Cartoon rage
By Diana West
We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude. I've written about dhimmitude
periodically, lo, these many years since September 11, but it takes time to sink
in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye'or, whose
pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished
by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed
through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and
Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and
Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered,
surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as "people of the book [the Bible]," were
tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost.
There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the
right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious
identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia)
designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi. The resulting culture
of self-abnegation, self-censorship and fear shared by far-flung dhimmi is the
basis of dhimmitude. The extremely distressing but highly significant fact is,
dhimmitude doesn't only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.
[Read on here.
Hat tip: Michelle
Malkin.]
