and the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. But many of the 70  students attending her Oct. 15 lecture at Georgetown University  on "The Ideology of Jihad, Dhimmitude and Human Rights" walked out.

Julia Segall, president of the Georgetown Israel Alliance, and  Daniel Spector, president of the Jewish Student Alliance, called the  lecture a "disaster" in Friday's edition of Hoya, a student newspaper.

Bat Ye'or and Mr. Littman "made no effort to make a clear  distinction between pure, harmonious Islam and the acts of a few who  falsely claim to act in the name of Islam," they wrote.

In the same issue, dissenting student Scott Borer-Miller  criticized the university for its treatment of Bat Ye'or and  its "anti-Zionist environment where supporting Israel is uncool."

Mr. Littman shrugged off the fracas.

"The Muslim students who were attending were unhappy with what  we were saying and so they pressured the Jews," he said. "And the  Jews collapsed. They've become dhimmis."

Bat Ye'or also was criticized by John Esposito, director of  Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding,  for lacking academic credentials. She studied at the University of  London's School of Archaeology and at the University of Geneva, but  never graduated.

Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious  Freedom, said Bat Ye'or's research into Turkish, Persian and Arabic  documents dating back to the eighth century has not been contested.

"What's notable is [various academics] don't attempt to refute  her work, which is scholarly and documented," he said. "Those who  oppose it owe it to her to engage her work at the scholarly level,  which it deserves."

Imam Rashied Omar, a Capetown (South Africa) University academic  pursuing his doctorate in religion and violence at the University of  Notre Dame, said that Bat Ye'or's findings are a minority view that  contrasts with a large portion of extant literature on medieval  Jewish-Muslim-Christian relations.

"That's not to say there was no oppression," he said, "but it's  well-known that Jews sought refuge under Muslim empires. Jews and  Christians obtained greater freedom and abilities to express their  religious identities under Muslim rule than was the case under  Christian rule."

Abdelaziz Sachedina, a religious studies professor at the  University of Virginia, points out that Bat Ye'or used highly polemic  sources written by the victims of dhimmitude.

"Monotheistic religions are always exclusivist," he said, "so  how are they going to deal with other monotheistic peoples? Muslims  have showed their civilization has a better mechanism in which to do  so because they give sanctity to other monotheists. It was a just  system that took the dignity of all human beings into consideration.  Muslims are not saying we treated them well or that it was an ideal  situation."
 


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