Hello Friends,
Pamella Geller interviews Bat Ye'or one of the world's leading scholars on islam. Bat Ye'or (in Hebrew means Daughter of the Nile) is the pseudonym of Gisele Littman an Egyptian born author and scholar. She fled her native Egypt and authored many books about non muslims living in Islamic countries and the influence of Islam on the world as a whole. Her book "Eurabia:The Euro-Arab Axis coined the now famous term Eurabia.
In this interview Bat Ye'or gives a history lesson starting in WW II with Islam's collaboration with the Nazis and ends in the present. It is a warning and should be listened to and comprehended cause she explains the ramifications and inherent dangers facing the western world extremely well.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Bat Ye'or you'll find a Wikipedia bio below the video. The interview was 90 minutes long but the first part is just under 40 minutes. When the rest is available I'll post it here.
Shalom,
Peter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=17Wtui1WYgs#!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bat Ye'or (Hebrew: בת יאור, meaning "daughter of the Nile") is a pseudonym of Gisèle Littman, née Orebi, an Egyptian-born British writer and political commentator who writes about the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East, and in particular the history of Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
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).
Early life
Bat Ye'or was born into a Jewish family in Cairo, Egypt, but she and her parents were forced to leave Egypt in 1957 after the Israeli attack on Egypt during the Suez War of 1956,[8] arriving in London as stateless refugees.[9] 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.[10]
She described her experiences in the following manner:
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 was married to the late British historian and human rights advocate David Littman, with whom she frequently collaborated.[11]
She has provided briefings to the United Nations and the U.S. Congress[12] and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.[13][11]
Research
In 1971 her first history text was published (under the Arabic pen name "Yahudiya Masriya", meaning "Egyptian Jewess"), The Jews of Egypt, in which she chronicled the history of the Jewish community in Egypt.[14]
In 1980 Le Dhimmi: Profil de l'opprimé en Orient et en Afrique du Nord depuis la conquête Arabe (The Dhimmi: Profile of the oppressed in the Orient and in North Africa since the Arab conquest) was published. In this she provided a historical survey of the views of Islamic theologians and jurists on the treatment of non-Muslim populations in lands ruled by Islam from the 7th century onwards. The text was supplemented by voluminous primary source correspondence and testimonies of inside and outside observers over the centuries.[15]
In 1991 Les Chrétientés d'Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude: VIIe-XXe siècle. (The Christians of the Orient between Jihad and Dhimmitude: seventh to twentieth centuries) was published. The study aimed to analyze the function of "dhimmitude" within the context of jihad and sharia. The second half of the book was composed of extensive listing of passages from documents that the author saw as describing acts perpetrated by Muslims against the dhimmi population.
In 2002 Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide was published. In this study Bat Ye'or further examined the legal and social condition of "dhimmi" populations using various religious and historical sources.
Her most recent book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis explored 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 saw as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and fascists, socialists and Nazis, on the other, in what she identified as a growing influence of Islam over European culture and politics.[16] She popularized the use of term "Eurabia" in a particular sense, although the term was first used as a title of a 1970s journal of an organization promoting European-Arab friendship. Her definition was as follows:
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.
Theses
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," and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation."[17] 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.[18] 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."[19] 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.[20]
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!
Though Bat Ye'or acknowledges that not all Muslims subscribe to so-called "militant jihad theories of society," she argues that the role of 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.[21]
Bat Ye'or has focused on the rapid transformation of Eastern Christian lands into Islamic territories, concluding that corruption and division among Christians contributed[22] 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.[23]
Reception
Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago, argued 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."[24]
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."[25]
According to the American scholar Joel Beinin, Bat Ye'or exemplifies the "neo-lachrymose" perspective on Egyptian Jewish history. According to Beinin, this perspective has been "consecrated" as "the normative Zionist interpretation of the history of Jews in Egypt"; it draws its authority from Bat Ye'or's claim to authenticity as an Egyptian Jew and has "won broad acceptance among both scholars and the general public in Israel and the West."[26]
Irshad Manji describes her as "a scholar who dumps cold water on any dreamy view of how Muslims have historically dealt with the “other".”[27]
According to journalist Adi Schwartz from Haaretz, the fact that she is not an academic and has never taught at any university, but has worked as an independent researcher, has, along with her opinions, made her a controversial figure. He quotes professor Robert Wistrich, head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, who notes that "[u]p until the 1980s, she was not accepted at all. In academic circles they scorned her publications. Only when Bernard Lewis published the book 'Jews of Islam' with quotations from Bat Ye'or did they begin to pay any attention to her. A real change toward her emerged in the 1990s, and especially in recent years."[28]
Craig R. Smith in a New York Times article referred to her as one of the "most extreme voices on the new Jewish right."[29]
Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifaoui wrote:
What is outrageous and unacceptable in Bat Ye'or's approach, is to see her reproducing an intellectual conspiracy-theory, a shameless propaganda, a way of thinking which she herself was a victim of, as well as millions of her coreligionists. Because, basically, these cries of outrage are not very different than "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", this hoax created by the tsarist police in order to demonize the Jews, all jews. It mimics, in some way, "The Jewish France", the book of the nineteenth century anti-Semitic journalist Edouard Drumont who suggested that his country was dominated by Jews.[30]
According to David Aaronovitch:
[Eurabia] is a concept created by a writer called Bat Ye’or who, according to the publicity for her most recent book, "chronicles Arab determination to subdue Europe as a cultural appendage to the Muslim world — and Europe's willingness to be so subjugated". This, as students of conspiracy theories will recognise, is the addition of the Sad Dupes thesis to the Enemy Within idea.[31]
British historian Martin Gilbert has called her "the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands"[32] In a Jerusalem Post interview, referring to Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis he stated "I've read Bat Yeor's book. I know her and have a great respect for her sense of anguish... I'm saying that her book - which is 100 percent accurate - is an alarm call that will ultimately prevent what she's warning about from taking place."[33]
Bruce Bawer writes on Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis that "[n]o book explains the European Muslim situation, in all its complexity, more ably," "[i]t’s hard to overstate this book’s importance." "Eurabia is eye-opening and required reading for anyone seriously interested in understanding Europe’s current predicament and its probable fate."[34]
According to Daniel Pipes,
Bat Ye'or has traced a nearly secret history of Europe over the past thirty years, convincingly showing how the Euro-Arab Dialogue has blossomed from a minor discussion group into the engine for the continent's Islamization. In delineating this phenomenon, she also provides the intellectual resources with which to resist it. Will her message be listened to?[35]
Robert Spencer, an American writer on the West's relationship with Islam, described her as "the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, of the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law". He argued that she had turned this area, which he believed the "Middle East studies establishment" has hitherto been afraid of or indifferent to, into a field of academic study.[36] British writer David Pryce-Jones called her a "Cassandra, a brave and far-sighted spirit."[37]
Johannes J.G. Jansen, Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Leiden University, wrote that "In 1985, Bat Ye'or offered Islamic studies a surprise with her book, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, a convincing demonstration that the notion of a traditional, lenient, liberal, and tolerant Muslim treatment of the Jewish and Christian minorities is more myth than reality."[38]
According to historian Niall Ferguson, "future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term 'Eurabia' as prophetic. Those who wish to live in a free society must be eternally vigilant. Bat Ye’or’s vigilance is unrivalled."[39]
Works
Books
- Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate, to be published September 16, 2011, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 1-61147-445-0
- Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, 2005, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-4077-X
- Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, 2001, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3942-9; ISBN 0-8386-3943-7 (with David Littman, translated by Miriam Kochan)
- The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude;seventh-twentieth century, 1996, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3678-0; ISBN 0-8386-3688-8 (paperback).
- The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, 1985, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 0-8386-3233-5; ISBN 0-8386-3262-9 (paperback). (with David Maisel, Paul Fenton and David Littman; foreword by Jacques Ellul)
- Les Juifs en Egypte, 1971, Editions de l'Avenir, Geneva (in French, title translates as "The Jews in Egypt")
- Verso il Califfato Universale: Come l’Europa è diventata complice dell’espansionismo musulmano, Lindau, Torino: May 2009. ("Toward the Universal Caliphate: How Europe Became an Accomplice of Muslim Expansionism")
Book chapters
- 17 chapters in Robert Spencer (ed.), The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, 2005. ISBN 1-59102-249-5.
- "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, Cassell, London/New York 1999; Continuum, 2001, ISBN 0-8264-4764-3 (pp. 33–51).
- "A Christian Minority. The Copts in Egypt" in W. A. Veehoven (ed.), Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A World Survey. 4 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, ISBN 90-247-1779-5.