Bat Ye'or

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Bat Ye'or at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC
Bat Ye'or at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC

Bat Ye'or (Hebrew: בת יאור) (meaning "daughter of the Nile" in Hebrew; a pseudonym of Gisèle Littman, née Orebi) is a British writer specializing in the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East, and in particular the history of Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments.[1]

She is the author of eight books, including Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001), The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), and The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (1985). Her historical vision has won broad acceptance among both scholars and the general public in Israel and the West.[2]

She has provided briefings to the U.S. Congress and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Bat Ye'or was born in Cairo, Egypt, but her citizenship was revoked as part of Egypt's retribution against its Jewish residents following Israel's Operation Suzannah.[3] She and her parents left Egypt in 1957, arriving in London as stateless refugees. Beginning in 1958 she attended the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London and in 1959 became a British citizen by marriage. She moved to Switzerland in 1960 to continue her studies at the University of Geneva. [4]

She describes how her experiences 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.

She is married to British historian David Littman, with whom she frequently collaborates. [5]

[edit] Research

Her first book, The Jews in Egypt, was published in 1971, along with a study of Egyptian Coptic Christians, under the Arabic nom de plume Yahudiya Masriya, meaning "Egyptian Jewess".

She is known for employing the neologism dhimmitude, which she discusses in detail in Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. She credits assassinated Lebanese president-elect and Phalangist militia leader Bachir Gemayel with coining the term.

Ye'or describes dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," [1] and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation." [2] 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. [3] [4] The cause of jihad, she argues, "was fomented around the 8th century by Muslim theologians after the death of Muhammad and led to the conquest of large swathes of three continents over the course of a long history."< [5] She says:

Dhimmitude is the direct consequence of jihad. It embodie[s] 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. [We can observe a] return of the jihad ideology since the 1960s, and of some dhimmitude practices in Muslim countries applying the sharia [Islamic] 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. [6]

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... [T]here are many interpretations [of jihad]. At times, the main emphasis is placed on the spiritual nature of this 'struggle'. Indeed, it would merely [refer to] the struggle that the believer has to wage against his own evil inclinations.... [T]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. [E]xpansion [of Islam] ... happened through war!" [7] Though Bat Ye'or acknowledges that it is not the case that all Muslims subscribe to so-called "militant jihad theories of society," she argues that the role of the sharia in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam demonstrates that what she calls a perpetual war against those who won't submit to Islam is still an "operative paradigm" in Islamic countries. [8]

Bat Ye'or has focused on the rapid transformation of Eastern Christian lands into Islamic territories, concluding that corruption and division among Christians contributed [9] 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. [10]

Use of the term "dhimmitude" has increased in recent years: some scholars have used it both by itself and in association with Bat Ye'or's work, e.g. in undergraduate courses relating to the relationship Muslims have had historically with other peoples. [11] [12]

Other issues Bat Ye'or has written on include:

  • The existence or lack thereof of pluralism in Islamic culture, with a focus on Eastern Europe; [13]
  • Violations of human rights in Islamic cultures; [14]
  • The theological rules that govern jihad; [15]
  • How Muslims interpret the history of the dhimmi peoples; [16]
  • How the Muslim interpretation of religious scripture influences Islamic interpretation of history and modern-day events; [17]
  • The "dialog of civilizations" and the "negation of the other." [18]

[edit] "Eurabia"

In Bat Ye'or's most recent book, 2005's Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, she explores the history of the relationship from the 1970s onwards between the European Union, previously the European Economic Community, and the Arab states, tracing what she sees as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and fascists, socialists and Nazis, on the other hand, in the origins and growing influence, as she sees it, of Islam over European culture and politics. [6]

She herself can take some credit for the term "Eurabia" in this context; though the term was first used as a title of a journal initiated in the mid-1970s by the European Committee for Coordination of Friendship Associations with the Arab world, she popularized it as a term for Arab/Islamic influence over Europe. She explains the term's origins in the book:

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.

[edit] Views

Bat Ye'or's work has attracted praise and criticism from academic historians and political commentators on Islam and the Middle East.

British historian Sir Martin Gilbert writes of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis that it "presents a wide range of historical and contemporary documents and facts to tell the story of how the European Union is being subverted by Islamic hostility to the very ethics and values of Europe itself. Readers who seek a fair resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict will be shocked by the evidence produced in these pages of unfair pressures and deliberate distortions. Europe's independence of spirit is shown in the process of being undermined." [7]

Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, has written that "[n]o writer has done more than Bat Ye'or to draw attention to the menacing character of Islamic extremism. Future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term 'Eurabia' as prophetic." [8] American writer Robert Spencer, who specializes in Islam, has described her as "the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, of the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law". He argues that she has turned this area, which he believes the "Middle East studies establishment" has hitherto been afraid of or indifferent to, into a field of academic study. [19] British writer David Pryce-Jones calls her a "Cassandra, a brave and far-sighted spirit." [9]

Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago, argues that "by obscuring the existence of pre-Christian and other old, non-Christian communities in Europe as well as the reason for their disappearance in other areas of Europe, Bat Ye’or constructs an invidious comparison between the allegedly humane Europe of Christian and Enlightenment values and the ever present persecution within Islam. Whenever the possibility is raised of actually comparing circumstances of non-Christians in Europe to non-Muslims under Islamic governance in a careful, thoughtful manner, Bat Ye’or forecloses such comparison." [10]

John Esposito, a scholar on Islamic history, criticized Bat Ye'or for lacking academic credentials. [11]

In a review of The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude the American historian Robert Brenton Betts commented that the book dealt with Judaism at least as much as with Christianity, that the title was misleading and the central premise flawed. He said: "The general tone of the book is strident and anti-Muslim. This is coupled with selective scholarship designed to pick out the worst examples of anti-Christian behavior by Muslim governments, usually in time of war and threats to their own destruction (as in the case of the deplorable Armenian genocide of 1915). Add to this the attempt to demonize the so-called Islamic threat to Western civilization and the end-product is generally unedifying and frequently irritating."[12]

Johann Hari, a British journalist, writes that Bat Ye'or works resemble "an ideology startlingly similar" to anti-Semitism. He likens Ye'or's views to "a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca."[13]

[edit] Selected works

On-line bibliography
Books
Book chapters
  • "The Dhimmi Factor in the Exodus of Jews from Arab Countries" in Malka Hillel Shulewitz (ed.), The Forgotten Millions. The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, London/New York: Cassell, 1999; Continuum, 2000 (pp. 33-51)
  • "A Christian Minority. The Copts in Egypt" in Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A World Survey. 4 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976
Documentaries

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Griffith, Sidney H. "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh-Twentieth Century by Bat Yeor, Miriam Kochan, David Littman", International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, November 1998, pp. 619-621.
  2. ^ Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. University of California Press, 1998, page 15.
  3. ^ Belien, Paul. "Eurabia Scholars Gather in The Hague", Brussels Journal, February 20, 2006.
  4. ^ Whithead, John W. "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, An interview with Bat Ye'or", The Rutherford Institute, June 9, 2005.
  5. ^ Duin, Julia. "State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians", The Washington Times, February 30, 2006.
  6. ^ Lappen, Alyssa A. "Triple-pronged Jihad — Military, Economic and Cultural", American Thinker, April 5, 2005.
  7. ^ Gilbert, Martin. Review reproduced on the back cover of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
  8. ^ Ferguson, Niall. Review reproduced on the back cover of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
  9. ^ Pryce-Jones, David. "Captive continent", National Review, May 9, 2005.
  10. ^ Qureshi, Emran & Sells, Michael A. The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy. Columbia University Press, 2003, p. 364. ISBN 0-231-12667-0
  11. ^ "State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians, Jews" by Jula Duin appeared in "Washington Times," October 30, 2002
  12. ^ Robert Brenton Betts, "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude".Middle East Policy 5 (3) (September 1997), pp.200-2003.
  13. ^ Hari, Johann. "Amid all this panic, we must remember one simple fact — Muslims are not all the same", The Independent, August 21, 2006.

[edit] Further reading

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