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Bat Ye'or

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Bat Ye'or (meaning "daughter of the Nile" in Hebrew; pseudonym of Giselle Littman) is an Egyptian-born British Jewish author and historian specializing in the Middle East, Islam, and non-Muslims in Muslim lands.

An article in the New York Times (controversially ) referred to her as one of the "most extreme voices on the new Jewish right." She rejects that charge, claiming to have been "calumniated" in the paper.

Early life

Bat Ye'or was born in Cairo, but her Egyptian nationality was revoked in 1955 because she was Jewish; she and her parents left Egypt in 1957, arriving in London as stateless refugees. In 1959 she became a British citizen. From 1958 she attended the Institute of Archeology at London University, before moving to Switzerland in 1960 to continue her studies at the University of Geneva.

She describes how her life experience influenced her research interests:

I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessness−and I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience.

Research

Her first book, The Jews in Egypt, appeared in 1971. She published it, along with her next study on Copts in Egypt, under a pseudonym Yahudiya Masriya, meaning "Egyptian Jewess" in Arabic. Since then, Bat Ye'or focused predominantly on the history of non-Muslims under Muslim rule. In

"Dhimmitude"

Bat Ye'or is known for promoting the use of the term dhimmitude, which she discusses in detail in Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide; and credits assassinated Lebanese president-elect and Phalangist militia leader Bachir Gemayel with coining the term. She argues that dhimmitude is a social and psychological condition deriving from the surrender of the Christian clergy and political leaders to the Muslim jihad armies, and their submission to Islamic domination of both their lands and peoples. In exchange, they received a pledge of protection ('dhimma') from the Muslim sovereign; conditioned upon payment of a special tax, jizya.

"Eurabia"

In Bat Ye'or's latest book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, she explores the dialogue between the European Union (then the European Economic Community) and the Arab states that began in the 1970s and traces what she sees as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and fascists and Nazis, on the other hand, in the origins and developing influence, as she sees it, of Islam over Europe, its culture and politics. . She has coined the term Eurabia to describe this relationship, a concept discussed at length in her most recent book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis:

Eurabia is a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC) which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

Public appearances

Testimony before Governing bodies:

  • 1997 "Past is Prologue: The Challenge of Islamism Today. An Historical Overview of the Persecutions of Christians under Islam". Congressional Testimony at United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Hearing on Religious Persecution in the Middle East. (Congressional Records Testimony on May 1, 1997)
  • 1997 Similar testimony delivered to a U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) Briefing on Capitol Hill (April 29, 1997)
  • 2001 A Culture of Hate Analysis to the Association of World Education
  • 2002 "Human Rights and the Concept of Jihad". Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) Briefing on Capitol Hill (February 8, 2002)

She has appeared on U.S. television station C-SPAN.

Criticism

A number of academics have questioned Ye'or's scholarship and her conclusions.

Sidney H. Griffith in the International Journal of Middle East Studies writes of The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: "The problems one has with the book are basically twofold: the theoretical inadequacy of the interpretive concepts jihad and dhimmitude, as they are employed here; and the want of historical method in the deployment of the documents which serve as evidence for the conclusions reached in the study. There is also an unfortunate polemical tone in the work."

Malek Chebel, writing in the French weekly magazine Le Point, suggested that Ye'or books are not those of a serious historian. He points out that distinguished Jewish historians specializing in Islam such as Ignace Goldziher, Georges Vajda, Samuel Munk, Bernard Lewis and Maxime Rodinson have established that Jews living in Muslim lands have never been victims of pogroms, mass deportations, discrimination or extermination.

Esther Benbassa, Director of Religious Studies in Modern Judaism at the Sorbonne has also questioned Ye'or's academic credentials and says that the historic restrictions on "people of the book" existed, but were more symbolic than practical with non-Muslim minorities enjoying protection, autonomy and freedom.

Jason Burke, chief reporter for the Observer, describes Bat Ye'or as the "favourite of the more unsavoury right-wing American websites."

Bibliography

  • 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 Dhimmi Factor in the Exodus of Jews from Arab Countries" (pp. 33-51), in Coll. work (ed.) Malka Hillel Shulewitz, The Forgotten Millions. The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands (London/New York: Cassell, 1999; Continuum, 2000)
  • The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, 1996, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0838636888.
  • The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam, 1985, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0838632629.
  • A Christian Minority. The Copts in Egypt. Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A World Survey. 4 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976
  • Les Juifs en Egypte (Jews in Egypt: French) (Geneva: Editions de l'Avenir, 1971)
  • Bibliography of Bat Ye'or

Documentaries

See also

References

External links

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