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Revision as of 22:41, 16 September 2005 by Dhimmi (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Bat Ye'or (meaning "daughter of the Nile" in Hebrew) is the pseudonym of an Egyptian-born British Jewish author and researcher Giselle Littman.
She is best known for attempting to popularize the use of the term Dhimmitude, the collective experience of dhimmis, or "protected peoples", religious minorities living among an Islamic majority. She credits Lebanese politician and militia-leader Bachir Gemayel for the term.
Bat Ye'or has spoken at a United Nations Commission on Human Rights-organized conference and spoken before the United States Congress.
Some historians regard her work as politically opinionated rather than factual, while others regard it as scholarly.
Her theses
Ye'or regards dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation." She believes that "the dhimmi condition can only be understood in the context of Jihad," and studies the relationship between the theological tenets of Islam and the sufferings of the Christians and Jews who, in different geographical areas and periods of history, have lived in Islamic majority areas. She says:
Dhimmitude is the direct consequence of jihad. It embodie all the Islamic laws and customs applied over a millennium on the vanquished population, Jews and Christians, living in the countries conquered by jihad and therefore Islamized. return of the jihad ideology since the 1960s, and of some dhimmitude practices in Muslim countries applying the sharia law, or inspired by it. I stress the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude ideology, and the concept of human rights based on the equality of all human beings and the inalienability of their rights.
Jacques Ellul attempts to summarize her views in the foreword to The Decline (see below), saying that Ye'or focuses on "jihad and dhimmitude ... as ... two complementary institutions... here are many interpretations . At times, the main emphasis is placed on the spiritual nature of this 'struggle'. Indeed, it would merely the struggle that the believer has to wage against his own evil inclinations.... his interpretation ... in no way covers the whole scope of jihad. At other times, one prefers to veil the facts and put them in parentheses. xpansion ... happened through war!" Though Ye'or acknowledges that it is not the case that all Muslims subscribe to so-called "militant jihad theories of society", she claims that the role of the sharia in the "1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam" demonstrates that "a perpetual war against those infidels who refuse to submit" is still a so-called "operative paradigm" in Islamic countries.
Ye'or has focused on the rapid conversion of Eastern Christian lands to Islam, concluding that corruption and division among Christians contributed and may even have afforded Islam certain models of legal control of subjugated populations; she suggests that Yugoslavia is an example of the long-term scars of dhimmitude, where Christians were under that status for centuries.
Perhaps most controversially of all, Ye'or believes that the West is being Islamized and is "drifting toward dhimmitude"; to express this claim, she has coined another term, "Eurabia". She sees this as the result of a French-led European policy originally intended to increase European power against the United States by aligning its interests with those of the Arab countries, and regards it as a primary cause of alleged European hostility to Israel.
Usage of the term "dhimmitude" has increased in recent years (as Google confirms); some scholars have used it both by itself and in association with Bat Ye'or's work, e.g. in undergraduate and graduate courses relating to the relationship Muslims have had historically with other peoples or to the study of regions such as Syria , . Her works have also been quoted by some scholars in reference to the field of religious history.
Other questions Ye'or studies include:
- Pluralism in Islamic culture, with a focus on Eastern Europe
- Violations of human rights in Islamic cultures
- The theological rules that govern jihad
- How Muslims interpret the history of the dhimmi peoples
- How the Muslim interpretation of religious scripture influences Islamic interpretation of history and modern-day events
- The "dialog of civilizations" and the "negation of the other"
Publications by Bat Ye'or
- Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, 2005, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 083864077X.
- Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, 2001, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0838639437.
- The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, 1996, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0838636888.
- The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam, 1985, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0838632629.