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."
