Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide

This is one of dozens of books I used to mine historical information for my seminar on Understanding Islam. It explores the origins of Jihad and its application throughout history. The picture it paints is not a pretty one. One must keep in mind that Mohammed respected Christians and Jews in his earlier days. Then things went horribly wrong.

Met all my expectations. Bat Ye'or is a first class historian.

Chilling info on Muslim domination.

This was the first book I read for Pat Ye'Or.Pat provides an excellent view of the collision of the Arabic so called civilization with almost all other civilizations. The historical facts in the book are so well referenced.Pat, I admire you for your excellent work. Keep it up.

Many in the free West do not know what history the Islam has. Bat Yeor has written a book about what Islam did in the period from 700 till 1400. EVERY FREE man should read this. If you know the past, then the future will NOT surprise you

This is an extremely well researched book which should be required reading for anyone who seriously wishes to understand the world of Islam. An excellent exposition of the struggle to exist that non-Muslims have had living in Islamic countries. It also puts into perspective the struggles Israel has had to exist surrounded by Islamic states. Islam is not just another religion and Bat Yeor's detailed research and analysis makes the case for the reasons it should be regarded as a threat to the western world.

Is this the only book you will ever need to read about conflicts in the Middle East? No. But it is the best of them.A book about the denial of human rights to non-Whites in the antebellum American South would not be flattering to slave owners. Similarly, this book is not flattering to those who deny rights to non-Muslims. While being a "dhimmi" literally means being "protected," the word is used in the same sense as "protection money." "Dhimmitude" is basically the denial of human rights to non-Muslims.Bat Ye'or points out three aspects of dhimmitude. First is political, the invariable choice to oppose rights for non-Muslims. Second is historical, the construction of a set of arbitrary lies and taunts regarding non-Muslims, a denial and destruction of non-Muslim history, and the invention of a bogus Muslim history. Third is theological, the development of religious attacks on non-Muslims and the generation of specifically anti-Jewish and anti-Christian theologies.Bat Ye'or is at her best when she shows how all this has played out in real life. She shows how dhimmitude has led to inter-dhimmi conflicts, with Christians leaving the Middle East in droves while those Christians who remain are pressured to renounce the Old Testament and join (or even lead) the attacks on Jewish rights in Israel.

It is a dominant theme of the literature on the Jewish Diaspora that Jews in Muslim lands were treated better than Jews among Christians. It is repeated like a mantra, every student of Jewish history or of Islamic studies must learn it and repeat it, until it becomes myth. This excellent study is one of the few to challenge this dominat view. Today academics encourage the propoganda that Islam is 'more tolerant' than Christianity. However here we are given a small taste of that 'tolerance'. Dhimmi is a word meaning 'protected'. However just as the Nazis created concentration camps to 'protect' the Jews the word itself can be used in many ways. This book analyzes the experience of Jews in Muslim lands. Some have accused this work of 'only' concentrating on the negative aspects of Muslim-Jewish relations, however this is just the point, a litany of works have focused on this subject in Europe, it time that the dust be taken from the truth about Islamic nations.Partly the problem rests on lack of sources and literature, this book begins to fill this essential gap.A second way to analyze the question of which Jews were 'better off' is to see the end result. If Muslim lands were 'better' to the Jews then why did the Jews of Europe become free and wealthy? Why were there more Jews in Europe than muslim lands despite persecution, endless forced conversion and murder due to claims that Jews created the black death? Jews numbered 12 million in Christian lands while they numbered only a million in Muslim ones in 1930. By 1945 the numbers were 6 million and 1 million. By 1967 the numbers were 8 million and 50,000.Seth J. Frantzman

That most of Islam is today drastically hostile to Jews is obvious and is often explained as being the result of Zionism. But Bat Ye'or sets out to demolish the widely held idea that in CLASSICAL Islam the dhimmis (Protected People - Jews and Christians) had lived reasonably comfortably under Muslim rule in those centuries. She cites countless examples of humiliations that were deliberately inflicted on dhimmis, the uncertainty of their lives and of their possessions. I am sure that what she says about the maltreatment of Jews is correct and that is a valuable corrective to some received ideas. But because she concentrates entirely on this, and because her 528-page book finds no place for a discussion of the so-called "Golden Age" in Spain or of Jews and Jewish culture flourishing in ancient Iraq,in Egypt and in the early Ottoman centuries, it leaves an unfortunate impression of having been written with a partisan agenda.