Posted on 09/16/2001 9:16:54 PM PDT by Coyote
I hate working in the abstract, can you name one?
I only will admit that there might be some who say they are Muslim and follow the Koran who are not evil. I think there are some individuals who are willing to co-exist with others but I don't think overall, the Muslims intend to do that.
May 1, 1997
PREPARED STATEMENT OF BAT YE'OR BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS SUBJECT - HEARING ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST PAST IS PROLOGUE: THE CHALLENGE OF ISLAMISM TODAY
Basic text of oral Statement; more passages in brackets to be omitted. Fuller text to be used for Freedom House Briefing Seminar on 30 April.]
Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress,. Ladies and Gentlemen.
"Past is Prologue." These words are engraved on the pediment of the Archives building in Washington. The English source is probably Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the original perhaps Ecclesiastes (1:9). I have chosen this motto for my Statement today and shall first give:
An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians under Islam.
To fully understand the present tragic situation of Christians in Muslim lands, one must comprehend the ideological and historical pattern that is conducive to violations of human rights, even though this pattern does not seem to be a deliberate, monolithical, anti-Christian policy. However, as this structure is integrated into the corpus of Islamic law (the shari'a), it functions in those countries that either apply the shari'a in full, or whose laws are inspired by it. The historical pattern of Muslim-Christian encounters developed soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632.
The historical pattern of Muslim-Christian encounters developed soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. Muslim -- Christian relations were regulated by two legal-theological systems: one based on jihad, the other on the shari'a. A Jihad should not be compared to a Crusade -- or to any other war. The strategy and tactics of jihad are minutely fixed by theological rules, which the calif or ruler wielding both spiritual and political power -- must obey. The jihad practised now in Sudan is conducted according to its traditional rules. One could affirm that all "jihad" groups today conform to these decrees.
It is an historical fact that all the Muslims countries around the southern and eastern Mediterranean were Christian lands before being conquered, during a millenium of jihad under the banner of Islam. Those vanquished populations -- here I am referring only to Christians and Jews - were then "protected," providing they submitted to the Muslim ruler's conditions- Therefore, "protection" in the context of a conquest is the consequence of a war, and this is a very important notion.
In April 1992, for instance, religious leaders in Sudan's Southern Kordofan region -- who were "publicly supported at the highest government level" -- issued a fatwa, which stated: "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." This fatwa appears in a 1995 Report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the U.N.'s special Rapporteur on Sudan, Dr. Gaspar Biro. (ECOSOC, E/CN.4/1996/62, para.97a). This religious text gives the traditional definition of a harbi (someone living in the Dar al-harb, the "region of war"), an infidel who has not been subjected by jihad, and therefore whose life and property -- according to classical texts of Islamic jurists -- is thus forfeited to any Muslim. (It also gives a definition of an apostate who can be killed -- the case of Salman Rushdie in 1989, Farag Foda in 1992, and Taslima Nasreen 1994, are other examples where the death sentence was decreed.)
Non-Muslims are protected only if they submit to Islamic domination by a "Pact" -- or Dhimma -- which imposes degrading and discriminatory regulations. In my books, I have provided documents from Islamic sources and from the vanquished peoples, establishing a sort of classification so that the origins, development and aims of these regulations can be recognized when they are revived nowadays. I am only referring to Christians and Jews because they share the same Islamic theological and legal category, and are referred to in the Koran as "People of the Book" -- the word "people" is in the singular. If they accept to submit to a Muslim ruler, they then become "protected dhimmi peoples" -- tributaries, since their protection is linked to an obligatory payment of a koranic poll tax (the jizya) to the Islamic community (the umma).
This protection is abolished: - if the dhimmis should rebel against Islamic law; give allegiance to non-Muslim power; refuse to pay the koranic jizya; entice a Muslim from his faith; harm a Muslim or his property; commit blasphemy. Blasphemy includes denigration of the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, the Muslim faith, the shari'a by suggesting that it has a defect, and by refusing the-decision of the ijma -- which is the consensus of the Islamic community or umma (Koran III: 106). The moment the "pact of protection" is abolished, the jihad resumes, which means that the lives of the dhimmis and their property are forfeited. Those Islamists in Egypt who kill and pillage Copts consider that these Christians -- or dhimmis -- have forfeited their "protection" because they do not pay the jizya.
In other words, this "protector-protected" relationship is typical of a war-treaty between the conqueror and the vanquished, and this situation remains valid for Islamists because it is fixed in theological texts. But it should be emphasized that other texts in the Koran stress religious tolerance and peaceful relations, which frequently existed. (Nonetheless, early jurists and theologians - invoking the koranic principle of the "abrogation" of an earlier text by a later one - have established an extremist doctrine ofjihad, which is a collective duty.)
The protection system presents both positive and negative aspects: it provide security and a measure of religious autonomy. On the other hand, dhimmis suffered many legal disabilities intended to reduce them to a condition of humiliation and segregation. Those rules were established as early as the 8th and 9th centuries by the founders of the four schools of Islamic law: Hanafi, Malaki, Shafi'i and Hanbali.
The shari'a is a complete compendium of laws based on theological sources, principally the Koran and hadiths - that is, the sayings and acts of the Prophet. The shari'a comprises the legal status of the dhimmis: what is permitted and what is forbidden to them. It sets the pattern of the Muslims' social and political behavior toward dhimmis and explains its theological, legal and political motivations.
It is this comprehensive system, which lasted for up to thirteen centuries, that I have analyzed in my last book The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam] as the "civilization of dhimmitude." Its archetype - the dehumanized dhimmi - has permeated Islamic civilization, culture and thought and is being revived through the Islamist resurgence and the return of the shari'a.
The main principles of "dhimmitude" are:
1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis;
2) the social and economic discrimination of the dhimmis;
3) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis.
Numerous laws were enacted over the centuries in order to implement these principles, which remained in practice throughout the 19th century and in some regions into the 20th century.
Arab-Islamic civilization developed in conquered Christian lands, among Christian majorities, which were eventually reduced to minorities. The process of the Islamization of Christian societies appears at all levels. It is part and parcel of the Christian suffering embodied in laws, customs, behavior patterns, and prejudices that were perpetuated during many centuries. Christianity could survive in some countries like Egypt and the Balkans where their situation was tolerable, but in other places they were wiped out physically, expelled, or forced to emigrate.
During the whole of the 19th century, European governments tried to convince Muslim rulers -- from Constantinople to North Africa -- to abolish the discriminations against dhimmis. This policy led to reforms in the Ottoman Empire from 1839 -- known as the Tanzimat -- but it was only in Egypt, under the strong rule of Muhammad Ali, that real progress was made. Improvements in the Ottoman Empire and Persia, imposed by Europe, were bitterly resented by the populace and religious leaders.
European laws were introduced in the process of Turkish modernization, and in some Arab countries, but it was only under colonial rule that Christian and Jewish minorities were truly liberated from centuries of opprobrium. Traditionalists however resented the Westernization of their countries, the emancipation of the dhimmis and the laws imported from infidel lands. The fight for decolonization was also a struggle by the Islamists to re-establish strict Islamic law.]
Why is this persecution ignored by the Churches, governments and media?
The 19th century -- and even after World War I -- was a traumatizing period of genocidal slaughter of Christians, spreading from the Balkans (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria) to Armenia and to the Middle East. In this context of death, the doctrine of an Islamic-Christian symbiosis was conceived toward the end of the 19th century by Eastern Christians as a desperate shield against terror and slavery. This doctrine -- which also included anti-Zionism -- had many facets, both political and religious. In the long term, its results were mostly negative.
It is this doctrine -- still professed today -- that is responsible for the general silence about the ongoing tragedy of Eastern Christians. Any mention of jihad and of the persecutions of Christians by Muslims was a taboo subject because one could not denounce persecution and simultaneously proclaim that an Islamic-Christian symbiosis has always existed in the past and the present. It is in this cocoon of lies and of a deliberately imposed silence, solidly supported by the Churches, governments, and the media -- each for its own reasons -- that persecution of Christians could develop freely, during this century, even until now, with little hindrance. Moreover, this doctrine also blocked the memory of dhimmitude, leaving a vacuum of thirteen centuries whose emptiness was filled with a myth that was useless as a means to prevent the return of old prejudices and persecutions.
For this reason, dhimmitude -- which covers several centuries of Christian and Jewish history, and which is a comprehensive civilization englobing legislation, customs, social behavior, and prejudices -- has never been analyzed, nor publicly discussed. It is this silence for which academia in Europe and America bear much responsibility that allows the perpetuation of religious discrimination and persecution today. There are many factors that explain this silence of governments, Churches, academia, and the media, on such a tragic issue concerning persecuted Christians in the Muslim world; they are interrelated and although their motivations are different they have solidly cemented a wall of silence that has buried the historical reality.
Proposals for redressing these violations of fundamental human rights:
1. To define the ways and means to end this tragedy:
1) Not to foster an anti-Islamic current which would be wrong, as the vast majority of Muslims are themselves victims of Islamists in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, etc.
2) Christians must continue to live in their historical lands because it is their right, and only they can transform traditional Muslim mentalities. These dwindling communities should be encouraged to stay, as their presence will signify that Muslims have accepted that Jews and Christians also possess the right to life and dignity in their ancient homelands -- and not under a dhimmi protection, but with human rights equal to those of Muslims. If they fail, it will be our loss in the West too. Islamic countries that once had a Judeo-Christian culture should not become monolithically Islamic -- that is, Christianrein, as they have become virtually Judenrein -- through a policy of ethnic cleansing that followed a long historical period of discrimination.
3) If the human rights -- and the minority rights -- of Christians are not respected in those countries that formerly had Christian majorities, then the rights of all non-Muslims will be challenged by the Islamists' resurgence. It is for Christians worldwide -- particularly in America and Europe, and for the international community also -- to assure that the human rights for all religious minorities are respected worldwide.
II. We should realize that those populations are in grave danger and that even Muslim governments cannot protect them from mob violence -- sometimes they pretend to be unable to do so in order to stop foreign pressure or public campaigns. We should also remember that, from the late 1940s, the Jewish communities in the Arab-Muslim world -- then more than a million, now 1% of that number, under 10,000 and fast dwindling -- were the victims of persecution, terrorism, pillage and religious hatred that forced them to flee or emigrate. Christians were left as the only non-Muslims on whom religious fanaticism and hatred could be focused. Each Christian community tried to resist the return of the old order, following the path of secularism or communism.
The Islamists reproach Christians in their countries of:
1) being against the implementation of the shari'a;
2) demanding equal rights, basing themselves on International Covenants;
3) seeking foreign help to achieve equality with fellow Muslim citizens.
For the Islamists, these three accusations alone are tantamount to rebellion. It was these same motives that had justified the first great massacres of the Armenians a century ago in 1894-96, punished for having rebelled and for claiming the reforms that were promised.
This is why dhimmis communities were always careful to proclaim their enmity to Europe. An outward opposition to Christian countries being their life-saving shield against threats from their environment, they have interiorized this animosity to the point that they often strive for the triumph of Islam, some of them even becoming the best and most perfect tools of Islamic propaganda and interests in Europe and America. (The late Father Yoakim Moubarac and Georges Corm in France, and Edward Said in America, are but three examples out of many.)
III. In order to avoid mistakes and be more effective, one has to realize the difference of contexts between the campaign for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s, and the promotion of human rights for Christians in Islamic lands today. The main difficulty arises because the discrimination or persecution in some countries cannot be ascribed to a deliberate government policy. It is rather a fact of civilization: the traditional contempt for dhimmis -- not so different from that of African Americans in the past -- and irritation because they are out-stepping their rights and must be obliged to return to their former status.
Sometimes, however, it is imposed by the Islamists, and a weak government doesn't dare to protect the Christians, fearing to become even more unpopular because anti-Western, and anti-Christian prejudices have imbued Muslim culture and society for centuries.
1) There are many ways to persecute Christians; some are by legal means, like the laws concerning the building or the repair of churches; others, by terror. A Christian can be killed, not because he committed a crime, but simply because he belongs to a group of infidels, whom, allegedly, are in rebellion; or for reasons of "spectacle-terrorism" that can serve as a deterrent policy to fulfill the terrorists' aims.
2) Another point concerns the use of a fatwa. If a fatwa is decreed against an individual, any Muslim is authorized to kill him, and by so doing he is the executor of what is considered the sentence of Allah.
IV. The problem is multifarious; it is not only religious but also cultural. This aspect is more acute with Christian than with Jewish communities because Muslims conquered Christian lands and civilization that were then subjected to a deliberate policy of Arabization and Islamization. Take, as an example, Christian pre-Islamic Coptic history: language and culture are a neglected, if not forbidden, domain because it would imply that Muslim history had been imperialistic. But Culture and history are important elements in a group's identity, and there are many Muslim intellectuals who are proud of Egypt's Pharonic and Coptic past. It is the Islamists who reject this past as an infidel culture, a part of the jahaliyah, what existed before Islam, considered taboo. Therefore, I would also suggest further goals, such as:
1) Recovering "Memory," the long history of the dhimmi peoples, of dhimmitude -- the collective, cultural patrimony of Jews and Christians for without their memory and without their history, people fade away and die.
2) Preventing the destruction of Christian historical monuments, either by local governments, or as was done with Abu Simbel, and other sites that now belong to the World's cultural legacy.
V. Discussing "dhimmitude" in academia and elsewhere. This is a Judeo-Christian historical patrimony and those whose heritage it is are entitled to know about it. The discussion of dhimmitude with Muslims, however, is fraught with difficulties. In the eyes of Islamists, and criticism of Islamic law and history is assimilated to a blasphemy. For a dhimmi, it is forbidden to imply that Islamic law has a default, or to contradict the ijma, the consensus. Moreover, the court testimony of a dhimmi against a Muslim is not accepted. Therefore, as dhimmitude is the testimony of dhimmi history -- of Christians and Jews -- under Islamic oppression, it would not be considered valid in traditionalist circles. Besides, the unification of religious and political power transfers the political domain into the religious one, therefore any criticism of Islamic civilization may become, for Islamists and others, a blasphemy.
The case of Farag Foda, and Egyptian Muslim intellectual, who defended the Copts and strongly criticized some Muslim religious authorities was exemplary: he was assassinated in 1992 after a fatwa. In giving his testimony, the late Sheik Muhammad El-Ghazali implicitly justified Foda's assassination on the grounds of apostasy; he stated that anyone opposing the sharia was an apostate and thus deserved death.
VI. Encourage Muslim intellectuals to strive in their own countries and in the West for the defense of equal human rights for Christians and others. The 1981 UNESCO Declaration of Islamic Human Rights and that of Cairo, both conditional on the sharia, are insufficient.
VII. Creation of a team of experts and lawyers -- and not apologists in order to discuss the problem, always stressing that the aim is not to foster anti-Muslim nor anti-Islamic feelings, but to create peace and reconciliation between religions and people, without which the next century will become a bloodbath and clash of civilizations.
He was also a murderer, a common thief and rapist:
BatYeorp43ffMohammedandhisslaughters The following from the expert on the dhimmi under Islam, Bat Ye'or, in The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (pp. 43ff.)
In 624 Muhammad, joined by more followers, called upon the Qaynuqa, one of the Jewish tribes of Medina, to recognize his prophetic mission. When they refused, he besieged and overcame them. On the intercession of one of their protectors---a recent convert to Islam---their lives were spared, but they were expelled from the city, their lands and a part of their possessions being confiscated by the Muslims. The following year the Jewish Nadir tribe suffered a similar fate: Muhammad burned down their palm groves and divided all their fields and houses among thecommunity of Believers. 4
In 627 the Meccans sent a united force to lay siege to the Muslims in Medina but they withdrew suddenly on a stormy night and without fighting. However, guided by the angel Gabriel, Muhammad then turned his host against the Jewish tribe of the Qurayza, who had been neutral during the seige. Because the Jews refused conversion, Muhammad attacked and overwhelmed them. Trenches were then dug in the marketplace of Medina, and the Jews---six to nine hundred of them, according to traditional Muslim sources-----were led forth in batches and decapitated. All the menfolk perished in this way, with the exception of one convert to Islam. The Prophet then divided the women, children, houses, and chattels among the Muslims.5
Shrewd in political matters, Muhammad then endeavored to win over the powerful tibes of Mecca. In 628, taking advantage of a treaty of nonbelligerency (Hudaybiya) with the Meccans,6 he attacked the oasis of Khaybar, one hundred and forty kilometers northwest of Medina, cultivated by another Jewish tribe. The assailants came to the oasis at night and in the morning attacked the peasants as they were coming out to work in the fields, carrying spades and baskets.7 Their palm groves were burned down. After a siege lasting a month and a half, the inhabitants surrendered under the terms of a treaty known as the dhimma. According to this agreement Muhammad allowed the Jews to continue cultivating their oasis, on condition they ceded to him half of their produce; he also reserved the right to break the agreement and expel them whenever he wished.8 Subsequently, all the Jewish and Christian communities of Arabia submitted to the Muslims under the terms of a dhimma similar to that granted at Khaybar
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4. al-Bukhari (d. 869), Les Traditions Islamiques (Al-Sahih), trans. O. Houdas and W. Marcais (Paris, 1903-1914), vol. 2, title 41, chap 6; title 56, chap. 80; 3, chap. 154:2. This compilation of the acts and sayings attributed to Muhammad, completed in the ninth century, constitutes one of the two pillars of Islamic jurisprudence, the other being the contemporary compilation made by his younger disciple, Muslim (d. 875).
5. Idn Ishaq, pp. 461-69; M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet (Paris, 1969), pp. 142-46; W. Montgomery Watt, "Muhammad", in the Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge, 1970), 1:39-49.
6. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, p. 154: Bukhari, vol. 2, title 54, chap. 15.
7. Ibn Ishaq, p. 511; Bukhari, vol. 2, title 56, chaps. 102: 5, 130.
8. Ibn Ishaq, pp. 524-25; Bukhari, vol. 2, title 41, chaps. 8, 9, 11, 17, and title 57, chap. 19: 10. For example of the treaties between Muhammad and the Jews living in Makna (near Eilat), see al-Baladhuri, vol. 1, The Origins of the Islamic State (Kitab Futuh al-Buldan), trans. P.K. Hitti (New York, 1916), pp. 93-94.
And they wiped out the Byzantine Empire the way they wiped out the land of Churches. It's also what they have in store for us. (See the map)
Unfortunatley our present tactics, which will include the same old immigration policies, 0.00% chance of changing them- be realistic: (as many as we can, as fast as we can, and let's wipe out Christendom once and for all) To publicly espouse otherwise is a federal matter. (hate crime). To send us over the cliff faster, we will be killing scores of our own boys internationally, to increase Islamic fervor against us.
We are going in the wrong direction, as fast as we can.
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