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Her books ''[[Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis]]'' and ''Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate'' explored the alleged relationship from the 1970s onwards between the [[European Union]] (previously the [[European Economic Community]]) and the [[Arab world|Arab states]], tracing what she saw as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and [[fascist]]s, [[socialist]]s and [[Nazi]]s, on the other, in what she identified as a growing influence of Islam over European culture and politics.<ref name=Lappen>{{cite news |title=Triple-pronged Jihad -- Military, Economic and Cultural |author=Alyssa A. Lappen |url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/04/triplepronged_jihad_military_e.html |newspaper=[[The American Thinker]] |date=5 April 2005 |accessdate=4 August 2012}}</ref> 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.The notion of "Eurabia" was praised as convincing<ref>{{cite journal | title=Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis | author=William E. Watsona | journal=History: Reviews of New Books | year=2005 | volume=33 | issue=3 | doi=10.1080/03612759.2005.10526593}}</ref> |
Her books ''[[Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis]]'' and ''Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate'' explored the alleged relationship from the 1970s onwards between the [[European Union]] (previously the [[European Economic Community]]) and the [[Arab world|Arab states]], tracing what she saw as connections between radical Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand, and [[fascist]]s, [[socialist]]s and [[Nazi]]s, on the other, in what she identified as a growing influence of Islam over European culture and politics.<ref name=Lappen>{{cite news |title=Triple-pronged Jihad -- Military, Economic and Cultural |author=Alyssa A. Lappen |url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/04/triplepronged_jihad_military_e.html |newspaper=[[The American Thinker]] |date=5 April 2005 |accessdate=4 August 2012}}</ref> 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.The notion of "Eurabia" on one hand was praised as convincing<ref>{{cite journal | title=Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis | author=William E. Watsona | journal=History: Reviews of New Books | year=2005 | volume=33 | issue=3 | doi=10.1080/03612759.2005.10526593}}</ref> and important <ref>{{cite journal | title=Review-Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis | author=Rory Miller | journal=Middle Eastern Studies | year=2006 | volume=42 | issue=4 | doi=10.1080/00263200600664534}}</ref>but on the other hand was dismissed as a conspiracy theory.<ref name=Kundnani /><ref name = Race /><ref name=MorgEur /> |
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==Affiliations== |
==Affiliations== |
Revision as of 14:14, 24 August 2012
Gisèle Littman | |
---|---|
Born | Orebi 1933 (age 90–91) Zamalek, Cairo |
Pen name | Bat Ye'or (Hebrew: בת יאור) |
Occupation | Writer,historian[1][2] |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University College, London, University of Geneva[3] |
Notable works | The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001), Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005) |
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 Middle Eastern Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments.[6] She is widely described as historian[1][2] though never graduated her masters degree [3][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. She and her parents left Egypt in 1957 after the Suez War of 1956,[8] arriving in London as stateless refugees.[9] In 1958 she attended the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London, and 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.[10]
She was married from 1959 to the late British historian and human rights advocate David Littman from whom she got the British nationality. She frequently collaborated with him.[3]
She has provided briefings to the United Nations and the U.S. Congress and has given talks at major universities such as Georgetown, Brown, Yale, Brandeis, and Columbia.[3][11]
Main works
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.
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.It was translated and was published in 1985 by name The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam 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.[12]
Dhimmitude
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.
Ye'or 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. The term itself is made up of the word "dhimmi", which means "protected" in Arabic and "refers to the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule".[13]
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."[14] 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.[15] 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."[16] 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.[17]
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.[18]
Bat Ye'or has focused on the transformation of Eastern Christian lands into Islamic territories, concluding that corruption and division among Christians contributed 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.[citation needed]
Eurabia
Her books Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate explored the alleged 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.[19] 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.The notion of "Eurabia" on one hand was praised as convincing[20] and important [21]but on the other hand was dismissed as a conspiracy theory.[22][2][7]
Affiliations
Bat Ye'Or sits on the Board of Advisors of the International Free Press Society, [23][22] identified as a "key organization" of the Counterjihad-movement. She is considered as its "main ideologue", and conspiracy theories with roots in Ye'or's Eurabia are important to the movement.[22][7]
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]
Sidney Griffith, the head of the department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America wrote in a review of Decline of Eastern Christianity that Ye'or has "raised a topic of vital interest"; adding, however, that the "theoretical inadequacy of the interpretive concepts of jihad and dhimmitude, as they are employed here", and the "want of historical method in the deployments of the documents which serve as evidence for the conclusions reached in the study" serve as dual barriers. He goes on to say "[quotations] are presented out of context, with no analysis or explanation. One has the impression that in their bulk they are simply meant to undergird the contentions made in the first part of the book", concluding that thus Ye'or has "written a polemical tract, not responsible historical analysis." [26]
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."[27]
Matt Carr argues that Bat Ye'or is the "main inspiration" of many conspiracy theories on the far-right. He elaborates: "Stripped of its Islamic content, the broad contours of Ye’or’s preposterous thesis [in Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis] recall the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the first half of the twentieth century and contemporary notions of the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ prevalent in far-right circles in the US".[2] He notes further that Bat Ye'or's analysis is driven by a contempt of "Islam’s celebrated cultural achievements" and a view of Islam as a "perennially barbaric, parasitic and oppressive religion".
British historian Martin Gilbert has called her "the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands"[8] 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."[28]
In a review of The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam Leon Nemoy writing in Jewish Quarterly Review has argued that "Bat Ye'or's book will assuredly fail to convince fanatic Muslim partisans or extreme Western leftists...But perhaps it will induce middle of the road Western readers to acquaint themselves more thoroughly and more accurately with the facts of history and base their final conclusions on these facts and not on unhistorical claims of shrill propagandists."[12]
Works
Books
- Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate, 16 September 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.
Articles
- Many articles published in National Review and FrontPage Magazine.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Bonney, Richard; Trim, David J.B. (2007). The Development of Pluralism in Modern Britain and France. Peter Lang. p. 343. Retrieved 9 August 2012.
- ^ a b c d Matt Carr (July 2006). "You are now entering Eurabia". Race & Class. 48 (1). SAGE Publications: 1–22. doi:10.1177/0306396806066636. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ^ a b c d Julia Duin (30 October 2002). "State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians, Jews". The Washington Times. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Marján, Attila (2010). Europe's Destiny. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 161. ISBN 0-8018-9547-2.
{{cite book}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ Toby Archer, Breivik's Swamp. Was the Oslo killer radicalized by what he read online ?, Foreing Policy, 25 July 2011.
- ^ Sidney H. Griffith (November 1998). "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh-Twentieth Century (review)". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 30 (4). Cambridge University Press: 619–21. doi:10.1017/S0020743800052831. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ a b c "Eurabiske vers" (in Norwegian). Morgenbladet. 19 August 2011. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
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suggested) (help) - ^ a b Gilbert, Martin (1997). A History of the Twentieth Century: 1952-1999. HarperCollins. p. 142. ISBN 068810066X. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
Most of those who went elsewhere did so as 'stateless refugees, among them Gisele Orebi (later Gisele Littman), who was to become the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands, and their vigorous champion: her book The Dhimrni. Jews and Christians under Islam, written under the pen name Bat Ye'or, brought the issue of continuing discrimination to a wide public.
- ^ André Darmon Israel Magazine July 2007 Interview with Bat Ye'or Bat Ye'or - I was born in Egypt, in Cairo, into a family of the Jewish bourgeoisie, of an Italian father and a French mother. My grandfather, to whom Egyptian nationality was accorded by exception, was crowned Bey by the Ottoman sultan. My father decided to renounce Italian nationality as a result of Mussolini's racist laws, but when Nasser came to power, my mother's goods were confiscated because she was French and my father's because he was Jewish. We were forced to stay home, we were chased out of public places and at that moment we decided to flee Egypt. Many fled secretly from fear of being imprisoned. We were forced, like all Egyptian Jews, to sign papers according to which we renounced all our goods, our passport and our nationality, for those who had it, since the Jews had been for the most part Ottoman subjects and not Egyptian. The Jews promised in writing not to demand anything of the Egyptian State. The only right we had was to take one suitcase, which was searched and thrown to the ground and 20 Egyptian pounds that were taken from us anyway by the customs officials, not to mention the insults and acts of terror in front of my parents, both of whom were invalids.
- ^ a b John W. Whitehead (9 June 2005). "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis An interview with Bat Ye'or". The Rutherford Institute. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Nidra Poller (7 February 2005). "The Brave New World of Eurabia". The New York Sun. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ a b Leon Nemoy The Jewish Quarterly Review,New Ser.,Vol.76,No.2. (Oct.,1985),pp.162-164 Obviously the principal part of the book is the documentary section, which offers to the reader the original views of Muslim theologians and jurists on the general relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and on how non-Muslim minorities should be treated, as well as the testimony of both non-Muslim minority individuals and foreign observers as to what the Dhimmi's life was actually like. One might conceivably disagree here and there with Mme. Bat Ye'or's conclusions drawn from these documents, but one cannot challenge the original Muslim texts, or characterize all the factual accounts of both Dhimmis and foreign observers (some-if not most-of the latter were not exactly philosemites) as a pack of lies pikes justificatives are essentially highly reliable from beginning to end. These testimonies by eyewitnesses on the actual circumstances of non-Muslim life under Muslim rule throughout the medieval and modern periods of history.
- ^ Staff writer (19 June 2005). "What is 'dhimmitude'?". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
- ^ Julia Duin (30 October 2002). "Islam's 'idealistic version of itself' not quite the reality". The Washington Times. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Ye'or, Bat (10 October 2002). Dhimmitude Past and Present : An Invented or Real History? (Speech). C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureship. Brown University. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Donna Desrochers (28 February 2002). "Americans should educate themselves about jihad's "culture of hate," says WSRC speaker". Brandeis University. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Rod Dreher (29 October 2002). "Damned If You Do". The National Review. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Bat Ye’or (1 July 2002). "Jihad and Human Rights Today". The National Review. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ Alyssa A. Lappen (5 April 2005). "Triple-pronged Jihad -- Military, Economic and Cultural". The American Thinker. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ^ William E. Watsona (2005). "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis". History: Reviews of New Books. 33 (3). doi:10.1080/03612759.2005.10526593.
- ^ Rory Miller (2006). "Review-Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis". Middle Eastern Studies. 42 (4). doi:10.1080/00263200600664534.
- ^ a b c Arun Kundnani (June, 2012). "Blind Spot? Security Narratives and Far-Right Violence in Europe" (pdf). International Centre for Counter-terrorism. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - ^ "International 'Counter-Jihadist' organisations - The International Free Press Society (IFPS) Network". Counter-jihad report. HOPE not hate. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
- ^ Qureshi, Emran; Sells, Michael Anthony (2003). The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy. Columbia University Press. p. 364. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ^ Robert Brenton Betts (September 1997). "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (review)". Middle East Policy. 5 (3). Wiley-Blackwell: 200–203. Retrieved 4 August 2012. (subscription required)
- ^ Griffith, Sidney H., "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude", International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Nov., 1998), pp. 619-621.
- ^ Beinin, Joel (2005). The Dispersion Of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, And The Formation Of A Modern Diaspora. American University in Cairo Press. p. 15. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ^ Ruthie Blum Leibowitz (22 February 2007). "One on One with Sir Martin Gilbert: Hindsight and aforethought". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
External links
- Dhimmi.org and Dhimmitude.org, websites maintained by Bat Ye'or