THE MYTH OF

ISLAMIC TOLERANCE

This enlightening collection of essays by some of the world's leading authorities on Islamic
social history focuses on the pervasive legal and cultural oppression of nonMuslims in Islamic
societies. The authors of these in-depth but accessible articles explode the widely diffused myth,
promulgated by Muslim advocacy groups, of a largely tolerant, pluralistic Islam. In fact, the
contributors lay bare the tyrannical legal superstructure that has treated non-Muslims in Muslim
societies as oppressed and humiliated tributaries, and they show the devastating effects of these
discriminatory attitudes and practices in both past and contemporary global conflicts.
The insightful chapters presented in The Myth of Islamic Tolerance explain how the legally
mandated SUbjugation of nonMuslims under Islamic law stems from the Muslim concept of jihad-
the spread of Islam through conquest. Historically, the Arab Muslim conquerors overran vast
territories containing diverse non-Muslim populations. Many of these conquered people surrendered
to Muslim domination under a special treaty called dhimma in Arabic. As such, these nonMuslim
indigenous populations, mainly Christians and Jews, were then classified under Islamic law as
dhimmis (meaning "protected"). Although protected status may sound benign, this classification in
fact referred, most importantly, to "protection" from the resumption of the jihad against nonMuslims.
The authors maintain that underlying this religious caste system is a culturally

(continued on back flap)

THE MYTH OF

ISLAMIC
TOLERANCE
HOW ISLAMIC LAW
TREATS NON-MUSLIMS
THE MYTH OF

ISLAMIC
TOLERANCE
HOW ISLAMIC LAW
TREATS NON-MUSLIMS

EDITED BY ROBERT SPENCER

Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228-2197
 Published 2005 by Prometheus Books

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims. Copyright © 2(K)5 by Robert Spencer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the
Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The myth of Islamic tolerance : how Islamic law treats non-Muslims / edited by Robert Spencer.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-59102-249-5
I. Dhimmis. 2. Religious minorities—Legal status, laws, etc.—Islamic countries.
I. Spencer, Robert, 1962-

KBP2449.M98 2004
297.2’8—dc22
 CONTENTS

Foreword: The Genesis of a Myth

Ibn Warraq

Part 1. Islamic Tolerance: Myth and Reality

1. The Myth of Islamic Tolerance

Robert Spencer
The Myth of Islamic Tolerance
History as Politics:
The Uses of the Myth of Islamic Tolerance
The Current Myth and the Current Reality
Non-Muslims in the Qur’an
Non-Muslims in the Hadith
Non-Muslims in Islamic Jurisprudence
Radical Muslim Theorists on Non-Muslims

Part 2. Islamic Law Regarding Non-Muslims

Introduction
Robert Spencer

2. Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State

Samuel Shahid

3. The Jizya Tax: Equality and Dignity under Islamic Law?

Walter Short

Part 3. Islamic Practice Regarding Non-Muslims

Introduction
Robert Spencer

4. Protected Peoples under Islam

David G. Littman and Bat Ye ‘or

5. Historical Amnesia: Naming Jihad and Dhimmitude

Bat Ye’or

6. Dhimmi Peoples: Oppressed Nations

Bat Ye ‘or

7. Dhimmitude: Jews and Christians under Islam

Bat Ye ‘or

Part 4. The Myth and Contemporary Geopolitics

Introduction
Robert Spencer

8. Past Is Prologue: The Challenge of Islamism Today

Bat Ye ‘or

9. Oriental Jewry and the Dhimmi Image in

Contemporary Arab Nationalism
Bat Ye ‘or

10. Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Bat Ye ‘or

11. Euro-Arab Anti-Zionism

Bat Ye ‘or

12. The Oppression of Middle East Christians:

A Forgotten Tragedy
Walid Phares

13. A Christian Minority: The Copts in Egypt

Bat Ye ‘or

14. Eastern Christians Torn Asunder: Challenges—New and Old

Bat Ye ‘or

15. Christians in the Muslim World

Patrick Sookhdeo

16. Persecution of Jews and Christians: Testimony versus Silence

Bat Ye ‘or

17. What Is Happening in Indonesia?

Mark Durie

18. Documentation of Oppression of Religious Freedom in

Aceh, Indonesia
Mark Durie

19. Jihad and Human Rights Today: An Active Ideology Incompatible with Universal
Standards of Freedom and Equality
Bat Ye’or

20. Culture of Hate: A Racism That Denies the History and

Sufferings of its Victims
Bat Ye’or
21. The Dhimmitude of the West
Mark Durie

22. Beyond Munich: The Spirit of Eurabia

Bat Ye’or

23. Eurabia: The Road to Munich

Bat Ye ‘or

24. The Islamic Conquest of Britain

Srdja Trijkovic

25. Something Rotten in Denmark?

Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard

Part 5. Human Rights and Human Wrongs at the United Nations

Introduction
David G. Littman and Robert Spencer

26. Islamism Grows Stronger at the United Nations

David G. Littman

27. Universal Human Rights and “Human Rights in Islam”

David G. Littman

28. “Blasphemy” at the United Nations and Judeophobia in the Arab-Muslim World
David G. Littman

29. Dangerous Censorship of a UN Special Rapporteur

Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman

30. Judeophobia Today = Anti-Judaism/Anti-Zionism/Antisemitism: A Growing “Culture of

Hate”
AWE Written Statement to the Sixtieth Session of the UNCHC

31. The Ideology of Jihad: Antisemitism/Genocide/Slavery in the Sudan

Robert S. Wistrich

32. The Alarming Growth of Judeophobia/Antisemitism Since the Vienna World Conference
on Human Rights (1993) and the UN Decade for Human Rights Education: 1995-2004
WUPJ Written Statement Submitted to the Sixtieth Session of the UNCHR

33. “Free at Last”: Slaves in Sudan/Disappearing Jews of Iran: Their History

David G. Littman

34. The Ancient Jewish Community of Iran: End Silence, Disappearances, Discrimination,
“Dhimmitude”
 WUPJ Statement to the Sixtieth Session of the UNCHR

35. The Remnant Dhimmi Populations of the Middle East and North Africa: Forgotten Jewish
Refugees and Persecuted Indigenous Christian Communities
David G. Littman

36. Historical Facts and Figures: The Forgotten Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries
WUPJ Written Statement to the Fifty-fifth Session of the UNCHR’s Sub-Commission

37. Discrimination in the Egyptian Criminal Justice System: The Exemplary Case of Dr.
Neseem Abdel Malek— Grave Attacks and Discrimination against Copts
AWE Written Statement to the Sixtieth Session of the UNCHR

38. “Rushdie Affair”: Syndrome and Historical Overview— the Right to Life and Human
Rights Mechanisms
AWE Written Statement to the Sixtieth Session of the UNCHR

39. Blasphemy Legislation in Pakistan’s Penal Code

AWE Written Statement to the Fiftieth Session of the UNCHR’s Sub-Commission

40. Universality of International Human Rights Treaties

David G. Littman

41. Homage to UN High Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello

David G. Littman

42. International Bill of Human Rights: Universality/International Standards/National

Practices
AWE Statement to the Fifty-fifth Session of the UNCHR’s Sub-Commission

43. Combating Defamation of Religions

Roy Brown

44. Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and Belief— New Threats to the Freedom of Opinion
and Expression: A General View of Apostasy
Ibn Warraq

45. Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and Belief— New Threats to the Freedom of Opinion
and Expression: A Concrete Proposal
Shafique Keshavjee

46. Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and Belief— New Threats to the Freedom of Opinion
and Expression: Pakistani Blasphemy Law
Muhammad Younus Shaikh

47. Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and Belief— New Threats to the Freedom of Opinion
and Expression: The Problem of Apostasy in an Islamic-Christian Context
Paul Cook
48. Utopia: A “United States of Abraham”
David G. Littman

49. Yasir’s Terrorist Jesus

David G. Littman

Part 6. The Myth in Contemporary Academic and Public Discourse

Introduction
Robert Spencer

50. Edward Said and the Saidists: Or Third World Intellectual Terrorism
Ibn Warraq

51. Jihad and the Professors

Daniel Pipes

52. The Islamic Disinformation Lobby: American Muslim Groups’ Politically Motivated
Distortions of Islam
Robert Spencer

53. ‘Isa, the Muslim Jesus

Mark Durie

54. Islam and the Dhimmis

Bat Ye ‘or

55. Answering Al-Azhar

Bat Ye ‘or

56. Islam, Taboo, and Dialogue:

Reclaiming Historic Truths in Seeking Present-Day Solutions
Bat Ye ‘or

57. Israel, Christianity, and Islam: The Challenge of the Future

Bat Ye ‘or

58. Honest Intellectuals Must Shed Their Spiritual Turbans

Ibn Warraq

Contributors
 FOREWORD
THE GENESIS OF A MYTH
Ibn Warraq

ISLAM AND MINORITIES

I slam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social, and Apolitical life of
mankind in all its aspects; the life of its followers without qualification; and the life of those who
follow the so-called tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from getting in the
way of Islam in any way. And I mean Islam, I do not accept some spurious distinction between Islam
and “‘Islamic fundamentalism” or “Islamic terrorism.” The terrorists who planted bombs in Madrid;
those responsible for the deaths of more than two thousand people on September 11, 2001, in New
York and Washington, DC; and the ayatollahs of Iran were and are all acting canoni-cally; their
actions reflect the teachings of Islam, whether found in the Qur’an, in the acts and sayings of the
Prophet, or Islamic law based on them.
Islamic law, the Sharia, is the total collection of theoretical laws that apply in an ideal Muslim
community, one that has surrendered to the will of God. It is based, according to Muslims, on divine
authority that must be accepted without criticism, without doubts and questions. It is an all-
embracing system of duties to God, and it controls the entire life of the believer and the Islamic
community. Islamic law intrudes into every nook and cranny of the life of an individual, who is not
free to think for himself.
Given the totalitarian nature of Islamic law, Islam does not value the individual, who has to be
sacrificed for the sake of the Islamic community. Collectivity has a special sanctity under Islam.
Under these conditions, minorities are not tolerated. Expressing one’s opinion or changing one’s
religion—the act of apostasy—is punishable by death.
Under Muslim law, the male apostate must be put to death, as long as he is an adult and in full
possession of his faculties. If a pubescent boy apostatizes, he is imprisoned until he comes of age,
when, if he persists in rejecting Islam, he must be put to death. Drunkards and the mentally disturbed
are not held responsible for their apostasy. If a person has acted under compulsion he is not
considered an apostate, his wife is not divorced, and his lands are not forfeited. According to Hanafis
and Shia, a woman is imprisoned until she repents and adopts Islam once more, but according to the
influential Ibn Hanbal, and the Malikis and Shafiites, she is also put to death. In general, execution
must be by the sword, though there are examples of apostates tortured to death, strangled, burned,
drowned, impaled, or flayed. The caliph Umar used to tie them to a post and had lances thrust into
their hearts, and the Sultan Baybars II (1308-1309) made torture legal.
And the absence of any mention of apostasy in the penal codes of some contemporary Islamic
countries in no way implies that a Muslim is free to leave his religion. In reality, the lacunae in the
penal codes are filled by Islamic law, as in the case of Muhammad Taha, executed for apostasy in the
Sudan in 1985, and hundreds of others have been executed for apostasy in Iran in recent years: for
example, in 1998 Ruhollah Rowhani, fifty-two years old, was hanged for converting to the Bahai
faith.
All Islamic human rights schemes, such as the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human
Rights, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, and so on, severely restrict and qualify the
rights of women as well as minorities such as non-Muslims and apostates, unbelievers, and heretics,
who do not accept Islamic religious orthodoxy.
As for religious minorities, the relations of Muslims and non-Muslims are set in a context of a
war: jihad. The totalitarian nature of Islam is nowhere more apparent than in the concept of jihad, the
holy war, whose ultimate aim is to conquer the entire world and submit it to the one true faith, to the
law of Allah. To Islam alone has been granted the truth—there is no possibility of salvation outside
it. It is the sacred duty—an incumbent religious duty established in the Qur’an and the Traditions—
of all Muslims to bring it to all humanity. Jihad is a divine institution, enjoined specially for the
purpose of advancing Islam. Muslims must strive, fight, and kill in the name of God:
Q. 9.5-6: “Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them.”
Q. 4.76: “Those who believe tight in the cause of God.”
Q. 8.12: “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Infidels, strike off their heads then, and strike
off from them every fingertip.”

Mankind is divided into two groups: Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslims are members of
the Islamic community, the umma, who possess territories in the dar al-Islam, the Land of Islam,
where the edicts of Islam are fully promulgated. The non-Muslims are the Harbi, people of the dar
al-Harb, the Land of Warfare—any country belonging to the infidels that has not been subdued by
Islam but that, nonetheless, is destined to pass into Islamic jurisdiction either by conversion or by war
(jarb). All acts of war are permitted in the dar al-Harb. Once the dar al-Harb has been subjugated,
the Harbi become prisoners of war. The imam can do what he likes to them, depending on the
circumstances.
In other cases, they are sold into slavery, exiled, or treated as dhimmis, who are tolerated as
second-class subjects as long as they pay the kharaj, a kind of land tax, and the jizya, the poll tax,
which has to be paid individually at a humiliating public ceremony to remind the non-Muslim
minorities that they are inferior to the believers, the Muslims. In all litigation between a Muslim and
a dhimmi, the validity of the oath or testimony of the dhimmi is not recognized. In other words, since
a dhimmi is not allowed to give evidence against a Muslim, his Muslim opponent always gets off
scot-free. No Muslim can be executed for having committed any crime against a dhimmi.
Accusations of blasphemy against dhimmis are quite frequent, and the penalty is capital punishment.
A non-Muslim man may not marry a Muslim woman. I should emphasize that all these principles are
not merely of historical interest but are indeed still applied against non-Muslims in modern Iran,
Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, to name but a few countries.
Muslims are certain that Islam is not only the whole of God’s truth, but also its final
expression. Hence Muslims fear and persecute such post-Islamic religious movements as the Bahais
and the Ahmadis. Here is Amnesty Inter-national on the plight of the Ahmadis: “Ahmadis consider
themselves to be Muslims but they are regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because they call
the founder of their movement al-Masih [the Messiah]: this is taken to imply that Muhammad is not
the final seal of the prophets as orthodox Islam holds, i.e., the Prophet who carried the final message
from God to humanity. … As a result of these divergences, Ahmadis have been subjected to
discrimination and persecution in some Islamic countries. In the mid-1970s, the Saudi Arabia based
World Muslim League called on Muslim gov-ernments worldwide to take action against Ahmadis.
Ahmadis are since then banned in Saudi Arabia.”1
But what of putative Islamic tolerance? Those apologists who continue to perpetuate the myth
of Islamic tolerance should contemplate the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran;
the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand
Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the
entire Jewish community of four thousand in Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the
Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseam.

THE GENESIS OF A MYTH

But how did the myth of Islamic tolerance arise?

The uncritical attitude toward Islam and the genesis of the myth of Islamic tolerance must be
seen against the more general intellectual background of Europe’s first encounter with non-European
civilizations, especially in the sixteenth century—the age of exploration—when the notion of the
“noble savage” was first fully developed. Of course, well before the discovery of the Americas, the
Greeks and the Romans had had the corresponding myth of a golden age and the virtues of the
barbarians. Even the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden is but a variation of the
idea of a golden age of simplicity and natural virtue that our ancestors puta-tively enjoyed in an
unspoiled, ecologically sound wilderness.
In his Germania, written in 98 CE, Roman historian Tacitus contrasts the virtues of the
Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome, the noble simplicity with the corruption and
pretentiousness of Roman civilization. Sig-nificantly, as an “ethnological treatise it was singularly
incoherent,”2 but it worked well as a morality tale. Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
Edward Gibbon were all influenced by it.
Perhaps the real founder of the sixteenth-century doctrine of the noble savage was Peter
Martyr Anglerius (1459-1525), contrasting the Spaniards with the Indians, whom he considered to be
happier, being free of the anxieties of contemporary Spaniards.3
But it was left to Montaigne (1533-1592), under the influence of Peter Martyr, to develop the
first full-length portrait of the noble savage in his celebrated essay “On Cannibals” (c. 1580), which
is also the source of the idea of cultural relativism. Deriving his rather shaky information from a
plain, simple fellow, Montaigne describes some of the more gruesome customs of the Brazilian
Indians and concludes: “I am not so anxious that we should note the horrible savagery of these acts as
concerned that, whilst judging their faults so correctly, we should be so blind to our own. I consider it
more bar barous to eat a man alive than to eat him dead; to tear by rack and torture a body still full of
feeling, to roast it by degrees, and then give it to be trampled and eaten by dogs and swine—a
practice which we have not only read about but seen within recent memory, not between ancient
enemies, but between neighbours and fellow-citizens and, what is worse, under the cloak of piety and
religion—than to roast and eat a man after he is dead.”4
Elsewhere in the essay, Montaigne emphazises their inevitable simplicity, state of purity, and
freedom from corruption. Even their “fighting is entirely noble.” Like Tacitus and Peter Martyr,
Montaigne’s rather dubious secondhand knowledge of these noble savages does not prevent him from
criticizing and morally condemning his own culture and civilization: “[We] surpass them in every
kind of barbarity.”5
The sevententh century saw the first truly sympathetic accounts of Islam, but the most
influential of these, those of Pierre Jurieu and Pierre Bayle, served the same purpose as those of
Tacitus, Peter Martyr, and Montaigne. Let us hear Jurieu:

It may be truly said that there is no comparison between the cruelty of the Saracens
against the Christians, and that of Popery against the true believers. In the war against the
Vaudois, or in the massacres alone on St. Bartholomew’s Day, there was more blood spilt upon
account of religion, than was spilt by the Saracens in all their persecutions of the Christians. It
is expedient to cure men of this prejudice; that Mahometanism is cruel sect [sic], which was
 propagated by putting men to their choice of death, or the abjuration of Christianity. This is in
no wise true; and the conduct of the Saracens was an evangelical meekness in comparison to
that of Popery, which exceeded the cruelty of the cannibals.6

The whole import of Jurieu’s Lettres Pastorales (1686-89) only becomes clear when we
realize that Jurieu was a Huguenot pastor, the sworn enemy of Bossuet, and he was writing from
Holland after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He is using the apparent tolerance of the
Muslims to criticise Roman Catholicism—for him the Saracen’s “evangelical meekness” is a way of
contrasting Catholicism’s own barbarity as on St. Bartholomew’s Day.
Bayle (1647-1706) was much influenced by Jurieu and continued the myth of Islamic
tolerance, which persists to this day. He contrasts the toler-ance of the Turks to the persecutions of
Brahmans in India by the Portuguese, and the barbarities exercised by the Spaniards in America.
“[The Muslims] have always had more humanity for other religions than the Christians.”7 Bayle was
a champion of toleration—was he not himself the victim of intolerance and forced to flee to Holland?
For Jurieu and Bayle in the seventeenth century, Turk was synonymous with Muslim; thus
Turkish tolerance turned into Muslim tolerance in general. Between them, they showed no
knowledge whatsoever of the early persecutions of Christians and Jews, the massacres of Hindus and
Buddhists in the early conquest of the Indian province of Sind, the intolerance of the Almo-hads, and
the persecution of the Zoroastrians, especially in the province of Khurasan. Even in their beloved
Turkey, they seem unaware of the slaughter of Christians in the fall of Constantinople, when the
streets literally ran with blood—there was not much evangelical meekness in evidence then. Nor do
they refer to the inhumane system of the Devshirme in operation in contemporary Turkey. Many
religious minorities sought and found refuge in Turkey to escape Catholic or Orthodox persecution:
Jewish refugees from Spain after their expulsion in 1492 and 1496, known as the Marranos;
Calvinists of Hungary; and others from Russia and Silesia. But they were there on sufferance,
tolerated as second-class citizens. It was quite illegitimate of Jurieu and Bayle to talk of Muslim
tolerance in general on the basis of their scanty knowledge of Islamic history, since the situation
varied enormously from century to century, country to country, ruler to ruler. One thing is certain—
there never was an interfaith Utopia.
Even in seventeenth-century Turkey, so admired by Bayle and Jurieu, the situation was far
from rosy. Here is how the English ambassador at Constan-tinople described the scene in 1662:

This present Vizier degenerates nothing from the tyranie, & severitie of his father, but
rather exceeds him in a naturall abhorrencie of Christians & their religion. For those churches,
that were 2 yeares past burnt down in Galata & Const:ple, the ground was purchased at a deare
rate from the Grand Sig:r by the Greekes, Armenians, & Romanists; but not with licence to
build in the forme of Churches; or therein use any more rites, or services of religion. But these
religions being too forward in their zeale, not only reedifyed them in the fashion of Churches,
but resorted theither publickly to their divine service; wch the vizier hath made use of, as a
wellcome opportunitie to demolish, & levell their Churches with the ground, wch hee doth
with much passion, & malice, & comitted those who had the chiefe hand in the building to a
severe imprisonment, excepting only my chiefe Druggerman, or interpreter who yet escapes
free from any molestation by that security hee enioyes under my protection.8

Here is how scholar Bat Ye’or sums up the situation in the “tolerant” Turkish empire: “For
strategic reasons the Turks forced the populations of the frontier region of Macedonia and the north
of Bulgaria to convert, notably in the XVI and XVII centuries. Those who refused were executed or
burnt alive.”9
Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, published at the end of the seventeenth century, inaugurated
the eighteenth-century vogue for the pseudo-foreign letter, such as Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes
(1721), Madame de Grafigny’s Lettres d’une Peruvienne (c. 1747), D’ Argens’ Lettres Chinoises
(1750), Voltaire’s Asiatic in the Philosophical Dictionary (1752), Horace Walpole’s Letter from Xo
Ho, a Chinese philosopher in London, to his friend Lien-Chi, at Peking (1757), and Oliver
Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (1762), in which Lien Chi Altangi passes philosophical and satirical
comments on the manners of the English.
Thus, by the eighteenth century, the noble savage was simply a device to criticize and
comment on the follies of one’s own civilization. The noble savage is no longer the simpleton from
the jungle but a sophisticated and superior observer of the contemporary scene in Europe. By
emphasising the corruption, vice, and degradation of the Europeans, eighteenth-century writers
exaggerated the putative superiority of the alien culture, the wisdom of the Chinese or Persian or
Peruvian moralist and commentator. They were not really interested in other cultures for their own
sake; in fact, they had very little knowledge of these civilizations.
Against this intellectual background, we can understand why the eighteenth century so readily
adopted the myth of Muhammad as a wise and tolerant ruler and lawgiver, when it was presented to
them by Count Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722). Boulainvilliers’ apologetic biography of
Muhammad appeared posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance
of this book in shaping Europe’s view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much
influenced Voltaire and Gibbon. Boulainvilliers had no knowledge of Arabic and had to rely on
secondary sources; thus his work is by no means a work of serious scholarship— on the contrary it
contains many errors and “much embroidery.”10 Nonetheless, Boulainvilliers was able to use
Muhammad and the origins of Islam as “a vehicle of his own theological prejudices” and as a
weapon against Christianity in general and the clergy in particular. He found Islam reasonable; it did
not require one to believe in impossibilities—no mysteries, no miracles. Muhammad, though not
divine, was an incomparable statesman and a greater legislator than any one produced by ancient
Greece. Jeffery has rightly called this work “a bombastic laudation of Mohammad in the interests of
belittling Christianity. Hurgronje calls it ‘an anti-clerical romance, the material of which was supplied
by a superficial knowledge of Islamdrawn from secondary sources.’ A little of the tar from
Boulainvilliers’ brush can be detected in Gibbon’s. . . . Decline and Fall.”11
George Sale’s translation of the Qur’an (1734) is the first accurate one in English. Like
Boulainvilliers, whose biography of Muhammad he had carefully read, Sale firmly believed that the
Arabs “seem to have been raised up on purpose by God, to be a scourge to the Christian church, for
not living answerably to that most holy religion which they had received.”12
The attitude of Voltaire can be seen as typical of the entire century. Voltaire seems to have
regretted what he had written of Muhammad in his scurrilous, and to a Muslim blasphemous, play
Mahomet (1742), where the Prophet is presented as an impostor who enslaved men’s souls:
“Assuredly, I have made him out to be more evil than he was.”13 But his Essai sur les Moeurs (1756)
and various entries in the Philosophical Dictionary show him to be prejudiced in Islam’s favor at the
expense of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular. Like Boulainvilliers and Sale, both
of whom he had read, Voltaire uses Islam as a pretext to attack Christianity, which for him remained
the “most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”14 Like
many eighteenth-century intellectuals, Voltaire was a deist, that is to say, “he believed in the
existence of God while opposing revealed religion—miracles, dogmas, and any kind of priesthood.”15
In his Sermon of the Fifty (1762), Voltaire “attacks Christian mysteries like transubstantiation
as absurd; Christian miracles as incredible; the Bible as full of contradictions.” The God of
Christianity was a cruel and hateful tyrant. “The true God, the sermon continues, ‘surely cannot have
been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough.’ Nor could he have
inspired ‘books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.’“16
By contrast, Voltaire finds the dogmas of Islam simplicity itself: there is but one God, and
Muhammad is his Prophet. For all deists, the superficial rationality of Islam was appealing: no
priests, no miracles, no mysteries. To this was added other false beliefs such as the absolute tolerance
of Islam of other religions, in contrast to Christian intolerance.
Gibbon was much influenced by Boulainvilliers in particular but also by the eighteenth-
century Weltanschauung with its myths and preoccupations— in short, what we have been examining
throughout this chapter. By the time Gibbon came around to writing his History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire (the first volume came out in 1776), there was, as Bernard Lewis puts it,
“a vacancy for an Oriental myth.” But what happened to the Chinese mentioned earlier? Here is how
Lewis sums up the situation in the latter half of the eighteenth century:

Europe has always needed a myth for purposes of comparison and castiga-tion. . . . The
eighteenth-century Enlightenment had two ideal prototypes, the noble savage and the wise and
urbane Oriental. There was some competition for the latter role. For a while the Chinese, held
up as a model of moral virtue by the Jesuits and of secular tolerance by the philosophers, filled
it to perfection in the Western intellectual shadowplay. Then disillusionment set in, and was
worsened by the reports of returning travellers whose perceptions of China were shaped by
neither Jesuitry nor philosophy, but by experience. By the time Gibbon began to write, there
was a vacancy for an Oriental myth. Islam was in many ways suitable.17

What Lewis tells us about Gibbon is applicable to almost all the writers on Islam in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: “[Gibbon’s] own imperfect knowledge and the defective state
of European scholarship at the time hampered his work and sometimes blunted the skepticism which
he usually brought to the sources and subjects of his historical inquiries. . . . The Muslim religious
myths enshrined in the traditional biographical literature on which all his sources ultimately rest were
more difficult for him to detect, and there are failures of perception and analysis excusable in a
historian of the time.”18
Gibbon, like Voltaire, painted Islam in as favorable a light as possible in order to better
contrast it with Christianity. He emphazised Muhammad’s humanity as a means of indirectly
criticizing the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ. His anticlericalism led Gibbon to underline
Islam’s supposed freedom from that accursed class, the priesthood. Indeed, the familiar pattern is
reemerging—Islam used as a weapon against Christianity.
Gibbon’s deistic view of Islam as a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise
and tolerant lawgiver, enormously influenced the way all Europeans perceived a sister religion for
years to come. Indeed, it established myths that are still accepted totally uncritically by scholars and
laymen alike.
Both Voltaire and Gibbon subscribed to the myth of Muslim tolerance, which to them meant
Turkish tolerance. But eighteenth-century Turkey was also far from being a land of interfaith Utopia.
Jews were treated contemptuously, recalled the traveler Carsten Niebuhr. And here is how another
British ambassador describes the situation in Constantinople in 1758:

[T]he Grand Seignor [Sultan Mustafa III] himself affords us he is deter-min’d to keep his
laws, and to have them executed, that concerning dress has been repeated and with uncommon
solemnity. . . . [A) Jew on his sabbath was the first victim, the Grand Seignor going the rounds
incognito, met him, and not having the Executioner with him, without sending him [the Jew]
to the Vizir, had him executed, and his throat cut that moment, the day after an Armenian
follow’d, he was sent to the Vizir, who attempted to save him, and condemn’d him to the
Galleys, but the Capigilar Cheaia [head of the guards] came to the Porte at night, attended with
the executioner, to know what was become of the delinquent, that first Minister had him
brought directly from the Galleys and his head struck off, that he might inform his Master he
had anticipated his Orders. A general terror has struck all the people.19
 Another ambassador in 1770, in Constantinople, writes that a law was passed whereby any
Greeks, Armenians, and Jews seen outside their homes after nightfall were to be hanged without
exception. A third ambassador, writing in 1785, describes how any Christian churches secretly
repaired by the Christians were dismantled by the Turkish authorities because of protests by Muslim
mobs.20
Thomas Carlyle’s account of Muhammad in his On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in
History (1841) is often considered the first truly sympathetic portrait by a Western intellectual.
According to Prof. W. Montgomery Watt, Carlyle “laughed out of court the idea of an impostor being
the founder of one of the world’s great religions.”21 Laughter is no substitute for argument, and valid
arguments are singularly lacking in Carlyle’s essay. Instead, we are presented “violent exclamatory
rhetoric,”22 wild mumblings about “mysteries of nature.” What “arguments” there are are fallacious.
Muhammad cannot have been an impostor. Why not? It is inconceivable that so many people could
have been taken in by a mere trickster and insincere fraud. His genuineness lies in the success of his
religion. Truth by numbers. Carlyle parades the total number of Muslims, which he takes to be 180
million, in front of our eyes in order to impress us and falsely imply that Muhammad cannot have
persuaded so many of a false religion. But Muhammad only persuaded a few thousand—the rest have
simply followed and copied one another; a large number of Muslims blindly follow the religion of
their fathers, as something given. It is absurd to suggest that the vast majority have examined the
arguments for and against the sincerity of Muhammad.
Second, to assess the truth of a doctrine by the number of people who believe it is also totally
ridiculous. The number of people who believe in Scientology is increasing yearly; is its truth also
growing year by year? There are more Christians worldwide than Muslims; is Christianity more true?
When a book titled 100 Authors against Einstein was published, Einstein remarked, “If I were
wrong, then one would have been enough!” The converse is also true.
“But at least an insincere man could not have been so successful; leaving aside the truth of
what he preached.” Again, an obviously fallacious argument. How do we know Muhammad was
sincere? “Because otherwise he would not have been so successful.” Why was he so successful?
Because he was sincere? A patently circular argument! It is said that L. Ron Hubbard bet Arthur C.
Clarke that he could start a new religion and went out and founded the religion of Scientology. It is
especially difficult to know how much of their own mumbo jumbo charlatans believe—
televangelists, mediums, gurus, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founders of religions, cults, and
movements—there is a bit of Elmer Gantry in all of them.
Like his predecessors, Carlyle had a superficial knowledge of Islam—we can safely say that as
a piece of scholarship, his essay on Muhammad is totally worthless—but, unlike them, he used Islam
as a weapon against materialism and Benthamite utilitarianism. Deeply perturbed by the mechanical
world that was emerging due to the Industrial Revolution, he had to resort to the comforting myth of
the wisdom of the East. Like Gustave Flaubert’s Bou-vard, he longed for and expected regeneration
from the Orient, which would wake the West from its spiritual paralysis. Carlyle adumbrated certain
ideas that were to reappear throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. First, Carlyle saw Islam
as a confused form of Christianity, a bastard kind of Christianity, shorn of its absurd details. Whereas
Dante and his contemporaries had seen Islam as a Christian heresy, and as something inferior, Carlyle
saw it more positively: “Mahomet’s Creed we called a kind of Christianity;… I should say a better
kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and
Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead!”23
As to Carlyle’s actual portrait of Muhammad, it is but a reformulation of the noble savage but
in a relgious garb, as someone in direct touch with the mysteries of existence, life, and nature; full of
mystical intuition of the real nature of things denied to us in the skeptical, civilized West. “A
spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light: of wild
worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. . . . The word of
such a man is a Voice direct from Nature’s own heart.” Elsewhere, Muhammad is descibed as “an
uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him.”24 The Arabs in
general are seen as active but also meditative, with wild strong feelings, and they possess that
supreme quality, “religiosity.” Their religion is heartily believed. What is most important is sincerity,
not truth—it hardly matters what is believed as long as it is believed with a fierceness that goes
beyond mere reason. “The very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer than the truths of [of an insincere
man].”25
Bertrand Russell and others have seen in Carlyle’s ideas the intellectual ancestry of fascism.
Carlyle’s fascism can be seen in his uncritical adulation of the strong leader but also in his
sentimental glorification of violence, cruelty, extremism, and irrationalism in his contempt for reason.
“A candid ferocity … is in him; he does not mince matters.”26 It is astonishing that anyone took any
of Carlyle’s drivel seriously. But it is equally sad that Muslims peddle this nonsense as a separate
pamphlet as a kind of seal of approval to show that a European takes their Prophet seriously. It is also
surprising, since a careful reading of the chapter shows Muhammad in a less-than-flattering light: he
is not always sincere, his moral precepts are not of the superfinest, he is by no means the truest of
prophets, and so on. Above all, this chapter contains the famous insult to the Qur’an: “A wearisome
confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, longwindedness, entan-glement; most crude
incondite;—insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European
through the Qur’an.”27 Or us through Carlyle!
Many of the European apologists of Islam of the seventeenth and eighteenth century had no
proper acquaintance with the Arabic sources; most had only a superficial knowledge. They used
Islam as a weapon against intolerance, cruelty, dogma, clergy, and Christianity.
Many European apologists of Islam of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had a far greater
knowledge of Islam and were, by contrast, devout Christians—priests, missionaries, and curates, who
realized that, to be consistent, they had to accord Islam a large measure of religious equality, to
concede Muhammad religious insight. They realized that Islam was a sister relgion, heavily
influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas, and that Christianity and Islam stood or fell together; they knew
that if they started criticizing the dogmas, doctrines, and absurdities of Islam, their own fantastic
structure would start to crumble and eventually crash around them. They perceived a common danger
in certain economic, philosophical, and social developments in the West—the rise of rationalism,
skepticism, atheism, and secu larism; the Industrial Revolution; and the Russian Revolution and the
rise of Communism and materialism. Sir Hamilton Gibb writes of Islam as a Christian “engaged in a
common spiritual enterprise.”28 But let us beware of skepticism: “Both Christianity and Islam suffer
under the weight of worldly pressure, and the attack of scientific atheists and their like,” laments
Norman Daniel.29
Hence the tendency amongst Christian scholars to be rather uncritical— a tendency not to wish
to offend Muslim friends and Muslim colleagues. Thus, by the end of the twentieth century, Christian
scholars of Islam had become the unwitting guardians and perpetuators of the myth of Islamic
tolerance.
PART 1.
ISLAMIC TOLERANCE:
MYTH AMD REALITY
 1.
THE MYTH OF ISLAMIC 1.
TOLERANCE

Robert Spencer

THE MYTH OF ISLAMIC TOLERANCE

Like Christians, Muslims respect and revere Jesus. Islam teaches that Jesus is one of the
greatest of God’s prophets and messengers to humankind.
Like Christians, every day, over 1.3 billion Muslims strive to live by his teachings of
love, peace, and forgiveness. Those teachings, which have become universal values, remind us
that all of us, Christians, Muslims. Jews, and all others have more in common than we think.

So read an advertisement that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) placed in
California newspapers in March 2004. For such ostensible attempts to promote harmony and
cooperation between Christians and Muslims, CAIR has, despite the arrests of three of its officials on
terror-related charges in 2002 and 2003,1 maintained a reputation as a neutral civil rights organization
dedicated to helping Muslims find a place within American secular society.
This ad campaign was just one part of larger efforts by Muslims, particularly in Western
countries, to present a vision of Islam that is different from Osama bin Laden’s—benign where his is
lethal, open and accepting where his is fanatical and intransigent. The council and its allies have
succeeded in virtually ruling out of polite society any idea of Islam except one that insists it is a
religion that Western non-Muslims need not fear and must not despise. Their presentation of Islam as
another of the world’s great religions, closely akin to Judaism and Christianity and, like them, liable
to be “hijacked” through no fault of its own by “extremists” who commit violence in its name, is one
that is accepted as axiomatic by most Americans—to do otherwise would be regarded in many circles
as tantamount to committing the cardinal American sin of “racism,” despite the fact that Islam is not
a race and most Muslims in the world today are not members of the ethnic group with which they are
most often identified, the Arabs.
As a result, in America today millions of people, including many in influential sectors of the
government and media, believe in Islam. Not thai they believe in Allah and his prophet Muhammad,
but they nonetheless have something akin to religious faith in an idea of Islam itself. This faith
consists of various assumptions that have emanated from academia, the media, the State Department,
groups like CAIR, and even the president of the United States and that have by now become
unquestioned assumptions held by millions.
 A cornerstone of this secular faith in Islam is that Islam is a tolerant faith. Jews and Christians,
we are told, lived in harmony with Muslims during the era of the great Islamic empires of the past.
When radical Muslims bombed Madrid on March 11, 2004, commentators reminded us that when
Muslims ruled Spain, it was a beacon of tolerance and the envy of Europe. When radicals bombed
synagogues in Istanbul on November 15, 2003, we were told that such bombings were particularly
heartbreaking in a city that for so long had known peace and harmony between Muslims, Jews, and
Christians.
The dogma of Islamic tolerance has important political implications. Sclerotic European states
eyeing the rapid growth of their Muslim popula-tions console themselves with tales of old al-
Andalus, reassuring one another that Islamic hegemony not only wasn’t all that bad—it was a
veritable golden age. Investigators in Europe and America are discouraged from monitoring activity
in mosques. After all, goes the dogma, terrorism isn’t an Islamic problem. Islam is a supremely
tolerant faith. No, terrorism is a problem of political grievances or socioeconomic imbalances. If
Islam has anything at all to do with it, it is only as a tool of unscrupulous religious leaders, who
probably don’t even really believe in Islam at all, who use religious language to excite and
manipulate the uneducated masses. European and American politicians and religious leaders make
careful overtures to growing Islamic communities, which they assume will—with a few exceptions—
assimilate at least to the extent of becoming peaceful and active participants in the political process.
Why not? Islam is a tolerant faith.
In the face of its general acceptance and the opprobrium that awaits those who decline to toe
the line, it seems churlish at best (if not a manifestation of more sinister intent) to challenge the idea
of Islamic tolerance. But it is precisely because of these and other political uses to which the idea is
put that the challenge must be made. The dogma of Islamic tolerance has become a potent political
and cultural weapon; accordingly, it cannot and must not be out of bounds to examine the truth of this
dogma.
If this dogma is false, its destructive power will be very great. Europeans and Americans will
find themselves in the position of having encouraged millions of Muslims to come to their shores to
live as equals, only to find that Islam doesn’t accept a position as just one among a community of
disparate religions but must struggle to make itself supreme. As Bat Ye’or, the great historian of
dhimmitude, the institutionalized oppression of non-Muslims (dhimmis: “protected” or “guilty”
people) under Islam, puts it:

The civilization of dhimmitude does not develop all at once. It is a long process that
involves many elements and a specific mental conditioning. It happens when peoples replace
history by myths, when they fight to uphold these destructive myths, more than their own
values because they are confused by having transformed lies into truth. They hold to those
myths as if they were the only guarantee for their survival, when, in fact, they are the path to
destruction. Terrorized by the evidence and teaching of history, those peoples prefer to destroy
it rather than to face it. They replace history with childish tales, thus living in amnesia,
inventing moral justification for their own self-destruction.2

If that is indeed the case, the political implications will be as manifold and complex as those that
follow from the assumption that Islam is tolerant. Either way, the investigation is of the utmost
urgency.
In this book are gathered a good number of the groundbreaking historical investigations of Bat
Ye’or, who pioneered the study of dhimmitude as a distinct phenomenon of Islamic history, theology,
and law.3 Other essays delve into attendant matters: the fearless and erudite former Muslim Ibn
Warraq examines the real legacy of enormously influential academic Edward Said. Said, of course,
was a pioneer in his own right, tarring generations of careful scholars of the Islamic world as racists
and imperialists (or, as Said would have had it, “Orientalists”) and elevating the myth of Islamic
tolerance to the dogmatic level in American and European universities. Mark Durie explores the
teachings of Islam on issues of tolerance and peaceful coexistence as well as a number of related
matters in his witness statement from the trial of two Christian preachers in Australia. The preachers
were sued, rather intolerantly, by a Muslim group for allegedly defaming Islam and thereby violating
Australia’s newly minted hate crime laws. Their daring and creative defense was to have recourse to
the Islamic writings themselves, which Durie surveys brilliantly here.
Other, smaller pieces bring to light various ways in which the myth of Islamic tolerance wields
influence today among policy makers, academics, and opinion makers. Each of these in its own way
reveals the power and uses of the myth and demonstrates why it is so important to investigate the his-
torical claims, as well as the assertions about Islamic law and theology, that are being made.
Another section of the book brings together some extremely revealing material from the UN
Commission on Human Rights. Since these are documents delivered to address particular problems
and issues before the United Nations, some of this material is overlapping, appearing in one
document and again in another. I ask the reader’s patience and understanding: these records reveal
the stark realities of Islam’s human rights record; some repetition was necessary in order to preserve
their character. These documents show conclusively that the source of the conflict that the Islamic
world has with the non-Muslim world is not Israel; Israel acts only as the canary in the mine-shaft, as
this material about rising antisemitism and Judeophobia makes clear. But the human rights records of
Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, and the enormous obstacles that Muslim freethinkers and
apostates face, have nothing to do with Israel: they illuminate a deeper problem of ingrained Islamic
intolerance. These documents illuminate many attempts to use the myth, as well as many outright
contradictions of the myth, made by Islamic states at the United Nations—as well as the cognitive
dissonance created for and by these states by the disagreements between UN human rights
declarations and various provisions of Islamic law, the Sharia.
These UN statements and other documents indicate that the historical and jurisprudential
issues discussed in the other essays are very much alive today—as alive as the myth of Islamic
tolerance.

HISTORY AS POLITICS:
THE USES OF THE MYTH OF ISLAMIC TOLERANCE

The myth of Islamic tolerance was from its inception a political creation. Ibn Warraq surveys its
origins with magnificent precision and directness in the foreword to this volume. And according to
Bat Ye’or, it gained great currency because of nineteenth-century European political machinations in
the Balkans: “Curiously, this myth started in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 19th century. It alleges that
Turkish rule over Christians in its European provinces was just and lawful. That the Ottoman regime,
being Islamic, was naturally ‘tolerant’ and well disposed toward its Christian subjects; that its justice
was fair, and that safety for life and goods was guaranteed to Christians by Islamic laws. Ottoman
rule was brandished as the most suitable regime to rule Christians of the Balkans.”4
The European politicians’ interest in propagating the myth of Islamic tolerance stemmed from
the geopolitical realities of the day. “This theory,” Bat Ye’or continues, “was advanced by European
politicians in order to safeguard the balance of power in Europe, and in order to block the Russian
advance towards the Mediterranean. To justify the maintenance of the Turkish yoke on the Slavs, this
yoke had to be presented to the public opinion as a just government. The Ottoman Empire was
painted by Turkophiles as a model for a multi-[ethnicj. multi-religious empire.”5
Of course, reality was considerably different. Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Balkan regions
were subject to substantially the same regulations for dhimmis that prevailed elsewhere in the Islamic
world and were dictated by the Sharia. These laws are outlined by Samuel Shahid and Bat Ye’or in
several essays later in this book. Exceptions to the harsh inequalities mandated by these laws only
proved the rule, for they generally resulted from periods of laxity. These were all too often followed
by Islamic revivals that featured a reassertion of harsh Sharia strictures, boding ill for non-Muslim
populations. For instance, in 1758 the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte noted that laws
mandating that dhimmis must dress in a manner distinct from the dress of Muslims, and in a way that
demonstrated their inferior status, were being enforced with a new rigor—a rigor that sprang from the
deep religious convictions of Sultan Mustafa III: “The order against Christians & Jews Dress, except
in modest Cloaths, browns blacks … & as to caps & boots is most rigorously executed in a Manner
unknown before, which alarms most all those who are not Mahometans, & makes them apprehend
the utmost Rigour; it seems however but natural, when it is considered, that it comes from a self-
denying religious Prince.”6
The imposition of a dress code may seem to be a small matter in those days before Hitler-
imposed Star of David badges on German Jews, but, as Shahid and Bat Ye’or demonstrate in their
essays in this volume, the dress requirements were just the most visible element of a detailed system
of regulations designed to ensure that dhimmi Jews and Christians would “feel themselves subdued,”
as commanded in the Qur’an (sura 9:29). By no stretch of the imagination does all this bespeak the
atmosphere of openness, mutuality, and tolerance that is suggested by modern purveyors of the myth.
This is especially true in light of the penalties: the same British official wrote that a Jew had been
beheaded after being caught in clothes that violated the orders.
In 1860 Consul James Zohrab wrote a report from Sarajevo to the British ambassador to the
Porte, Henry Bulwer, that sounds as if it could have been filed in the last ten years. “The hatred of the
Christians toward the Bosniak Mussulmans,” he tells Bulwer, “is intense.” Some might imagine
today that this hatred was a consequence of Christian intransigence and fundamen-talism and a
refusal to respond with any generosity to the proffered hand of Islamic tolerance. But that was not
actually the case. “During a period of nearly 300 years,” Zohrab explains, the Christians “were
subjected to much oppression and cruelty. For them no other law but the caprice of their masters
existed.”7
Testimony like this made it difficult for the myth of Islamic tolerance to gain acceptance
among any who cared to consult the historical record. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
indefatigable scholars of Islam such as Sir William Muir, David S. Margoliouth, Thomas Patrick
Hughes, Arthur Jeffrey, and many others, while not specifically investigating the plight of the
dhimmis, had made available to English readers a wealth of material that abundantly established
Islam’s attitude toward non-Muslims as hardly one of tolerance.
Consequently, for the mythmakers history itself had to be made over. This wasn’t
accomplished definitively until a considerable time after the birth of the myth; but it was ultimately
accomplished in a most spectacular manner. In 1978, a Christian Arab professor, Edward Said,
published Orientalism, which quickly became the defining text for academic study of Islam in the
West. Said didn’t so much establish that Islam had a genuine tradition of tolerance as make it racist to
suggest otherwise. The great scholars of Islam such as Muir and Margoliouth were, in Said’s view,
simply tools of Western imperialism, whose visions of the Orient were not objective scholarship but
politically motivated tracts designed only to portray the Muslim world as needing the guiding hand of
Christian colonial masters.
Any criticism of Islam, including any questioning of the myth of Islamic tolerance, was
thereafter deemed ipso facto imperialist and racist by an academic establishment that quickly fell in
thrall to Saidism as an integral element of its overall program of hostility to the Western civilization
and heritage. The myth of Islamic tolerance reigned supreme not because it was borne out by the
facts, but because to challenge it was to identify oneself with a despised and discredited political
program. So Said and his followers were actually guilty of the very thing for which they excoriated
the Orientalists: they set out to force the facts to give way to overriding political realities.
 Saidists are now in virtually complete control of American academic study of Islam. Their
baneful influence is superbly illustrated by Daniel Pipes in “Jihad and the Professors,” which shows
just how divorced from reality their analyses of this key Islamic concept have become.
And since words like jihad have been introduced by Yasir Arafat, Osama bin Laden, Saddam
Hussein, and others into international geopolitics, the rapid and total victory that the Saidists won in
the academic sphere has also exerted a harmful influence on public policy. Orientalism appeared just
as the multiculturalist ethic was taking root in the United States and Western Europe. Saidism was
simultaneously a manifestation of that ethic and a further legitimization of it. Even to point out that
Islamic societies had been less than tolerant toward their non-Muslim populations, and that this
intolerance was mandated and reinforced by quite specific provisions of Islamic law, was to engage
in an unacceptable ethnocentrism. This was the genesis of the attitude that prevented American
officials (including the president of the United States) from using anything but the vaguest of
generalities (“evildoers”) to describe their Islamic terrorist foes after the World Trade Center and
Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001. To take notice of the Islamic motiva-tions and goals of the
jihadist attackers, except to deny their significance, would have made the Bush administration
vulnerable to charges of racism: the kiss of death in American politics. So while Bush occasionally
spoke of jihadists in reference to particular situations, he much more often energetically avoided any
public linkage of Islam with the global jihad network that he began to confront in the war on terror.
This avoidance on many occasions made public statements by officials become something of a
theater of the absurd. When American National Guard Spc. Ryan Anderson, a convert to Islam, was
arrested after allegedly trying to contact and join up with al Qaeda, reporters asked a Guard
spokesman, Lt. Col. Stephen Barger, about Anderson’s religion. Barger replied: “Religious
preferences are an individual right and responsibility, and I really can’t get into it.”8 As if a devout
Methodist or Zen Buddhist would have any interest in joining al Qaeda.
Ironically enough, even as Barger declined to consider the possibility that Islam might
somehow be implicated in Anderson’s behavior, he did so by means of a statement could only have
been made by a Westerner. Islam, with its strong sense of the umma, the worldwide community of
Muslim believers that transcends nationality, race, and political boundaries, as well as its detailed
rules for virtually every aspect of human behavior, does not consider religion a private matter. But
the possibility that a religious belief could have political implications, even if that belief involves so
avowedly worldly and political a religion as Islam, has been ruled by the Saidists and their allies to
be beyond the bounds of civilized discourse. That Islam cannot give rise except in “hijacked” form to
extremism and violence, and that it is in its true form broadminded, tolerant, noble, and
magnanimous—more so in many ways than Christianity—must be accepted as axiomatic by people
like Lieutenant Colonel Barger. Otherwise, they risk losing their jobs and worse: being stigmatized as
the spiritual and intellectual kin of people like David Duke and Bull Connor.
The myth of Islamic tolerance and its attendant dogmas are guarded jealously—sometimes in
quite intolerant ways. When a French publisher undertook a translation of my book Islam Unveiled in
2003, he and the translator quickly began to receive death threats. Translator Guy Milliere explains:
“I sent him [the publisher] the translation of the first thirty pages. A couple of weeks later I started to
receive death threats by e-mail: ‘You must be an enemy of Islam; you will die for what you do’; ‘You
must be a Jew; I hope somebody will slit your throat, you dirty Jew pig,’ etc. … I asked the police to
act; I have received no answer.”9
In other words, you must say that Islam is peaceful and tolerant, or we will kill you.

THE CURRENT MYTH AND THE CURRENT REALITY

 The almost universal prevalence of the myth of Islamic tolerance today has led to a strange
phenomenon: non-Muslims hastening to assure the public that the Islam of the terrorists is not the
“true Islam,” which is, they maintain, a benign and tolerant thing. The former archbishop of
canterbury, George Carey, after drawing the ire of the Muslim community in Britain by critical
remarks about Islamic extremism, attempted to make amends in May 2004 by explaining, “Our world
is in great peril. I am talking rather about a sharp ideological tension that separates the West from
another world, that we call Islamic and yet does not reflect the true values of Islam.”10
Carey didn’t explain what qualified him to declare what are the “true values of Islam” and
what aren’t, or to dismiss the claims by Islamic radicals themselves to represent “true” or “pure
Islam.” Yet in Carey’s England, Islamic radicals such as Sheikh Omar Bakri of the al-Muhajiroun
group (which held a pro-Osama celebration on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks) and
Abu Hamza al-Masri (former imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque, where several jihadists including
shoe bomber Richard Reid once worshiped) continue to teach young Muslims that their version of
Islam is the “pure” (Salafi) form of the religion—and, according to the BBC, “moderate Muslims
leaders have remained largely silent and have yet to provide a credible alternative.”11
Around the same time that Carey was opining about “true Islam,” the Army News Service
published an opinion piece by a staff sergeant named Russell Bassett, drawing a sharp distinction
between the terrorism of Osama bin Laden and Islam. Bassett quotes an American Muslim soldier,
Spc. David Burgos: “I have read the Koran several times and there Islam teaches its followers to be
peaceful. Islam is all about giving life, not taking it.”12 Bassett accepts this at face value and
dismisses Islamic terrorists as motivated by politics, not religion; he makes no attempt, of course, to
examine the Islamic justifications put forward by Osama and others for terrorism.
Bassett, to be sure, is not engaging in academic discourse, but his commentary is more than
just the opinion of one American sergeant. It is a man-ifestation of the United States government’s
official position on these matters, and its publication by the Army News Service is clearly intended to
advance Bassett’s opinions among American troops.
Even stranger are instances when Western non-Muslims have taken it upon themselves to
lecture radical Muslims about their supposed misuse of their faith. In November 2003, two American
converts to Islam, Jeffrey Leon Battle and Patrice Lumumba Ford, were sentenced to eighteen years
in prison for trying to join the Taliban and wage jihad against their fellow Americans. At the
sentencing, US district judge Robert Jones scolded Ford: “You do not represent the Muslim faith.
Muslims do not engage in the activities you engaged in. You are an insult to that faith.”13
Such assumptions, of course, mesh perfectly with the image that many Muslims try to create
for themselves in the eyes of the West. The Saudi English-language publication Arab News blamed
Westerners’ negative impressions of Islam on those Westerners’ own prejudices. After quoting
“blasphemous rhetoric that is the cause of Muslim rage today” from Chris-tian fundamentalist
preachers Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fal-well, and others, the columnist declares: “The
practice of anti-Islam in the US needs to be addressed. The Muslim is not plotting to kill the infidel.
The Arabs and Muslims are not all secretly plotting to take over the world in order to establish an
Islamic caliphate.”14
But Graham, Falwell, and Robertson didn’t invent the idea that Muslims want to reestablish
the caliphate, with all its intolerant provisions for non-Muslims. The Arab News’s reassurances ring
hollow in the face of the statements and activities of radical Muslim groups around the world. Al
Qaeda’s online magazine, Voice of Jihad, exhorted jihad warriors in fall 2003: “We draw the attention
of the Mujahideen to the strategy adopted by the Sheikh of the Mujahideen, Abu Abdallah Osama bin
Laden, and Sheikh Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and agreed to by many of the great Mujahideen,
regarding combat against the enemy: Our number one enemy is the Jews and the Christians, and we
must free ourselves to invest all our efforts until we annihilate them—and we are able do this if Allah
allows us to do it—because they are the main obstacle to establishing the Islamic state.”15
 This goal of establishing the Islamic state—ruled by a caliph—is not al Qaeda’s alone. The
Muslim group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which is active principally in Central Asia but also has members in
Yemen, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern countries, as well as a presence among Muslim emigrants in
the West, has openly declared its intention to “restore a worldwide Caliphate, uniting the world under
Islamic rule.”16 The Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah group that was responsible for the Bali bombing of
October 2002 has also stated its intention to establish an Islamic state ruled by a caliph in Southeast
Asia.17
In England, Sheikh Omar Bakri’s Al-Muhajiroun group declared on its Web site: “Today the
burden of working to establish the Khilafah and implement the Shari’ah is on the neck of all
Muslims, it is an obligation [Fard| of the highest order that requires utmost effort and sacrifice. If we
neglect this collective Fard then we are calling out to the wrath and anger of Allah [swt|. Muhammad
[saw] and his Sahabah |ra] had the great honour of establishing the first Islamic State in Madinah by a
bloodless coup de tat [sic]. Today we have the privilege of following the same footsteps and working
for this righteous and honourable cause.”18
Even the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, called for the
restoration of the caliphate, despite the Arab News’s ascribing of this idea to the “blasphemous
rhetoric” of so-called Islamophobes: “Today’s false idols, which dominate over the entire world, are
Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism. Islam instead calls for a Khilafa [Caliphate]
based on consultation, and a just economic system based on Zakat and a prohibition of usury.”19
Ultimately, an outcry brought about the removal of this material from the embassy Web site but no
retraction from Saudi officials.
Yet no amount of evidence seems to shake the power of the myth of Islamic tolerance in
Western public discourse. There seems to be no shortage of non-Muslim Westerners ready to assume
that the myth is true and to behave accordingly, despite the potentially lethal consequences that could
result from ignoring the words of the mujahedin themselves. A typical example came when Bill
Graham, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, called for building bridges of understanding to
Muslims as a response to terrorists’ “exploiting Islam as a pretext for violence.” Graham praised
Canada’s “diverse and flourishing Muslim communities,” showing no awareness of the possibility
that some within those communities subscribed to the radical Muslim caliphate/Sharia program. All
this despite evidence to the contrary afforded by Canada’s much-publicized Khadr family, which was
deeply involved with Osama bin Laden and jihad in several ways—which so offended Canadian
prime minister Jean Chretien that he personally intervened to help secure the release of one Khadr
family member, Ahmed Said Khadr, after he was jailed in Pakistan on suspicion of involvement in
the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in 1995.20
Graham’s statement reflected a Canadian government policy that has been torpid in
implementing antiterrorism measures, did not support the Iraq war, and has not been a particular
friend of Israel. Nonetheless, the day after his column appeared, an associate of Osama bin Laden
named Khalid Khawaja told Canada’s National Post that Western civilization was “selfish” and
warned Canadians that the country could become the site of suicide bombing attacks. He praised
death in an Islamic jihad as the best way to die and asked Canadians, “So how can you fight with
us?”21
Despite the strong Islamic character of Khawaja’s remarks, Graham made no statement
revising his views. He seems certain that Khawaja and others like him represent a discredited radical
fringe within a tolerant and benevolent religious tradition; statements and activities by that fringe
group, even though conducted on a global scale, do not seem to shake his faith in the myth.

NON-MUSLIMS IN THE QUR’AN

 The attitudes of modern Muslims toward non-Muslims are rooted, of course, in the Qur’an.
which Muslims believe to be the eternal words of Allah dictated to the prophet Muhammad through
the angel Gabriel. The Qur’an occupies an influence in the Islamic world that is far greater than that
of the Bible in the West, even during the heyday of Christendom; it exerts a dominant and formative
influence on the Muslim mind and culture.
Proponents of the myth of Islamic tolerance point to verses such as this one: “Those who
believe [in the Qur’an], and those who follow the Jewish [scriptures], and the Christians and the
Sabians, any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward
with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve” (sura 2:62; cf. 5:69 and 22:17).
Muslim spokesmen in the West like to quote such verses and to stress, as in the Council on American
Islamic Relations ad, the commonality between Islam and Christianity—and sometimes even
between Islam and Judaism.
However, the preponderance of Qur’anic testimony favors not tolerance and harmony between
Muslims and non-Muslims, but just the opposite. A fundamental component of the Qur’an’s view of
non-Muslims is the often repeated and implacable belief in its own superiority: “The Religion before
Allah is Islam” (sura 3:19), or, as another translation has it, “The only true faith in God’s sight is
Islam.” Muslims, accordingly, are also superior to others: “Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for
mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah.” By contrast,
most Jews and Christians (“People of the Book”) are wrongdoers: “If only the People of the Book
had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted
transgressors” (sura 3:110).
According to orthodox Muslim belief, the Qur’an is the final and perfect revelation from
Allah, the one true God. It confirms earlier revelations—a fact of which Muhammad was evidently
so sure that in the Qur’an he has Allah telling him that if he is harboring any doubts about the
veracity of his experiences with Gabriel, he need only check with those who received scriptures
before Muhammad’s time—that is, Jews and Christians: “And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt
concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was)
before thee. Verily the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee. So be not thou of the waverers”
(sura 10:94).
Yet the testimony that the earlier scriptures were supposed to bear to the coming of
Muhammad has been obscured by Jews and Christians. In a lengthy passage in a late sura (chapter)
of the Qur’an, “al-Baqara” (the Cow), Allah castigates the Jews and Christians for rejecting
Muhammad when they know better:

We gave Moses the Book and followed him up with a succession of messengers; We gave
Jesus the son of Mary Clear (Signs) and strengthened him with the holy spirit. Is it that
whenever there comes to you a messenger with what ye yourselves desire not, ye are puffed up
with pride? Some ye called impostors, and others ye slay! They say, “Our hearts are the
wrappings (which preserve Allah’s Word: we need no more).”
Nay, Allah’s curse is on them for their blasphemy: Little is it they believe. And when
there comes to them a Book from Allah, confirming what is with them, although from of old
they had prayedfor victory against those without Faith, when there comes to them thatwhich
they (should) have recognised, they refuse to believe in it but the curse of Allah is on those
without Faith. Miserable is the price for which they have sold their souls, in that they deny (the
revelation) which Allah has sent down, in insolent envy that Allah of His Grace should send it
to any of His servants He pleases: Thus have they drawn on themselves Wrath upon Wrath.
And humiliating is the punishment of those who reject Faith.
When it is said to them. “Believe in what Allah Hath sent down,” they say, “We believe
in what was sent down to us”: yet they reject all besides, even if it be Truth confirming what is
 with them. Say: “Why then have ye slain the prophets of Allah in times gone by. if ye did
indeed believe?”
There came to you Moses with clear (Signs); yet ye worshipped the calf (even) after
that, and ye did behave wrongfully. And remember We took your covenant and We raised
above you (the towering height) of Mount (Sinai), (saying): “Hold firmly to what We have
given you, and hearken (to the Law).” They said: “We hear, and we disobey.” And they had to
drink into their hearts (of the taint) of the calf because of their Faithlessness. Say: “Vile indeed
are the behests of your Faith if ye have any faith!”. . .
Say: Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel—for he brings down the (revelation) to thy heart
by Allah’s will, a confirmation of what went before, and guidance and glad tidings for those
who believe—whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and messengers, to Gabriel and
Michael, lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith. We have sent down to thee Manifest
Signs (ayat); and none reject them but those who are perverse. Is it not (the case) that every
time they make a covenant, some party among them throw it aside? Nay. Most of them are
faithless. And when there came to them a messenger from Allah, confirming what was with
them, a party of the people of the Book threw away the Book of Allah behind their backs, as if
(it had been something) they did not know! … If they had kept their Faith and guarded
themselves from evil, far better had been the reward from their Lord, if they but knew! (sura
2:88-103)

By the evidence of this passage and others in the Qur’an, the Jews and Christians who remain
in the world after the time of Muhammad are rene-gades who have rejected this final revelation out
of corruption and malice and who have exchanged truth for falsehood: “The Jews call ‘Uzair [Ezra] a
son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in
this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say” (sura 9:30). Nor is that remotely all.
The Jews “have incurred divine displeasure): in that they broke their covenant; that they rejected the
signs of Allah; that they slew the Messengers in defiance of right: that they said, ‘Our hearts are the
wrappings (which preserve Allah’s Word; We need no more)’; nay, Allah hath set the seal on their
hearts for their blasphemy, and little is it they believe . . .” (sura 4:155). They even misrepresent the
scriptures: “There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues: (As they read)
you would think it is a part of the Book, but it is no part of the Book; and they say, ‘That is from
Allah,’ but it is not from Allah. It is they who tell a lie against Allah, and (well) they know it!” (sura
3:78). They blasphemously doubt Allah’s power: “The Jews say: ‘Allah’s hand is tied up.’ Be their
hands tied up and be they accursed for the (blasphemy) they utter” (sura 5:64).
The Qur’an also frequently censures Christians for believing in false doctrines—including
beliefs that are central to the faith as it had been understood and practiced for as long as six centuries
before Muhammad began preaching. Apparently misunderstanding the nature of the Christian Trinity,
one verse has Allah quizzing Jesus: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me
and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah?” Jesus answers: “Glory to Thee! Never could I say
what I had no right (to say)” (sura 5:116).
In the book Allah frequently insists that he has no son—a fact Muslims believe to be an
essential component of true monotheism. “Say: ‘Praise be to Allah, who begets no son, and has no
partner in (His) dominion: Nor (needs) He any to protect Him from humiliation: yea, magnify Him
for His greatness and glory!’“ (sura 17:111).
Finally Muhammad weaves his charges against Jews and Christians together by condemning
Christians for believing that Jesus was crucified, and Jews for believing that they crucified him:
“They said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”; but they
killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein
are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they
killed him not” (sura 4:157).
 Because of the cavalier, self-serving, and underhanded ways in which they have treated
Allah’s message, both Jews and Christians live under the curse of Allah: “Allah’s curse be on them:
how they are deluded away from the Truth!” (sura 9:30).
The idea that Jews and Christians are accursed recurs several times in the Qur’an. Both have
rejected Allah and his messenger Muhammad:

Allah did aforetime take a covenant from the Children of Israel, and we appointed twelve
captains among them. And Allah said: “I am with you: if ye (but) establish regular prayers,
practice regular charity, believe in my messengers, honor and assist them, and loan to Allah a
beautiful loan, verily I will wipe out from you your evils, and admit you to gardens with rivers
flowing beneath; but if any of you, after this, resisteth faith, he hath truly wandered from the
path of rectitude.”
But because of their breach of their covenant. We cursed them, and made their hearts
grow hard; they change the words from their (right) places and forget a good part of the
message that was sent them, nor wilt thou cease to find them—barring a few—ever bent on
(new) deceits: but forgive them, and overlook (their misdeeds): for Allah loveth those who are
kind.
From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they
forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and
hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them
what it is they have done.
O People of the Book! There hath come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much
that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary): There hath
come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book, wherewith Allah guideth all
who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by
His will, unto the light, guideth them to a path that is straight, (sura 5:12-16)

All this leads directly to the Qur’an’s notorious verses of jihad, such as this one from later in
the same sura: “And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have
turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred
Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of
those who suppress faith” (sura 2:190). Many Western Muslim spokesmen today deny that this verse
applies to Jews and Christians of this age or any other, as they are in the Qur’an “People of the
Book” and not idolaters. However, it is clear from the long passage above that Jews and Christians
are indeed counted in the Qur’an among those who “suppress faith” and thus must be met by
Muslims not with talk of tolerance and peaceful coexistence but with jihad warfare: “And fight them
until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah. But if they cease, then lo! Allah is Seer of
what they do” (sura 8:39).
Indeed, the sura that most Muslim scholars believe to have been the last one revealed—and
hence the portion of the Qur’an that takes precedence over any contradictory passage revealed earlier
—is sura 9, at-Tauba (“Repentance”). It explicitly enjoins Muslims to wage war against the People of
the Book until they either convert to Islam or are subdued as second-class dhimmis: “Fight those who
believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah
and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the
Book, until they pay the Jizya [a special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel
themselves subdued” (sura 9:29).
In the end it is the will of Allah that Islam will triumph over all other religions: “He it is Who
hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail
over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse” (sura 9:33).
 This is tantamount to a declaration of war, and its spirit pervades the entire Muslim holy book.
So far is the Qur’an from modern notions of tolerance and peaceful coexistence that it even warns
Muslims not to befriend Jews and Christians—apparently including those who “feel themselves sub-
dued” and are paying the jiyza: “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your
friends and protectors. They are but friends and protec-tors to each other. And he amongst you that
turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust” (sura 5:51).
It is ironic in light of all this that the Qur’an also criticizes Jews and Christians for being
intolerant. Allah warns Muhammad that “never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee
unless thou follow their form of religion. Say: ‘The Guidance of Allah, that is the (only) Guidance.’
Wert thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldst thou find
neither Protector nor helper against Allah” (sura 2:120; cf. 2:135).
This is the Qur’an that pious Muslims cherish and memorize in its entirety; it is for them their
primary guide to understanding how they should make their way in the world and deal with other
people. It is nothing short of staggering that the myth of Islamic tolerance could have gained such
currency in the teeth of the Qur’an’s open contempt and hatred for Jews and Christians and
incitements of violence against them—and a testimony to the ease with which one can convince
himself of the truth of something in which one wants to believe, regardless of evidence to the
contrary.

NON-MUSLIMS IN THE HADITH

The Hadith, the traditions of the sayings and doings of the prophet Muhammad, are second in
authority only to the Qur’an for most Muslims. In fact, Sunni Islam, the sect of 85 to 90 percent of
Muslims worldwide, takes its name from the Sunnah, the Traditions, which Sunnis follow in
contradistinction to Shi’ite Islam, which from the days of its great imams and in a dif ferent way
thereafter invested more authority than do Sunnis in religious leaders. Sunnis rely instead, at least
according to the theory, on the teachings of Muhammad as recorded in the Hadith and explicated by
Islamic jurists.
The Hadith is voluminous, and much is of doubtful authenticity. But in the early centuries of
Islam six collections were identified by Muslims as being substantially authentic and therefore
trustworthy: those known today as Sahih Sittah (“reliable collections”): Sahih Bukhari, Sahih
Muslim, the Suncm of Abu Dawud, the Suncm of Ibn Majah, the Sunan of an-Nasai, and the Jami of
at-Hrmidhi. These, as applied and interpreted by jurists from the four principal Sunni madhhabs, or
schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Hanbali. Maliki, and Shafi’i) form the primary source for the
innumerable regulations of Islamic law, which governs virtually every aspect of life—from personal
hygiene to macroeconomics. Although it is likely—and Western scholars have established in many
cases—that many of these traditions that are revered as reliable are just as tenuous and inauthentic as
many of those that are universally rejected, this fact has had little impact thus far in the Islamic
world. Many of them enjoy normative status as principal sources for religious beliefs and practices.
Critical analysis of both the Qur’an and Hadith has been slight and furtive among Muslims—largely
owing to the fact that Islamic tolerance, both in history and today, does not generally extend to a
willingness to allow the words of Allah to be examined and prodded. To allow this would be
tantamount to admitting that the Qur’an is a human book, which few pious Mus-lims have been
prepared to do ever since the comparatively rationalist Mutazilite sect was vanquished centuries ago
and the idea that the Qur’an was uncreated was raised to the level of an unquestionable dogma. In
any case, since these traditions are regarded as authentic by orthodox Muslims, they play a key role
in the elaboration of Islamic intolerance and were accordingly muted in the era of the imposition of
the myth of tolerance.
 The Traditions’ message regarding non-Muslims consists primarily of an amplification of that
of the Qur’an. The Qur’an’s inconsistent statements about whether or not Jews and Christians will
enter paradise are resolved: “It is narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of
Allah (may peace be upon him) observed: By Him in Whose hand is the life of Muhammad, he who
amongst the community of Jews or Christians hears about me, but does not affirm his belief in that
with which I have been sent and dies in this state (of disbelief), he shall be but one of the denizens of
Hell-Fire.”22 So once again we see that if there is any tolerance in Islam at all, it is only provisional,
in anticipation of the great Day on which Allah will make it manifest to all that “the Religion before
Allah is Islam” (sura 3:19). Another Hadith has Muhammad saying:

On the Day of Resurrection, a call-maker will announce, “Let every nation follow that
which they used to worship.” Then none of those who used to worship anything other than
Allah like idols and other deities but will fall in Hell (Fire), till there will remain none but
those who used to worship Allah, both those who were obedient (i.e., good) and those who
were dis-obedient (i.e., bad) and the remaining party of the people of the Scripture. Then the
Jews will be called upon and it will be said to them, “Who do you use to worship?” They will
say, “We used to worship Ezra, the son of Allah.” It will be said to them, “You are liars, for
Allah has never taken anyone as a wife or a son. What do you want now?” They will say, “O
our Lord! We arc thirsty, so give us something to drink.” They will be directed and addressed
thus. “Will you drink.” whereupon they will be gathered unto Hell (Fire) which will look like a
mirage whose different sides will be destroying each other. Then they will fall into the Fire.
Afterwards the Christians will be called upon and it will be said to them. “Who do you use to
worship?” “They will say. ‘We used to worship Jesus, the son of Allah.’“ It will be said to
them, “You are liars, for Allah has never taken anyone as a wife or a son,” Then it will be said
to them, “What do you want?” They will say what the former people have said. Then, when
there remain (in the gathering) none but those who used to worship Allah (Alone, the real Lord
of the Worlds) whether they were obedient or disobedient.23

Of course, consigning other groups to hellfire doesn’t necessarily mean that one will not
consent to live in peace as equals with them on earth. But Islam in its totality attempts an audacious
recasting and, in a real sense, appropriation of Judaism and Christianity—a kind of theological
imperialism that can serve as a useful analogy and paradigm for the true nature of the tolerance that
Islamic jurists envision for this world.
For Muhammad did not hesitate to appropriate the central figures of Judaism and Christianity
and to claim that they were Muslim. Noah. Abraham, Moses, and Jesus appear in the Qur’an and
Hadith as Muslim prophets (see suras 2:87, 2:136, 3:84, 33:7, 42:13, etc.). Their religion was Islam
—until it was corrupted by their wicked followers (who were, of course, the ancestors of the Jews
and Christians, who remained outside the fold of Islam). In the Christians’ case, Jesus will set this
right in the latter days, returning to end the dhimmi status of non-Muslims in Islamic soci-eties—not
by initiating a new era of equality and harmony, but by abolishing Christianity and imposing Islam
upon everyone:

Allah’s Apostle said, “By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, surely (Jesus,) the son of
Mary will soon descend amongst you and will judge mankind justly (as a Just Ruler); he will
break the Cross and kill the pigs and there will be no Jizya (i.e., taxation taken from non
Muslims). Money will be in abundance so that nobody will accept it, and a single prostration
to Allah (in prayer) will be better than the whole world and whatever is in it.” Abu Huraira
added, “If you wish, you can recite (this verse of the Holy Book): ‘And there is none of the
people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) But must believe in him (i.e., Jesus as an
 Apostle of Allah and a human being) before his death. And on the Day of Judgment He will be
a witness against them’“ (4.159).24

To drive the point home, another tradition adds that Muhammad said: “How will you be when
the son of Mary (i.e., Jesus) descends amongst you and he will judge people by the Law of the
Qur’an and not by the law of Gospel?”25
Still, while all this and similar material is useful to refute the pseudo-multicultural posturing of
contemporary Muslim advocacy groups (particularly in the United States), it doesn’t add up in itself
to anything particularly intolerant. Theological absolutism of a similar kind can be found in virtually
all sects of Christianity, as well as in other religious traditions. But although sura 109 of the Qur’an
—often quoted today—envisions a live-and-let-live attitude between Muslims and non-Muslims, that
is far from the last word on the subject in either the Qur’an (as we have seen) or the Hadith. The
Hadith expand upon verses 9:5 and 9:29 of the Qur’an with accounts of Muhammad’s battles against
unbelievers. One of the most notable of these records not a battle but an epistolary encounter between
the Prophet of the new religion and the leader of the old empire, Heraclius of Byzantium. The
account in Sahih Bukhari is full of unlikely details, including the assertion that Heraclius was
mightily impressed by Muhammad and all but acknowledged his prophethood. To the dismay of
courageous Muslim apostates through the centuries, the Heraclius of this hadith burbles to one of
Muhammad’s men: “I asked you whether there was anybody who, after embracing [Muhammad’s]
religion, became displeased and discarded his religion; your reply was in the negative. In fact, this is
the sign of True Faith, for when its cheerfulness enters and mixes in the hearts completely, nobody
will be displeased with it.”
But most noteworthy is the brief, easy-to-overlook threat lobbed into the letter from the holy
man: “Embrace Islam,” he exhorted Heraclius, “and you will be safe.”26 No guarantee of safety or
offer of truce is made in the event that Heraclius declines to accept Islam.
The imperative was to invite non-Muslims to become Muslim—as Muhammad did Heraclius
and Osama bin Laden did the United States in the late 1990s—and then fight those who refuse. This
hadith delineates these choices, in accord with sura 9:29’s mandate to fight Jews and Christians until
they pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)—or, of course, convert to Islam. Says Muhammad:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in
Allah. Make a holy war; do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge; and do not
mutilate (the dead) bodies; do not kill the children. When you meet your enemies who are
polytheists. invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these you also
accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if
they respond to you. accept it from them and desist from fighting against them… . If they
refuse to accept Islam, demand from them theJi/ya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them
and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.27

When speaking of non-Muslim dhimmis, the sahih ahadith are primarily concerned with the
collection of the jizya—which constituted the “source of the livelihood” of the Muslims.28 The
traditions say little about the way in which Islamic societies are soon going to ensure that non-
Muslims “feel themselves subdued.” in accordance with sura 9:29. But Muslims from the earliest
ages seem to have been intent to fulfill this command and devised numerous ingenious ways to do so.
This resulted in an elaborate system of regulation for the treatment of dhimmis that enforced their
humiliation and inferiority on a daily basis—and that remained constant in the Islamic world,
although they were enforced with varying degrees of ferocity in different regions over the ages.
These regulations, as intolerant as they are, remain part of the Sharia to this day. Radical Islamic
terror organizations around the world have repeatedly declared their intention to impose the Sharia
wherever and whenever they can. This stands as an enduring threat to non-Muslims in nations with
Muslim majorities and elsewhere.

NON-MUSLIMS IN ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE

As the schools of Islamic jurisprudence developed, they constructed upon these hadiths and
passages of the Qur’an a legal structure for the treatment of non-Muslims. The features of this
remained remarkably consistent across the centuries, and among all the legal schools. Take, for
example, contempo rary Saudi sheikh Marzouq Salem al-Ghamdi, who explained in a sermon the
terms in which an Islamic society should tolerate the presence of non-Muslims in its midst:

If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the
Prophet—there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other
conditions are . . . that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that
were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes … that
they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech,
nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon: that they do
not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during
prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite
anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim. … If they violate these conditions,
they have no protection.29

Ghamdi’s list of conditions was taken practically verbatim from traditional sources of Islamic
law regarding non-Muslims. Nor was Ghamdi the only modern-day Muslim spokesman interested in
reviving these ancient strictures. In 2001 Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi preached a quite similar sermon on
Palestinian Authority television:

We welcome, as we did in the past, any Jew who wants to live in this land as a Dhimmi,
just as the Jews have lived in our countries, as Dhimmis, and have earned appreciation, and
some of them have even reached the positions of counselor or minister here and there. We
welcome the Jews to live as Dhimmis, but the rule in this land and in all the Muslim countries
must be the rule of Allah. . . . Those from amongst the Jews and from amongst those who are
not Jews who came to this land as plunderers, must return humiliated and disrespected to their
countries.30

Responding to a similar statement made in 1999 about Palestinian Christians by Sheikh Yussef
Salameh, the undersecretary for religious endowment for the Palestinian Authority, the Catholic
archbishop of the Galilee, Butrus al-Mu’alem, thundered: “It is strange to me that there remains such
back-wardness in our society. . . . there are still those who amuse themselves with fossilized
notions.”31
Fossilized these notions may be, but abrogated or repudiated they are not. And unfortunately,
those amusing themselves with them are not a small or insignificant group. In 1991 there appeared a
new English translation of ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a Shafi’i manual of Islamic
law compiled by fourteenth-century jurist Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368). Someone who didn’t
know that virtually every other Islamic legal document contained much the same material might
assume that this was the one to which Ghamdi and Madhi to reacquaint themselves with the
particulars of dhimmi status. “The subject peoples,” it declares, must “pay the non-Muslim poll tax
(jizya)” and “are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not
greeted with ‘as-Salamu ‘alaykum [the traditional Muslim greeting, “Peace be with you”]; must keep
to the side of the street; may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims’ buildings, though if
they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork,. . . recite the
Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals or feastdays; and are forbidden to
build new churches.”32
‘Umdat al-Salik itself is not solely of interest to historians. The translator, an American
convert to Islam named Nuh Ha Mim Keller, explains in an introduction that “not a single omission
has been made” from Ibn Naqib’s Arabic text, “though rulings about matters now rare or nonexistent
have been left untranslated unless interesting for some other reason.”33 Underscoring its relevance for
modern Muslims (and wary non-Muslims) is an endorsement from Cairo’s venerable Al-Azhar
University. Fath Allah Ya Sin Jazar, the general director of research, writing, and translation at Al-
Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy, gave the translation, and the manual itself, a resounding
endorsement: “We certify that the . . . translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to
the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community.”34
Joseph Schacht, the great Columbia University professor of Arabic and Islamics in the days
before Edward Said and his followers politicized the field, sums up the general position of all the
schools of Islamic law in terms that illustrate just how far the legal superstructure of dhimmitude is
from the myth of Islamic tolerance: “The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers is the law
of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed (excepting women, children, and
slaves); the third alternative, in general, occurs only if the first two are refused.”35
This is, of course, in complete accord with the choices for unbelievers explained by the
prophet Muhammad in the hadith quoted above: “When you meet your enemies who are polytheists,
invite them to three courses of action.” So also does Schacht’s summary of the schools’ restrictions
on dhimmis contain no surprises for anyone familiar with Ghamdi’s statement or the dictates of
‘Umdat al-Salik: “The treaty necessarily provides for the surrender of the non-Muslims with all
duties deriving from it, in particular the payment of tribute, i.e., the fixed poll tax (jizya) and the
land-tax (kharaj), the amount of which is determined from case to case.36
That may be, but another Islamic legal manual, the Hedaya, stipulates that “it is lawful to
require twice as much”37 from dhimmis as from Muslims—so while the rate may vary from dhimmi
to dhimmi, it must never become a light or easy burden. Bat Ye’or illustrates in her exhaustive and
illuminating historical works that this was seldom a temptation that Muslim rulers found difficult to
overcome.
Schacht continues: “The non-Muslims must wear distinctive clothing and must mark their
houses, which must not be built higher than those of Muslims, by distinctive signs; they must not ride
horses or bear arms, and they must yield the way to Muslims; they must not scandalize the Muslims
by openly performing their worship or their distinctive customs, such as drinking wine; they must not
build new churches, synagogues, and hermitages; they must pay the poll tax under humiliating
conditions.”38
These laws are not strictly enforced today in most Islamic states. In Saudi Arabia they aren’t
because of that nation’s status as the Muslim holy land. Non-Muslims aren’t allowed to practice their
religion at all in Saudi Arabia. Muhammad directed his followers to “turn out all Al-Mushrikun
[unbelievers] from the Arabian Peninsula”;39 any non-Muslims who go to Saudi Arabia to work must
strictly avoid any religious expression—those who dare violate this restriction have been imprisoned,
expelled from the country, and sometimes even tortured.40 Elsewhere the laws of dhimmitude gave
way in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to pressure from the European colonial powers
and were not components of the secular constitutions adopted by many Muslim states in the
postcolonial period.
Nonetheless, centuries of enforcement of these laws have produced lingering cultural attitudes.
That the Christian population of the Middle East, historically a significant presence, has plummeted
during roughly the same period as the rise of radical Islam is no accident. While the ancestors of
today’s Middle Eastern Christians had no choice but to accept dhimmitude and lived within its
restrictions for centuries without knowing or having the possibility of any other life, their
contemporary descendants have grown up in a much freer environment, emancipated by secularism.
Instead of reverting to the dhimmi subjugation that increasing numbers of their Muslim neighbors
wish to impose on them, they are simply opting out of the region alto-gether—to its immense
personal and cultural loss.
Nonetheless, this is understandable in light of the fact that Christians and other non-Muslims
still face widespread discrimination and harassment all across the Islamic world. One notorious
example was the case of Robert Hussein Qambar Ali, a Kuwaiti national who converted from Islam
to Christianity in the 1990s. Hussein was arrested and tried for apostasy, even though the Kuwaiti
constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and says nothing about the traditional Islamic
prohibition on conversion to another faith. Mohammad al-Jadai, one of Hussein’s prosecutors,
explained: “Legislators did not regulate the question of apostasy in the Constitution because they
never thought this kind of thing could happen here. The freedom of belief in the Constitution applies
only to the religion of birth.”41
This is a perspective that could only be informed by the Sharia provisions of dhimmitude.
Such deeply ingrained attitudes informed the proceedings against Hussein. When he asked during a
court hearing to see a memorandum from the prosecution, the prosecutor told the judge, “His blood is
immoral! This document contains verses from the Holy Qur’an and should not be touched by this
infidel!” Then he began quoting a passage from the memorandum that made abundantly clear the
relationship between Kuwait’s ostensibly tolerant secular law and the Sharia: “With grief I have to
say that our criminal law does not include a penalty for apostasy. The fact is that the legislature, in
our humble opinion, cannot enforce a penalty for apostasy any more or less than what our Allah and
his messenger have decreed. The ones who will make the decision about his apostasy are: our Book,
the Sunna, the agreement of the prophets and their legislation given by Allah.”42
Later, when his home was burglarized, Hussein knew that he would get no satisfaction if he
told Kuwaiti authorities about the crime. “I could tell them, but it is not a crime to steal or vandalize
the property of an apostate. The police wouldn’t even acknowledge that a burglary took place.”43
Even in places where it is not fully enforced, the Sharia retains the status of a kind of metalaw,
overriding and superseding the laws of the land whenever necessary. Consequently, the environment
for non-Muslims in Islamic societies is not positive, and as radicalism increases, Muslims grow
increasingly less tolerant toward their non-Muslim neighbors.

RADICAL MUSLIM THEORISTS ON NON-MUSLIMS

That intolerance is fueled also by the writings of some of the most popular and influential
radical Muslim theorists of modern times. In the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid
Qutb’s multivolume commentary on the Qur’an, Fi Zilal al-Qur’an (In the Shade of the Qur’an),
Qutb writes ven omously of Jews and Christians. In his exegesis of the verse mandating warfare
against the People of the Book (sura 9:29), Qutb recites a litany of Islam’s supposed historical
grievances against the Jews, concluding: “In modern history, the Jews have been behind every
calamity that has befallen the Muslim communities everywhere. They give active support to every
attempt to crush the modern Islamic revival and extend their protection to every regime that
suppresses such a revival. The other people of earlier revelations, the Christians, has been no less
hostile.”44
For Qutb. this hostility is not the result of various historical circumstances that could change
for the better, or be overcome through dialogue and attempts at mutual understanding. On the
contrary, Qutb explains that
 the Qur’anic statements concerning both groups are expressed as if they are stating
established facts. God says to the unbelievers: “They shall not cease to fight you until they
force you to renounce your faith, if they can.” (2:217) He also says about the people of earlier
revelations: “Never will the Jews nor yet the Christians be pleased with you unless you follow
their faith.” (2:120) This method of expression suggests that these are definitive statements
describing permanent attitudes not individual or temporary cases. When we cast a quick glance
at the history of these relations, on the basis of the attitudes adopted by the Jews and the
Christians toward Islam and the Muslims in all periods of history, we will appreciate the full
import of these true statements by God Himself. We also realize that such hostile attitudes are
the rule, not the exception.45

What then is to be done with these renegades, these untrustworthy, dishonest, and hateful
individuals? The Qur’an, of course, gives the answer: they must be “utterly subdued,” in line with
sura 9:29. Qutb explains: “As the only religion of truth that exists on earth today, Islam takes
appropriate action to remove all physical and material obstacles that try to impede its efforts to
liberate mankind from submission to anyone other than God. . . . The practical way to ensure the
removal of these physical obstacles while not forcing anyone to adopt Islam46 is to smash the power
of those authorities based on false beliefs until they declare their submission and demonstrate this by
paying the submission tax.”47
Similarly, Indian radical theorist Sayyid Abdul Ala Maududi says that Muslims must fight
against Jews, Christians, and others “not as one might think to compel the unbelievers into embracing
Islam. Rather, their purpose is to put an end to the sovereignty and supremacy of the unbelievers so
that the latter are unable to rule over men. The authority to rule should only be vested in those who
follow the true faith; unbelievers who do not follow this true faith should live in a state of
subordination. … ‘To pay jizyah of their hands humbled’ refers to payment in a state of
submission.”48
These men and other influential radicals were deeply traditionalist. Where socialism and Arab
nationalism had introduced ideas of tolerance and equality for non-Muslims in the Muslim world,
these theorists strenuously dissented on Islamic grounds. Qutb explicitly rejected democracy,
socialism, communism, and all other ideologies as non-Islamic, and pitched his Islamic supremacism
and intolerance precisely as the Islamic alternative.
That is the view that has swept the world in recent decades, with the rise of Islamic radical
groups, global in extent, that look to Qutb as a forefather and intellectual mentor. It is ironic that the
same period has seen the most intense growth of the myth of Islamic tolerance.
PART 2

ISLAMIC LAW REGARDING NON-MUSLIMS

Introduction

Robert Spencer

The two documents in this second section detail the particulars of Islamic X law regarding the
treatment of non-Muslims, with a particular focus on the aspect of that treatment that revolves around
payment of the jizya, the special tax on non-Muslims. This payment has always been the centerpiece
of the Islamic legal system regarding non-Muslims, as it is explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an (sura
9:29), while other elements of the treatment and status of the dhimmis are elaborations of this verse’s
command to make sure that the dhimmis “feel themselves subdued.”
Both of these essays show conclusively, with extracts from all the schools of Islamic law, that
there is no equality of dignity or rights for non-Muslims under Islamic law. The idea that Islamic
states of the Middle Ages were somehow prototypes for today’s Western, secular, multicultural
societies founders upon these facts, utterly destroying any credibility of the myth of Islamic
tolerance. Mythmakers must also confront the extraordinary unanimity of Islamic law on these points
—not only from different schools but across the centuries and in all areas of the Islamic world. It is a
truly remarkable example of the power of ijma—consensus. After all, as Muhammad is supposed to
have said, “My community will never agree upon an error.”1 This consensus thus bears witness to the
fact that the great majority of Muslims throughout history, and many even after the emancipation of
the dhimmis in the nineteenth century (brought about by Western pressure), have accepted these
principles as reasonable and right.
 2.
RIGHTS OF NON-MUSLIMS 2. IN AN
ISLAMIC STATE

Samuel Shahid

Recently a few books have been written about the rights of non-Muslims who are subjugated to
the rule of Islamic law. Most of these books presented the Islamic view in a favorable fashion,
without unveiling the negative aspect inherent in these laws. This brief study attempts to examine
these laws as they are stated by the four schools of the Fiqh (jurisprudence). It aims at revealing to
the reader the negative implications of these laws without ignoring the more tolerant views of
modern reformers. It is our ardent hope that this study will reveal to our readers the bare truth in both
its positive and its negative aspects.

THE CONCEPT OF “ISLAMIC STATE”

“An Islamic state is essentially an ideological state, and is thus radically different from a
national state.” This statement made by Maududi, a prominent Pakistani Muslim scholar, lays the
basic foundation for the political, economic, social, and religious system of all Islamic countries that
impose Islamic law. This ideological system intentionally discriminates among people according to
their religious affiliations. Maududi summarizes the basic differences between Islamic and secular
states as follows:

Reprinted from the Answering Islam Web site. http://www.answering-Islam.org/NonMuslims/rights.htm. Used with permission.

• An Islamic state is ideological. People who reside in it are divided into Muslims, who
believe in its ideology, and non-Muslims, who do not believe.
• Responsibility for policy and administration of such a state “should rest primarily with
those who believe in the Islamic ideology.” Non-Muslims, therefore, cannot be asked to
undertake or be entrusted with the responsibility of policymaking.
• An Islamic state is bound to distinguish (i.e., discriminates) between Muslims and non-
Muslims. However the Islamic law, the “Sharia” guarantees to non-Muslims “certain
specifically stated rights beyond which they are not permitted to meddle in the affairs of
the state because they do not subscribe to its ideology.” Once they embrace the Islamic
faith, they “become equal participants in all matters concerning the state and the
government.”1
 The above view is the representative of the Hanifites, one of the four Islamic schools of
jurisprudence. The other three schools are the Malikites, the Han-bilites (the strictest and the most
fundamentalist of all), and the Shafiites. All four schools agree dogmatically on the basic creeds of
Islam but differ in their interpretations of Islamic law, which is derived from four sources:

• Qur’an (read or recite): The sacred book of the Muslim community, containing direct
quotes from Allah as allegedly dictated by Gabriel.
• Hadith (narrative): The collections of Islamic traditions, including sayings and deeds of
Muhammad as heard by his contemporaries, first-, second-, and third-hand.
• Al-Qiyas (analogy or comparison): The legal decision drawn by Islamic jurists based on
precedent cases.
• Ijma (consensus): The interpretations of Islamic laws handed down by the consensus of
reputed Muslim scholars in a certain country.

Textual laws prescribed in the Qur’an are few. The door is left wide open for prominent scholars
versed in the Qur’an, the Hadith, and other Islamic disciplines to present their fatwa (legal opinion),
as we shall see later.

Classification of Non-Muslims

In his article “The Ordinances of the People of the Covenant and the Minorities in an Islamic
State,” Sheikh Najih Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah remarks that legists classify non-Muslims or infidels into
two categories: dar al-Harb, or the Household of War, which refers to non-Muslims who are not
bound by a peace treaty or covenant and whose blood and property are not protected by the law of
vendetta or retaliation; and Dar es Salam, or the Household of Peace, which refers to those who fall
into three classifications:

• Zimmis (those in custody; also called dhimmis) are non-Muslim subjects who live in
Muslim countries and agree to pay the jizya (tribute) in exchange for protection and safety,
and to be subject to Islamic law. They enjoy a permanent covenant.
• People of the hudna (truce) are those who sign a peace treaty with Muslims after being
defeated in war. They agree to reside in their own land, yet to be subject to the legal
jurisprudence of Islam like dhimmis, provided they do not wage war against Muslims.
• A Musta’min (protected one) is a person who comes to an Islamic country as a messenger,
merchant, visitor, or student wanting to learn about Islam. A Musta’min should not wage
war against Muslims, and he is not obliged to pay the jizya, but he would be urged to
embrace Islam. If a Musta’min does not accept Islam, he is allowed to return safely to his
own country. Muslims are forbidden to hurt him in any way. When he is back in his own
homeland, he is treated as one who belongs to the Household of War.2

This study will focus on the laws pertaining to dhimmis.

ISLAMIC LAW AND DHIMMIS

Muslim muftis (legal authorities) agree that the contract of the dhimmis should be offered
primarily to the People of the Book, that is, Christians and Jews, then to the Magi and Zoroastrians.
However, they disagree on whether any contract should be signed with other groups such as
communists or atheists. The Hanbalites and the Shafiites believe that no contract should be made
with the ungodly or those who do not believe in the supreme God. Hanifites and Malikites affirm that
the jizya may be accepted from all infidels, regardless of their beliefs and faith in God. Abu Hanifa,
however, did not want pagan Arabs to have this option because they are the people of the Prophet.
They must be given only two options: accept Islam or be killed.

THE JIZYA

Jizya literally means “penalty.” It is a protection tax levied on non-Muslims living under Islamic
regimes, confirming their legal status. Maududi states that “the acceptance of the jizya establishes the
sanctity of their lives and property, and thereafter neither the Islamic state nor the Muslim public has
any right to violate their property, honor, or liberty.” Paying the jizya is a symbol of humiliation and
submission, because dhimmis are not regarded as citizens of the Islamic state, although they are, in
most cases, natives to the country.
Such an attitude alienates the dhimmis from being an essential part of the community. How
can a dhimmi feel at home in his own land, among his own people, and with his own government,
when he knows that the jizya he pays is a symbol of humiliation and submission? In his book The
Islamic Law Pertaining to non-Muslims, Sheikh ‘Abdulla Mustafa al-Muraghi indicates that the jizya
can only be exempted from dhimmi who become Muslim’s or who die. The Shafiites reiterate that the
jizya is not automatically put aside when a dhimmi embraces Islam. Exemption from the jizya has
become an incentive to encourage dhimmis to relinquish their faith and embrace Islam.3
Sheik Najih Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah summarizes the purpose of the jizya. He says, quoting Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya, that the jizya is enacted “to spare the blood (of the dhimmis), to be a symbol of
humiliation of the infidels and as an insult and punishment to them, and as the Shafiites indicate, the
jizya is offered in exchange for residing in an Islamic country.” Thus Ibn Qayyim adds, “Since the
entire religion belongs to God, it aims at humiliating ungodliness and its followers, and insulting
them. Imposing the jizya on the followers of ungodliness and oppressing them is required by God’s
religion. The Qur’anic text hints at this meaning when it says: ‘until they give the tribute by force
with humiliation’ (Qur’an 9:29). What contradicts this is leaving the infidels to enjoy their might and
practice their religion as they wish so that they would have power and authority.”4

DHIMMIS AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

Muslims believe that the dhimmis are mushrikun (polytheists), for they see the belief in the
Trinity of Christianity as belief in three gods. Islam is the only true religion, they claim. Therefore, to
protect Muslims from corruption, especially against the unforgivable sin of shirk (polytheism), its
practice is forbidden among Muslims, because it is considered the greatest abomination. When
Christians practice it publicly, it becomes an enticement and exhortation to apostasy. It is significant
here to notice that according to Muraghi, dhimmis and infidels are polytheists and therefore, must
have the same treatment.
According to Muslim jurists, the following legal ordinances must be enforced on dhimmis
(Christians and Jews alike) who reside among Muslims:

• Dhimmis are not allowed to build new churches, temples, or synagogues. They are allowed
to renovate old churches or houses of worship, provided they do not allow to add any new
construction. “Old churches” are those that existed prior to Islamic conquest and are
 included in a peace accord by Muslims. Construction of any church, temple, or synagogue
on the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia) is prohibited. It is the land of the Prophet, and
only Islam should prevail there. Yet Muslims, if they wish, are permitted to demolish all
non-Muslim houses of worship in any land they conquer.
• Dhimmis are not allowed to pray or read their sacred books out loud at home or in churches,
lest Muslims hear their prayers.
• Dhimmis are not allowed to print their religious books or sell them in public places and
markets. They are allowed to publish and sell them among their own people, in their
churches and temples.
• Dhimmis are not allowed to install the cross on their houses or churches, since it is a
symbol of infidelity.
• Dhimmis are not permitted to broadcast or display their ceremonial religious rituals on
radio or television or to use the media or to publish any picture of their religious
ceremonies in newspapers and magazines.
• Dhimmis are not allowed to congregate in the streets during their religious festivals; rather,
each must quietly make his way to his church or temple.
• Dhimmis are not allowed to join the army unless there is indispensable need for them in
which case they are not allowed to assume leadership positions but are considered
mercenaries.

Maududi, who is a Hanifite, expresses a more generous opinion toward Christians. He says: “In
their own towns and cities they are allowed to do so [i.e., practice their religion] with the fullest
freedom. In purely Muslim areas, however, an Islamic government has full discretion to put such
restrictions on their practices as it deems necessary.”5

APOSTASY IN ISLAM

Apostasy means rejection of the religion of Islam either by action or the word of the mouth.
“The act of apostasy, thus, put an end to one’s adherence to Islam.”‘6 When one rejects the
fundamental creeds of Islam, he rejects the faith, and this is an act of apostasy—such an act is a grave
sin in Islam. The Qur’an comments, “How shall Allah guide those who reject faith after they
accepted it and bore witness that the Apostle was true and the clear sign had come unto them? But
Allah guides not the people of unjust. Of such the reward is that on them rests the curse of Allah, of
His angels and of all mankind in that will they dwell; nor will their penalty be lightened, nor respite
be their lot, except for those that repent after that and make amends; for verily Allah is Oft-forgiving,
Most Merciful” (sura 3:86-89).
Officially, Islamic law requires Muslims not to force dhimmis to embrace Islam. It is the duty
of every Muslim, they hold, to manifest the virtues of Islam so that those who are non-Muslims will
convert willingly after discovering its greatness and truth. Once a person becomes a Muslim, he
cannot recant. If he does, he will be warned first, then he will be given three days to reconsider and
repent. If he persists in his apostasy, his wife is required to divorce him, his property is confiscated,
and his children are taken away from him. He is not allowed to remarry. Instead, he should be taken
to court and sentenced to death. If he repents, he may return to his wife and children or remarry.
According to the Hanifites an apostate female is not allowed to get married. She must spend time in
meditation in order to return to Islam. If she does not repent or recant, she will not be sentenced to
death, but she is to be persecuted, beaten, and jailed until she dies. Other schools of Sharia demand
her death. The above punishment is prescribed in a Hadith recorded by the Bukhari: “It is reported by
‘Abaas . . . that the messenger of Allah . . . said, ‘Whosoever changes his religion (from Islam to any
other faith), kill him.’“7 In his book Shari’ah: The Islamic Law, Doi remarks, “The punishment by
death in the case of Apostasy has been unanimously agreed upon by all the four schools of Islamic
jurisprudence.”8
A non-Muslim wishing to become a Muslim is encouraged to do so, and anyone, even a father
or a mother, who attempts to stop him may be punished. However, anyone who makes an effort to
proselytize a Muslim to any other faith may face punishment.

CIVIC LAWS

Dhimmis and Muslims are subject to the same civic laws. They are to be treated alike in matters
of honor, theft, adultery, murder, and damaging property. They have to be punished in accordance
with Islamic law regardless of their religious affiliation. Dhimmis and Muslims alike are subject to
Islamic laws in matters of civic business, financial transactions such as sales, leases, firms,
establishment of companies, farms, securities, mortgages, and contracts. For instance, theft is
punishable by cutting off the thief’s hand whether he is a Muslim or a Christian. But when it comes
to privileges, the dhimmis do not enjoy the same treatment. For instance, dhimmis are not issued
licenses to carry weapons.

MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN

A Muslim male can marry a dhimmi girl, but a dhimmi man is not allowed to marry a Muslim
girl. If a woman embraces Islam and wants to get married, her non-Muslim father does not have the
authority to give her away to her bridegroom. She must be given away by a Muslim guardian.
If one parent is a Muslim, children must be raised as Muslims. If the father is a dhimmi and his
wife converts to Islam, she must get a divorce; then she will have the right of custody of her child.
Some fundamentalist schools indicate that a Muslim husband has the right to confine his dhimmi
wife to her home and restrain her from going to her own house of worship.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

The Hanifites believe that both dhimmis and Muslims must suffer the same penalty for similar
crimes. If a Muslim kills a dhimmi intentionally, he must be killed in return. The same applies to a
Christian who kills a Muslim. But other schools of law have different interpretations of Islamic law.
The Shafiites declare that a Muslim who kills a dhimmi must not be killed, because it is not
reasonable to equate a Muslim with a polytheist (mushrik). In such a case, blood price must be paid.
The penalty depends on the school of law adopted by the particular Islamic country where the crime
or offense is committed. This illustrates the implication of different interpretations of the Islamic law
based on the Hadith.
Each school attempts to document its legal opinion by referring to the Hadith or to an incident
experienced by the Prophet or the “rightly guided” caliphs.

THE WITNESS OF DHIMMIS

 Dhimmis cannot testify against Muslims. They can only testify against other dhimmis or
Musta’min. Their oaths are not considered valid in an Islamic court. According to the Sharia, a
dhimmi is not even qualified to be under oath. Muraghi states bluntly, “The testimony of a Dhimmi is
not accepted because Allah—may He be exalted—said: ‘God will not let the infidels (kafir) have an
upper hand over the believers.’“9 A dhimmi, regarded as an infidel, cannot testify against any
Muslim, regardless of his moral credibility. If a dhimmi has falsely accused another dhimmi and was
once punished, his credibility and integrity is tarnished, and his testimony is no longer acceptable.
One serious implication of this is that if one Muslim has committed a serious offense against another,
witnessed by dhimmis only, the court will have difficulty deciding the case, since the testimony of
dhimmis is not acceptable. Yet this same dhimmi whose integrity is blemished, if he converts to
Islam, will have his testimony accepted against the dhimmis and Muslims alike, because according to
the Sharia, “By embracing Islam he has gained a new credibility which would enable him to
witness.” All he has to do is to utter the Islamic confession of faith before witnesses, and that will
elevate him from being an outcast to being a respected Muslim enjoying all the privileges of a devout
believer.

PERSONAL LAW

On personal matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance, dhimmis are allowed to appeal to
their own religious courts. Each Christian denomination has the right and authority to determine the
outcome of each case. Dhimmis are free to practice their own social and religious rites at home and
in church without interference from the state, even in such matters as drinking wine, rearing pigs, and
eating pork, as long as they do not sell them to Muslims. Dhimmis are generally denied the right to
appeal to an Islamic court in family matters, marriage, divorce, and inheritance. However, in the
event a Muslim judge agrees to take such a case, the court must apply Islamic law.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES

The Islamic state is an ideological state; thus the head of the state inevitably must be a Muslim,
because he is bound by the Sharia to conduct and administer the state in accordance with the Qur’an
and the Sunna. The function of his advisory council is to assist him in implementing the Islamic
principles and adhering to them. Anyone who does not embrace Islamic ideology cannot be the head
of state or a member of the council.
Maududi, aware of the requirements of modern society, seems to be more tolerant toward
dhimmis: “In regard to a parliament or a legislature of the modern type, which is considerably
different from the advisory council in its traditional sense, this rule could be relaxed to allow non-
Muslims to be members, provided that it has been fully ensured in the constitution that no law which
is repugnant to the Qur’an and the Sunna should be enacted, that the Qur’an and the Sunna should be
the chief source of public law, and that the head of the state should necessarily be a Muslim.”10
Under these circumstances, the sphere of influence of non-Muslim minorities would be limited
to matters relating to general problems of the country or to the interest of the minorities. Their
participation should not damage the fundamental requirement of Islam. Maududi adds, “It is possible
to form a separate representative assembly for all non-Muslim groups in the capacity of a central
agency. The membership and the voting rights of such an assembly will be confined to non-Muslims
and they would be given the fullest freedom within its frame-work.”11
 These views do not receive the approval of most other schools of the Sharia, which hold that
non-Muslims are not allowed to assume any position that might bestow on them any authority over
any Muslim. A position of sovereignty demands the implementation of Islamic ideology. It is alleged
that a non-Muslim (regardless of his ability, sincerity, and loyalty to his country) cannot and would
not work faithfully to achieve the ideological and political goals of Islam.

BUSINESS WORLD

The political arena and the official public sectors are not the only areas in which non-Muslims
are not allowed to assume a position of authority. A Muslim employee who works in a company
inquires in a letter “if it is permissible for a Muslim owner [of a company] to confer authority on a
Christian over other Muslims.”12
In response to this inquiry three eminent Muslim scholars issued their legal opinions. Sheikh
Manna’ K. al-Qubtan, professor of higher studies at the School of Islamic Law in Riyadh, indicates,
“Basically, the command of non-Muslims over Muslims in not admissible, because God Almighty
said: ‘Allah will not give access to the infidels [i.e.. Christians) to have authority over believers
[Muslims]’ (Qur’an 4:141). For God—Glory be to Him—has elevated Muslims to the highest rank
(over all men) and foreordained to them the might, by virtue of the Qur’anic text in which God the
Almighty said: ‘Might and strength be to Allah, the Prophet |Muhammad] and the believers
[Muslims]’ (Qur’an 63:8).”
Thus the authority of non-Muslim over a Muslim is incompatible with these two verses, since
the Muslim has to submit to and obey whoever is in charge over him. The Muslim therefore becomes
inferior to him, and this should not be the case with the Muslim.
Dr. Salih al-Sadlan, professor of Sharia at the School of Islamic Law, Riyadh, cites the same
verses and asserts that it is not permissible for a infidel (in this case, a Christian) to be in charge over
Muslims whether in the private or public sector. Such an act

entails the humiliaton of the Muslim and the exaltation of the infidel [Christian!. This
infidel may exploit his position to humiliate and insult the Muslims who work under his
administration. It is advisable to the company owner to fear God Almighty and to authorize
only a Muslim over the Muslims. Also, the injunctions issued by the ruler, provides that an
infidel should not be in charge when there is a Muslim available to assume the command. Our
advice to the company owner is to remove this infidel and to replace him with a Muslim.

Dr. Fahd al-’Usaymi, professor of Islamic studies at the Teachers’ College in Riyadh, remarks
that the Muslim owner of the company should seek a Muslim employee who is better than the
Christian manager, or equal to him or even less qualified but has the ability to be trained to obtain the
same skill enjoyed by the Christian. It is not permissible for a Christian to be in charge of Muslims
by the virtue of the general evidences that denote the superiority of the Muslim over others. Then he
quotes sura 63:8 of the Qur’an and also cites verse 22 of sura 58: “Thou wilt not find any people who
believe in Allah and the Last Day. loving those who resist Allah and His Apostle, even though they
were their fathers or their sons, or their brothers, or their kindred.” ‘Usaymi claims that being under
the authority of a Christian may force Muslims to flatter him and humiliate themselves to this infidel
on the hope to obtain some of what he has. This is against the confirmed evidences. Then he alludes
to the story of Umar Ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph, who was displeased with one of his
governors, who appointed a dhimmi as a treasurer, and remarked, “Have the wombs of women
become sterile that they gave birth only to this man?” Then ‘Usaymi adds, “Muslims should fear God
in their Muslim brothers and train them. . . . For honesty and fear of God are, originally, in the
Muslim, contrary to the infidel [the Christian] who, originally, is dishonest and does not fear God.”
Does this mean that a Christian who owns a business cannot employ a Muslim to work for
him? Even worse, does this mean that a dhimmi, regardless of his unequal qualification, cannot be
appointed to the position where he would serve his country best? This question demands an answer.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Maududi, who is more lenient than most Muslim scholars, presents a revolutionary opinion
when he emphasizes that in an Islamic state, “all non-Muslims will have the freedom of conscience,
opinion, expression, and association as the one enjoyed by Muslims themselves, subject to the same
limitations as are imposed by law on Muslims.”13 Maududi’s views are not accepted by most Islamic
schools of law, especially in regard to freedom of expression involving criticism of Islam and the
government. Even in a country like Pakistan, the homeland of Maududi, it is illegal to criticize the
government or the head of state. Many political prisoners are confined to jails in Pakistan and most
other Islamic countries. Through the course of history, except in rare cases, not even Muslims have
been given freedom to criticize Islam without being persecuted or sentenced to death. It is far less
likely for a dhimmi to get away with criticizing Islam.
In Maududi’s statement, the term limitations is vaguely defined. If it were explicitly defined,
one would find, in the final analysis, that it curbs any type of criticism against the Islamic faith and
government.
Moreover, how can the dhimmis express the positive aspects of their religion when they are
not allowed to use the media or advertise them on radio or television? Perhaps Maududi meant by his
proposals to allow such freedom to dhimmis only among themselves. Otherwise, they would be
subject to penalty. Yet Muslims are allowed, according to the Sharia to propagate their faith among
all religious sects without any limitations.

MUSLIMS AND DHIMMIS

Relationships between Muslims and dhimmis are classified in two categories: what is forbidden
and what is allowable.

The Forbidden

A Muslim is not allowed to

• emulate the dhimmis in their dress or behavior;

• attend dhimmi festivals or support them in any way which may give them any power over
Muslims;
• lease his house or sell his land for the construction of a church, temple, liquor store, or
anything that may benefit the dhimmi’s faith;
• work for dhimmis in any job that might promote their faith, such as constructing a church;
• make any endowment to churches or temples;
• carry any vessel that contains wine, work in wine production, or transport pigs;
• address dhimmis with any title such as “my master” or “my lord.”
The Allowable

A Muslim is allowed to

• financially assist the dhimmis, provided the money is not used in violation of Islamic law
like buying wine or pork;
• give the right of preemption (priority in buying property) to his dhimmi neighbor (the
hanbilites disapprove of this);
• eat food prepared by the People of the Book;
• console the dhimmis in an illness or in the loss of a loved one; it is also permissible for a
Muslim to escort a funeral to the cemetery, but he has to walk in front of the coffin, not
behind it, and he must depart before the deceased is buried;
• congratulate the dhimmis for a wedding, birth of a child, return from a long trip, or recovery
from illness; however, Muslims are warned not to utter any word that may suggest approval
of the dhimmis’ faith, such as “May Allah exalt you,” “May Allah honor you,” or “May
Allah give your religion victory.”

CONCLUSION

This study shows us that non-Muslims are not regarded as citizens by any Islamic state, even if
they are original natives of the land. To say otherwise is to conceal the truth. Justice and equality
require that any Christian Pakistani, Melanesian, Turk, or Arab be treated as any other citizen of his
own country. He deserves to enjoy the same privileges of citizenship regardless of religious
affiliation. To claim that Islam is the true religion and to accuse other religions of infidelity is a
social, religious, and legal offense against the People of the Book.
Christians believe that their religion is the true religion of God and Islam is not. Does that
mean that Great Britain, which is headed by a queen, the head of the Church of England, should treat
its Muslim subjects as a second class? Moreover, why do Muslims in the West enjoy all freedoms
allotted to all citizens of these lands, while Muslim countries do not allow native Christians the same
freedom? Muslims in the West build mosques, schools, and educational centers and have access to
the media without any restriction. They publicly advertise their activities and are allowed to
distribute their Islamic materials freely, while native Christians of any Islamic country are not
allowed to do so. Why are Christians in the West allowed to embrace any religion they wish without
persecution while a person who chooses to convert to another religion in any Islamic country is
considered an apostate and must be killed if he persists in his apostasy? These questions and others
are left for readers to ponder.
 3.
THE JIZYA TAX
Equality and Dignity
under Islamic Law?
Walter Short

INTRODUCTION

It is an oft-repeated assertion of Muslims that other faith communities have always been
treated with respect and dignity by in a genuine Islamic state. Indeed, as one peruses Islamic
literature, this claim is noticeable for the frequency of its presence. For example, Muslim author
Suzanne Haneef states about Islam’s attitude to other religious communities, “Islam does not permit
discrimination in the treatment of other human beings on the basis of religion or any other criteria. …
It emphasises neighborliness and respect for the ties of relationships with non-Muslims. . . . Within
this human family, Jews and Christians, who share many beliefs and values with Muslims, constitute
what Islam terms Ahl al-Kitab, that is, People of the Scripture, and hence Muslims have a special
relationship to them as fellow ‘Scriptuaries.’“1
Similarly, German convert Ahmed von Denffer, examining the position of Christians in Islam,
states that “It is thus clear that, seen from the legal perspective. Christians are entitled to have their
own prescriptions.”2 From what he terms the “Societal Perspective,” he tackles the problem of sura
5:51, which warns against taking Jews and Christians as “friends”: “On the other hand, Christians,
being ahl al-kitab, may not be harassed or molested for being non-Muslims. It is true that the Qur’an
warns against taking Jews and Christians as friends, but that does not mean they should be molested
or harmed because of their being non-Muslims.”3
So far, all very positive, but both Haneef and von Denffer are Muslims residing in the West,
thus interacting with Christians and addressing a Western audience. Thus their approach will be
conditioned by that reality. A somewhat different attitude is exhibited by a Muslim writer based in
Saudi Arabia, a state, governed largely by Islamic law, that forbids all expressions of religious
liberty: “In a country ruled by Muslim authorities, a non-Muslim is guaranteed his freedom of faith. .
. . Muslims are forbidden from obliging a non-Muslim to embrace Islam, but he should pay the
tribute to Muslims readily and submissively, surrender to Islamic laws, and should not practice his
polytheistic rituals openly” (emphasis added).4

Reprinted from http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/xstnc-5.html.

 In this paper I will examine aspects of Islam’s attitude to non-Muslims, especially the jizya
tax, to consider whether Haneef’s claim in particular is valid. My emphasis will be on Islamic law,
since that practically regulates everyday relations. Since Muslims in the West, as much as in the
Muslim world, uphold the divine character of the Sharia, based as it is primarily on the Qur’an and
the Sunnah, and uphold the Islamic state with Islamic law as the ideal society, it is important to see
what this would mean in practice for non-Muslims, if the caliphate were ever restored and applied to
the West.

THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE

In the West, at least in constitutional terms, however inadequately worked out in practice in
some places, the equality of human beings is a fundamental assumption—”all men are equal before
the law.” For this reason, justice is often depicted in statues as blindfolded; the class, religion, and
race are irrelevant—the law, at least in terms of its goal, applies equally to everyone and safeguards
everyone equally.
In Islamic law, however, this is simply not the case. The life of a Muslim is considered
superior to that of a non-Muslim, so much so that although a non-Muslim killing a Muslim would be
executed, the reverse would not occur.5 This is despite the fact that murder is normally considered a
capital offense in Islam, with regular executions in most Muslim states. This inequity is also
demonstrable in the blood rate paid to non-Muslims where murder or injury has occurred, which is
half that of a Muslim.6 Effectively, this ruling means that a Muslim need not fear the usual retribution
for murder if he kills a non-Muslim. The law deliberately and consciously does not protect non-
Muslims as it does Muslims. The position of Islamic law is not that human life is sacred but that
Muslim life is so.

THE VALUE OF EVIDENCE

What we have just stated about justice becomes very pertinent when considering evidence in a
court. Haneef’s assertions can be immediately questioned by pointing to the fact that in Islam, the
court testimony of a non-Muslim is considered inferior to that of a Muslim, a practice given official
sanction in countries like Pakistan.7 This means in practice that if a Muslim offends in some way
against a Christian, whether by stealing from the latter, inflicting injury, or even committing rape, the
Christian must gain at least another Christian witness even to match the testimony of the Muslim, and
even then in practice the assumption is that the latter is a more credible witness. This rule also carries
the insulting presumption that non-Muslims are intrinsically dishonest and unreliable witnesses per
se.
Obviously, this considerably disadvantages non-Muslims and becomes of practical import
when we consider the frequent charges of blasphemy used by Muslims against Christians in places
like Pakistan, which usually have an ulterior motive (often personal or land disputes). Legal
conditions such as these give unscrupulous Muslims the idea that it is “open season” on minorities. A
similar ruling endangers the inheritance rights of Christian wives of Muslims.8 Again, this gives
opportunity to dishonest Muslim relatives of a widow.

THE VALUE OF HUMAN DIGNITY

 What we have just examined becomes very important when we consider the issue of human
dignity. It almost naturally follows that if the life of a non-Muslim is considered inferior to that of a
Muslim, the dignity of the former will be held in the same lack of esteem. Rape in most Muslim
countries usually results in execution for the offender where the victim is a Muslim. Where the
victim is a non-Muslim and the perpetrator is a Muslim, this is not the case.9 Thus, the honor of a
Christian woman is not considered equal to that of a Muslim woman. This ruling is quite chilling.
A particularly objectionable ruling concerns the Christian wife of a Muslim man. Their
difference in religion precludes the possibility of having a common burial place. Moreover, if she is
pregnant at the time of death, the fetus, being considered Muslim, cannot be buried in a Christian
cemetery; thus the woman may not be buried there, either, and so must be buried in a “neutral”
place.10 Even in death, Christians are sometimes denied dignity.

THE VALUE OF HUMAN PROPERTY

The right to the defense of personal property is usually considered a fundamental liberty, and its
violation by theft is punishable in all societies, again, irrespective of the religious identity of the thief
or his victim. This is not the case in all circumstances in Islamic law. The situation is somewhat
ambiguous at times, especially if items haratn (forbidden) to Muslims are concerned.11
Another ruling, however, suggests that if a Muslim steals an item from a Christian, such as a
gold crucifix, and then states that he did so in order to destroy this “infidel” object, he may escape
prosecution.12 Hence, there is nothing clear-cut in Islamic law that protects the property of Christian
subjects, as would be the case in most Western systems, which protect all property, whatever people’s
race or faith.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Most Western constitutions today guarantee complete religious liberty, in opinion, practice, and
propagation. A person is perfectly free to hold or change his opinions or even to hold no religious
opinions whatsoever. Under Islamic law, however, this is not the case. Although a person may be free
to be a Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Zoroastrian, he may not hold other religious opinions, as the ban
on paganism illustrates.13
Moreover, although a non-Muslim may change his religion to Islam or one other “Scriptuary”
faith, a Muslim who converts from Islam faces execution.14 It follows from this that Christians are
forbidden to proselytize to Muslims, though no such reciprocal ban exists on Muslims. This also
affects marriages, since if a Muslim apostatizes, the marriage is dissolved, and there is at least one
recent example of this in Egypt, where a liberal Muslim was declared apostate by a court and his
marriage dissolved, necessitating the couple’s removal to the West; this illustrates that the ruling is
not merely theoretical.15
Most blatantly, while the postwar era, especially since the 1970s, has seen an energetic
upsurge of mosque construction in the West, there has been no corresponding development in
Christian religious buildings in the Muslim world, since Islamic law permits only the repair of
existing buildings, forbidding the construction of new ones.16 The same ruling forbids any Christian
presence whatsoever on the Arabian Peninsula; thus, whereas the Saudis recently constructed a giant
mosque in Rome, there is no possibility of reciprocity for the Roman Catholics (or anyone else) to
build even the smallest chapel in Saudi Arabia. The issue is not simply one of reciprocity; national
Christians in the Muslim world are denied this right as well, whereas Muslims may freely construct
mosques.

THE JIZYA TAX

The American Revolution was fought on the principle of “no taxation without representation,”
the idea being that constitutional equality was a precondition of the sovereign exercise of levying
taxes. The only basis for different levels of taxation is socioeconomic distinction, but even here the
tax is identical in character and is levied without regard for one’s communal origins. The principle of
distinction in progressive taxation is ability to pay. The tax imposed does not punish a businessman
for his success. Refusal to pay will result in fines or imprisonment but never execution. Furthermore,
the tax he pays grants him entitlement to the full protection of the state and thus full and equal
citizenship. The goal of the tax is the same with everyone—the ability of the state to provide for the
security and well-being of all its citizens.
This is not the case with the jizya, which is a tax that the dhimmis uniquely had to pay. It has
its origins in sura 9:29, where it is explicitly revealed as a sign of the subjugation of conquered non-
Muslims.17 Hence, the tax is clearly a tribute and a sign of subjection, in no way equivalent to the
alms tax, zakat. Yusuf Ali’s comment on the jizya clarifies this:

1281 Jizya: the root meaning is compensation. The derived meaning, which became the
technical meaning, was a poll tax levied from those who did not accept Islam, but were willing
to live under the protection of Islam, and were thus tacitly willing to submit to its ideals being
enforced in the Muslim State. There was no amount permanently fixed for it. It was in
acknowledgment that those whose religion was tolerated would in their turn not interfere with
the preaching and progress of Islam. Imam Shafi’i suggests one dinar per year, which would
be the Arabian gold dinar of the Muslim States. The tax varied in amount, and there were
exemptions for the poor, for females and children (according to Abu Hanifa), for slaves, and
for monks and hermits. Being a tax on able-bodied males of military age, it was in a sense a
commutation for military service. But see the next note. (9.29)

1282 ‘An Yadin (literally, from the hand) has been variously interpreted. The hand being
the symbol of power and authority. I accept the interpreta tion “in token of willing
submission.” The Jizya was thus partly symbolic and partly a commutation for military
service, but as the amount was insignificant and the exemptions numerous, its symbolic
character predominated. See the last note. (9.29)

Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Quranic exegete and founder of the Islamist Pakistani group
Jamaat-i-Islami was quite unapologetic about jizya: “The Muslims should feel proud of such a
humane law as that of Jizya. For it is obvious that a maximum freedom that can be allowed to those
who do not adopt the way of Allah but choose to tread the ways of error is that they should be
tolerated to lead the life they like.”18 He interprets the Quranic imperative to jihad as having the aim
of subjugating non-Muslims, to force them to pay the jizya as the defining symbol of their subjection:
“Jews and the Christians . . . should be forced to pay jizya in order to put an end to their
independence and supremacy so that they should not remain rulers and sovereigns in the land. These
powers should be wrested from them by the followers of the true Faith, who should assume the
sovereignty and lead others towards the Right Way.”19 The consequence of this is that in an Islamic-
state—specifically the khilafah (caliphate)—non-Muslims should be denied government posts, since
the state exists for the Muslims, who alone are true citizens, whereas the non-Muslims are merely
conquered residents, which the jizya signifies: “That is why the Islamic state offers them protection,
if they agree to live as Zimmis [i.e., dhimmis] by paying Jizya, but it can not allow that they should
remain supreme rulers in any place and establish wrong ways and establish them on others. As this
state of things inevitably produces chaos and disorder, it is the duty of the true Muslims to exert their
utmost to bring an end to their wicked rule and bring them under a righteous order.”20
Differences of taxation demonstrate distinctions in citizenship. As a symbol of subjection, it
signifies that the state is not really the common property of all its permanent residents, but only the
Muslims. The non-Muslims are conquered outsiders. It demonstrates their inferior condition; it also
punishes them for their disbelief in Islam. Islamic law makes it very clear that the jizya is punitive in
character.21 Further, it is to be levied with humiliation.22 Hence, it is in no way comparable to Western
tax systems. Even progressive taxation is not a “punishment” for economic success, nor is any tax
specifically humiliating in character.
This illustrates that essentially, in an Islamic state, non-Muslims are in a similar but worse
situation than prisoners out on parole, since they are still being punished—they are not considered
“good, law-abiding citizens,” however exemplary their conduct, but rather criminals given day leave.
Their crime is their faith.23 Moreover, their crime is capital in nature—they deserve death.24 This
demonstrates the unique character of the jizya tax: unlike Western taxes, payment does not grant
equality and liberty to the payee but rather merely permission for another tax period to live; failure to
pay it results in death. Again, it is rather analogous to a convict on parole, regularly visiting the
police station or parole officer to register. This is different from the case of someone in the West who
refuses to pay his tax for whatever reason; he is punished, though it must be stated not by execution,
for breaking the law. The reverse is true with the jizya—the tax itself is punishment, and the payee
lives in the permanent condition of being punished for his faith until he converts. Essentially, non-
Muslims live under a permanent death threat.

CONCLUSION

Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination could the situation of non-Muslims under Islamic
law be seen as one conferring equal citizenship, whatever Muslim apologists claim. Similarly, only a
leap of fantasy could ever believe that such a situation is one that non-Muslims would welcome. The
honor, dignity, equality, and even the lives of non-Muslims are by no means guaranteed under Islamic
law. The jizya tax in particular demonstrates the constitutional inferiority and humiliation such a legal
arrangement confers. For non-Muslims, it is rather like perpetually walking under the sword of
Damocles, ready to fall at any moment. If Muslims wish Christians and others to regard an Islamic
political order as something attractive, their scholars had best engage in a some heavy work of ijtihad
to revise those elements of Islamic jurisprudence and legislation that are particularly offensive to
non-Muslims.
 PART 3.
ISLAMIC PRACTICE
REGARDING NON-MUSLIMS

Introduction

Robert Spencer

The articles in this section are closely intertwined with those in part 2, as A much of this
material also details the legal status of non-Muslims in Islamic law. This collection of Bat Ye’or
articles and supplemental material—the first authored by David G. Littman and Bat Ye’or thirty years
ago— elucidates the reality of this legal superstructure by detailing how these laws were applied and
their close relation to the legal and theological Islamic doctrine of jihad (see “Historical Amnesia”)—
a concept that has been given a renewed martial emphasis by today’s radical Muslim theorists.
In the course of Bat Ye’or’s historical explorations, she clarifies many common modem
misconceptions, including one idea that often goes hand in hand with the idea of Islamic tolerance:
the notion that the behavior, or indeed the very existence, of the modem state of Israel is the root
cause of the friction between the Islamic world and the West, and that if Israel were to disappear, so
would any impediments to a new flowering of the tolerant, humane, and generous Islamic spirit (see
“Dhimmi Peoples: Oppressed Nations”). In fact, unfortunately, Israel is just one arena of the global
jihad, and antisemitism but one manifestation of the intolerant spirit of contempt and disdain that
generally has marked Islamic relations with members of the Qur’an’s “People of the Book.”
Another misconception exploded here by Bat Ye’or (“Islam and the Dhimmis”) is the idea that
the historical record of Islamic intolerance is somehow mitigated by worse behavior on the part of
medieval Christian Europe toward its Jewish populations. Such comparisons, she notes, are virtually
impossible to make and ultimately pointless.
For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that whatever may have been the sins of Christendom,
they are in the past, but the dhimmi system of intolerance is still very much part of Islamic Sharia.
 4.
PROTECTED PEOPLES
UNDER ISLAM
David G. Littman and Bat Ye’or

Jews and Christians had been living throughout the Orient, Egypt, and North Africa for
centuries before they were overrun in the seventh and subsequent centuries by successive waves of
Bedouin invaders from Arabia, who, under the banner of Islam, subjugated peoples and territories
from India to Spain. Many of the more important indigenous Jewish centers from Mesopotamia to the
Atlantic could lay claim, at that time, to a continuous community existence dating back one thousand
years, and those in their ancient homeland, the “Land of Israel,” to as long as two millennia.
The initial administrative tolerance of the conquerors was dictated by expediency and
realpolitik, but as Arab colonization took root, the social and economic conditions of the local,
colonized populations worsened. During the long centuries of Arab-Muslim domination, the
surviving remnants of once-flourishing Jewish and Christian communities—who had neither fled nor
been killed nor converted to Islam—were juridically and socially relegated to an inferior condition of
subjection and humiliation difficult to comprehend today.
Their status was that of ahl al-dlumma1—protected peoples, i.e., peoples tolerated in the
Muslim lands: dar al-Islam (House of Islam)—which subjected them to the disabilities and
humiliations laid down in specific regulations commonly known as the Covenant of Umar, which
degraded both the individual and the community.2
Up to the last decades of the nineteenth century, and even into the twentieth, the Jews in most
of North Africa (until European domination: i.e.,Algeria [1830], Tunisia [1881], Egypt [1882], Libya
[1911], and Morocco [1912|), Yemen, and other Muslim lands of the Orient were still obliged to live
in isolated groups amid the general population. They resided in special quarters and were constrained
to wear distinctive clothing; the carrying of arms was forbidden to them, and their sworn testimony
was not accepted under Muslim jurisdiction.

First published in 1976 by the Centre d’Inl’ormation et de Documentation sur le Moyen-Orient. Geneva, Switzerland.

The indigenous Christian populations fared no better. Throughout the Islamic lands they had,
like the Jews, been reduced to the inferior status of dhimmis3 and had been virtually eliminated from
North Africa by the twelfth century, during the Almohad persecutions.
For twelve hundred years, the dhimmis were tolerated in Muslim lands on the terms laid down
in the Covenant of Umar, the refusal or infringement of which could incur the death penalty.
The dhimmi status was referred to by Egyptian Abu Zahra, at an important conference of
theologians (1968) held at the Islamic University of Al-Azhar in Cairo under the patronage of
President Gamal Abdul Nasser: “But we say to those who patronize the Jews that the latter are
dhimmis, people of obligation, who have betrayed the covenant in conformity with which they have
been accorded protection.”4
President Anwar el-Sadat’s declaration on the feast of Muhammad’s birth (April 25, 1972) also
relates to this basic Islamic dhimmi concept: “They [the Jews] shall return and be as the Koran said
of them: ‘condemned to humiliation and misery.’ . . . We shall send them back to their former
status.”5 This highly evocative expression is based on a verse from the Qur’an (sura 9:29) and on its
traditional theological exegesis; it is strangely reminiscent of a passage from a poem composed in the
“golden age” of Arab-Muslim tolerance nine centuries ago. In a bitter anti-Jewish ode against Joseph
Ibn Nagrella (the Jewish minister of the Muslim ruler of Grenada in Spain), Abu Ishaq, a well-known
eleventh-century Arab jurist and poet, is unambiguous: “Put them back where they belong and reduce
them to the lowest of the low. . . . Turn your eyes to other [Muslim] countries and you will find the
Jews there are outcast dogs. … Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them. . . . They have
violated our covenant with them so how can you be held guilty against the violators?”6 Nagrella and
an estimated Five thousand Jews of Grenada were subsequently slaughtered on December 30, 1066.
This figure is more than the number of Jews reported to have been killed by the pillaging Crusaders
throughout the Rhineland thirty years later, at the time of the First Crusade.
Antoine Fattal, in his authoritative study on the legal status of non-Muslims in Muslim lands,
has written:

The dhimmi is a second-class citizen. If he is tolerated, it is for reasons of a spiritual

nature, since there is always the hope that he might be converted; or of a material nature, since
he bears almost the whole tax burden. He has his place in society, but he is constantly
reminded of his inferiority. … In no way is the dhimmi the equal of the Muslim. He is marked
out for social inequality and belongs to a despised caste; unequal in regard to individual rights;
unequal as regards taxes; unequal in the law courts, as his evidence is not admitted by any
Muslim tribunal, and for the same crime his punishment is greater than that imposed on
Muslims. No social relationship, no fellowship is possible between Muslims and dhimmis. . . .
Even today, the study of the jihad is part of the curriculum of all the Islamic institutes. In the
universities of al-Azhar, Najaf, and Zaitoune, students are still taught that the holy war is a
binding prescriptive decree, pronounced against the infidels, which will only be revoked with
the end of the world.7

Likewise Louis Gardet, a Catholic theologian and a respected orientalist, one of the leaders of
the contemporary “dialogue” between Islam and Christianity, has stressed,

The dhimmi should always behave as an inferior; he should adapt a humble and contrite
attitude. For example, in the payment of the jizya, or poll tax, the qadi, on receiving the
money, must make as if to give the dhimmi a light slap in the face so as to remind him of his
place.8 The dhimmi should everywhere give way to the Muslim. … If Islam did not invent the
ghettos, it can be said that it was the first to institutionalize them. (The rules established by
medieval Christian princes, in particular those of the popes for the ghetto of Rome, are often
copies of Muslim prescriptions relating to dhimmis.) The Reverend Father Bonsirven provided
a brief but evocative summing-up of the civil and political situation of the Jews in the Middle
Ages in his lecture at the Catholic Institute in Paris, later published with the title “Au Ghetto”
in the January 1940 issue of La Question d’Israel. In fact, and without the R. F. Bonsirven
having realized it, most of the rules, prescriptions and measures that he described repeat the
regulations concerning the dhimmis attributed to Umar I.9

The historian of the Hafsides, Robert Brunschwig, also remarked that “Islam subjected the
dhimmis to special fiscal and vestimentary obligations.” He noted that, toward the end of the twelfth
century, in the Almohad empire (North Africa and Spain), the Jews were compelled to wear a
distinctive mark, besides ridiculous clothes. “Would it not be strange if it were the Almohad example
which made Christendom decide to adopt the same sort of measure? The Jews were first compelled
to wear a distinctive badge in Chris tian lands at the beginning of the thirteenth century (first
officially promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1216).”10
The late renowned orientalist Gustave von Grunebaum wrote in 1971, “It would not be
difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the
Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and
recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would not be
difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced
conversions, or pogroms.” He referred in detail to the well-known letter, written to the suffering
Yemenite Jews toward the end of the twelfth century by Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who had
found refuge in Fatimid Egypt after fleeing twice (from Spain and Morocco) from the intolerant
Almohads: “and it is known to you that no nation stood against Israel more hostile than they
[meaning the Muslims], that no nation did evil to perfection in order to weaken us and belittle us and
degrade us like them.”11
Bernard Lewis, the much respected historian and coeditor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam,
emphasized in a 1968 article,

The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a
cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented in 19th-century Europe as a
reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews… .
European travellers to the East in the age of liberalism and emancipation are almost
unanimous in deploring the degraded and precarious position of Jews in Muslim countries, and
the dangers and humiliations to which they were subject. Jewish scholars, acquainted with the
history of Islam and with the current situation in Islamic lands, can have had no illusions on
this score. Vambery [1904] is unambiguous: “I do not know any more miserable, helpless, and
pitiful individual on God’s earth than the Jahudi in those countries.”12

One could provide scores of similar testimonies from earlier and later travelers to the Orient and
North Africa. Here are but three general comments from the 1850s. A few other documents are
included as well.
The Abbe Godard, who had travelled to North Africa, Egypt, and Palestine, noted in 1858, “It
is said that in Rome the Jews never pass under Titus’s Arch, but if they also keep such long memories
and grudges in Muslim lands, I do not see where they could walk.”13
A Romanian Jew, “Benjamin II,” who traveled extensively during five years in the Orient and
the Maghreb, drew a revealing comparison: “How happy I would be if [by my book of travels] I
could interest them [the Jews of Europe] in the plight of their coreligionists who are the victims of
oriental barbarism and fanaticism. Our strong and free brethren, who have the good fortune to live
under liberal regimes, where they are governed by wise laws and are treated humanely, will
understand how deplorable and urgent is the abnormal situation of their brethren in the Orient.
Religion demands it; humanity requires it. May the Almighty One lessen the burden of so many
tribulations; may he reward their heroism after centuries of slavery and their indomitable faith under
such cruel persecutions.”14
Jacob Saphir was born in Poland and taken to Safed in Galilee when he was ten; he fled to
Jerusalem after the Safed pogroms of 1836 and later traveled widely in the Yemen and the East in
1858-59. On the conditions of the Jews of the Yemen, whose situation was pitiful, he had this to say:
“In short, the suffering of the Jews in Yemen [ 1858-59] baffle all description. Even in the Holy Land
things did not look rosy before 1830, as I know from my own experience. But in comparison with the
Yemen, even Palestine could then be regarded as the land of freedom, and in the former country the
Jew is regarded as a hated prey.”15
The detailed report (1910) of Yomtob Semach showed that fifty years later nothing had
basically changed in the deplorable condition of the Jews of the Yemen.16
Numerous unpublished nineteenth-century documents, as well as reports by European
travelers,17 confirm that the discriminatory status applied to the Jews under Islam continued under
one form or another in most Arab lands until the early years of the twentieth century. Thousands of
Jews were assassinated singly, and collectively, as Jews, in Islamic lands from the Atlantic to the
Persian Gulf during the half century before World War I. Forced conversions were not infrequent,
often after girls and boys had been abducted.
It was only after the establishment of European protectorates in all of North Africa, Egypt, and
the Orient (with the exception of the Yemen, where the Jews had to wait till 1949-50, when they were
airlifted to Israel in “Operation Magic Carpet”) that the remaining oppressed non-Muslim minorities
gained de jure equal rights with Muslims, and not always even then—for example, the Jews of
Morocco and the majority of those of Tunisia remained under the protection of their monarchs until
the middle of the twentieth century, and as dhimmis their sworn testimony was never legally
recognized under Muslim jurisprudence.
Under European rule, Christians and Jews enjoyed physical security— and some even a
certain affluence—that lasted for two or three generations. As each Arab country won its national
independence, the situation of the minorities worsened, often becoming intolerable. More than one
thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting from 1938 to 1949 in Baghdad (1941/46/48), Tripoli
(1945/48), Aden (1947), Aleppo (1945/47/48), Damascus (1938/45/49), Oudja and Djerade
(Morocco), Cairo (1948), and so on. Similar tragedies happened during the same period to many
indigenous Christian groups throughout the Arab world.
One can hardly blame, anachronistically, the Zionist Congress (1897), the Balfour Declaration
(1917), or the declaration of Israel’s independence (1948) for past centuries of Arab-Muslim
oppression.
A Moroccan Muslim, Said Ghallab, provided an authoritative testimony in an article published
in 1965 in Jean-Paul Sartre’s periodical Les Temps Modernes:

The worst insult one Moroccan can make to another is to call him a Jew. … My
childhood friends have remained anti-Jewish. They mask their virulent antisemitism by
maintaining that the state of Israel was the creation of Western imperialism. My Communist
comrades have fallen into this trap themselves. Not a single issue of the communist press
denounces either the antisemitism of the Moroccans or that of their government. . .. And the
integral Hitlerite myth is cultivated among the popular class. Hitler’s massacre of the Jews was
acclaimed with delight. It is even believed that Hitler is not dead, but very much alive. And his
arrival is awaited (like that of the Imam el Mahdi) to free the Arabs from Israel.18

The general Arab opposition to the existence of an independent sovereign state of Israel in its
ancient homeland has its roots in traditional Islamic attitudes and dhimmi concepts.19 The
contemporary hostile Arab attitudes toward Jews (nearly one million have fled from a dozen Arab
countries since World War II, three-quarters of them to Israel)20 and other minorities is not something
unusual in the Arab world; what was unusual, for the dhimmis, was the relative calm of the preceding
two or three generations, during the period of European domination.
The root of the present Lebanese tragedy is religious, whatever the political and social aspects.
In 1860, the brutal massacre of several thousand Christians in Syria and Lebanon occurred soon after
the passing of the Hatti Hiimayun edict (1856), which had granted equal rights with Muslims to
Christians and Jews. The French intervened militarily, and combined European pressure obliged the
Sultan to accept an autonomous Christian-Lebanese province, albeit still under Ottoman suzerainty.
The determinationof the indigenous Maronites (and other oriental Christian ethnic groups) to survive
in their ancient homeland is a millenary phenomenon that should be recognized for what it is: an age-
old resistance against foreign imperialist domination. Today, whether or not the Palestinians and
other groups are participating willingly or are being used by fanatical leaders to achieve the ultimate
aims of jihad does not change the essence of the historical pattern— simply because the slogans and
catchwords used may lead to popular confusion.
A deeper knowledge of the past history of the non-Muslim minorities of these regions may
help the student or observer to better understand the real aims behind some of the present-day slogans
of Arab propagandists—for example, the PLO’s plans for a secular Arab-Palestine state that is to
replace Israel. One should bear in mind that this “politicidal” goal is fully supported by all Arab
leaders, including Col. Muammar al-Gadhafi, who is a fervent believer in the fundamental,
unchangeable truths of Islam and the Qur’an.
It is worth considering, as a conclusion, the profound observation made in 1968 by Georges
Vajda, the eminent orientalist of the French Centre National de Recherches Scientifique:

In the light of the foregoing facts [illustrated in his article], it seems clear that, unless it
changes its principles, goes against the deepest feelings of its coreligionists and calls in
question its own raison d’etre, no Muslim power, however “liberal” it may like to think itself
(we say “it may like to think itself” and not “it claims itself to be”), could depart from the line
of conduct followed in the past and continued de facto in the present, in conferring on the Jews
anything but the historic status of “protection,” patched up with ill-digested and unassimilated
Western phraseology. The same applies to the Christian minority, however it may attempt to
secure its position by increasingly anti-Jewish attitudes (one should not forget the recent
Vatican Council), inspired by political necessity but also on account of the odium theologicum
that is even more firmly rooted in the Eastern than in the Western Church, and which dates
from well before the birth of Islam. The present author cannot claim to make any value
judgements, still less to prophesy. His familiarity with original sources throughout a life of
study has convinced him that Christian and Jewish documents could in their turn provide a
very substantial contribution to a disheartening anthology of incomprehension and rancor. If
there does in fact exist a path towards a harmonious symbiosis between men of divergent
convictions, only those who are able to break with their past will be able to set out on it.21

DOCUMENTS: JEWS IN NORTH AFRICA AND EGYPT IN THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY

Morocco

General Domingo Badia y Leblich was a Spaniard and a scientist, sufficiently acquainted with
the language and the customs of the Moors to deceive even Sultan Sulayman himself. Passing as a
Muslim (Ali Bey), he carried out numerous “political” errands during his travels in the first years of
the nineteenth century. The reliable and prolific writer on Morocco Budgett Meakin, in a review of
all works on Morocco he published in 1899, considered Bey’s Travels of Ali Bey in Morocco “a
standard work” and stated that “his observations may be accepted with faith.” The general
description of the Jews of Morocco that follows is confirmed by earlier and later travelers.

The Jews in Morocco are in the most abject state of slavery: but at Tangier it is
remarkable that they live intermingled with the Moors, without having any separate quarter,
which is the case in all the other places where the Mahometan religion prevails. . . .
 The Jews are obliged, by order of the Government, to wear a particular dress, composed
of large drawers, of a tunic, which descends to their knees, of a kind of burnous or cloak
thrown on one side, slippers, and a very small cap; every part of their dress is black except the
shirt, of which the sleeves are extremely wide, open, and hanging down very low.
When a Jew passes before a mosque, he is obliged to take off his slippers, or sandals; he
must do the same when he passes before the house of the Kai’d, the Kadi, or of any
Mussulman of distinction. At Fez and in some other towns they are obliged to walk barefoot.. .
.
On my arrival, I had two Jews amongst my servants: when I saw that they were so ill-
treated and vexed in different ways, I asked them why they did not go to another country: they
answered me that they could not do so because they were slaves of the sultan.22

Arthur Leared, an English doctor, had no knowledge of Arabic but, according to Budgett
Meakin (1899), his “observations” were accurate. His book first appeared in London in 1876. His
description of the Jewish condition at that time in Marrakesh is confirmed by orientalists Heinrich
von Maltzen and Joseph Halevy, who visited the southern Moroccan capital in 1859 and 1876,
respectively. Dr. Leared’s comments on the Jews of Marrakesh are noteworthy.

The disqualifications and indignities to which the Jews are subjected in the city of
Marocco [Marrakesh], so far as they came under my own observation, were as follows:

1) They were never allowed to wear the turban.

2) In the presence of a governor, and when passing a mosque, they are obliged to remove the
blue handkerchief which the head is at other times bound.
3) They must wear black instead of yellow shoes always worn by the Moors.
4) When they go from their own quarter into the Moorish town, both men and women are
compelled to take off their shoes and walk barefooted; and this degradation appeared
especially painful when one had occasion to walk with a Jewish friend through the filthy
streets of the Moorish quarters.
5) A Jew, meeting a Moor, must always pass to the left.
6) Jews are not allowed to ride through the city.
7) They are not permitted to carry arms.
8) The use of the Moorish bath is forbidden to the Jews.
9) In the exercise of their religion they are restricted to private houses; hence there are no
public buildings used as synagogues. This restriction applies equally to other parts of the
empire, except Tangier.

No doubt there are other more or less annoying interferences with personal liberty which do not
meet the eye. But the list given is enough to show that the grievances of the Jewish community are
far from being merely sentimental. They live under the yoke of an iron despotism, and, as might be
expected, betray this in their manner and appearance. The men are in general of medium height, but
slender, long-visaged, and sallow. It is sad to see them walk with bowed heads and slow steps
through the streets of their mother city. . . .
In the southern province of Sus the Jew is regarded as so indispensable to the prosperity of the
country that he is not allowed to leave it. If he gets permission to go to Mogador to trade, it is only on
condition that he leaves his wife and family, or some relation to whom he is known to be attached, as
surety for his return. . . .
. . . According to Mohammedan law, neither Christian non Jew has, in legal matters, any locus
standi. In taking evidence their oath is not received, and the presumption is always in favor of the
true believer [i.e. the Muslim].23
Algeria

William Shaler was the United States consul in Algiers from 1816 to 1828. His Sketches were
published four years before the French military occupa-tion of the town in 1830. The Jews of Algiers
—about ten thousand—formed roughly a quarter of its population. They became the first in any
Muslim land to be granted equal rights with Muslims. Dubois-Thainville, the French consul at about
the same period, and others, confirm Shaler’s description.

Independent of the legal disabilities of the Jews, they are in Algiers a most oppressed
people; they are not permitted to resist any personal violence of whatever nature, from a
Mussulman; they are compelled to wear clothing of a black or dark colour; they cannot ride on
horseback, or wear arms of any sort, not even a cane; they are permitted only on Saturdays and
Wednesdays to pass out of the gates of the city without permission; and on any unexpected call
for hard labour, the Jews are turned out to execute it. . . .
On several occasions of sedition amongst the Janissaries, the Jews have been
indiscriminately plundered, and they live in the perpetual fear of a renewal of such scenes;
they are pelted in the streets even by children, and in short, the whole course of their existence
here, is a state of the most abject oppression and contumely. The children of Jacob bear these
indignities with wonderful patience; they learn submission from infancy, and practise it
throughout their lives, without ever daring to murmur at their hard lot. … It appears to me that
the Jews at this day in Algiers constitute one of the least fortunate remnants of Israel existing.24

In 1870 the vast majority of the Jews of Algeria were granted French citizenship by the
Cremieux decree.

Tunisia

The situation of the Jews of Tunisia had begun to improve in the middle of the nineteenth
century. The public hanging of an innocent Jew of Tunis in 1856 on the traditional accusation of
blaspheming Islam became a cause celebre and demonstrated the precariousness of their condition. A
new constitution (the Fundamental Pact) giving Christians and Jews full equality with Muslims was
promulgated under French pressure by the Bey of Tunis in 1857. In the revolt of 1864, the Jews of
Tunis, Nabeul, and Djerba were attacked, and the new constitution was swept away.
The description of the Jews of Tunis by the Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg relates to conditions
around 1870, prior to the French protectorate (1881). The Jews of Tunisia were nonetheless better off
than their brethren in Morocco at the same period.

The oppressions to which those latter are exposed, even to this day, are almost incredible.
In Algiers the French Government emancipated them some forty years ago, but in Tunis,
Morocco, and Tripolis they only got certain liberties during the last few years. Till then they
had to live in a certain quarter, and were not allowed to appear in the streets after sunset. If
they were compelled to go out at night they had to provide themselves with a sort of cat-o’-
nine tails at the next guardhouse of the “Zaptieh,” which served as a kind of passport to the
patrols going round at night. If it was a dark night, they were not allowed to carry a lantern
like the Moors and Turks, but a candle, which the wind extinguished every minute. They were
neither allowed to ride on horseback nor on a mule, and even to ride on a donkey was
forbidden them except outside the town; they had then to dismount at the gates, and walk in
the middle of the streets, so as not to be in the way of Arabs. If they had to pass the “Kasha,”
they had first to fall on their knees as a sign of submission, and then to walk on with lowered
 head; before coming to a mosque they were obliged to take the slippers off their feet, and had
to pass the holy edifice without looking at it. As Tunis possesses no less than five hundred
mosques, it will be seen that Jews did not wear out many shoes at that time. It was worse even
in their intercourse with Musulmans; if one of these fancied himself insulted by a Jew, he
stabbed him at once, and had only to pay a fine to the State, by way of punishment. As late as
1868 seventeen Jews were murdered in Tunis without the offenders having been punished for
it: often a Minister or General was in the plot, to enrich himself with the money of the
murdered ones. Nor was that all. The Jews— probably to show their gratefulness for being
allowed to live in the town, or to live at all—had to pay 50,000 piastres monthly to the State as
a tax!25

Tripolitania (Libya)

Paolo della Cella’s narrative describes the condition of the Jews of Benghazi before the
Ottomans reasserted their more lenient rule in Tripolitania (1835). An English naval commander
confirmed the similar abject status of the Tripoli Jews at about the same time. Cella, an Italian, was
physician to the ruler of Tripoli.

The Jews form the labouring portion of the population of Bengasi, the remainder
[Muslims] living in idleness at the expense of those unbelievers; in return for which, there is
no species of vexation and extortion to which the Israelites are not exposed. They are not
permitted to have a dwelling to themselves, but are forced to pay largely for being tolerated in
the house of a Mahometan, who thinks he has a right to practise every kind of knavery upon
his inmate. The clothes which a poor Jew had pulled off on going to bed, I saw exposed to sale
in the market next morning by the master of the house.26

Egypt

“The most perfect picture of a people’s life that has ever been written.” Edward Lane’s Modern
Egyptians describes the Egypt he knew so well from 1825 to 1835; it has retained its reputation as a
classic to this day. Lane spoke fluent Arabic, bore a resemblance to a pure Arab from Mecca and, in
Egypt, dressed as an Egyptian. The passage that follows is extracted from the few pages of his book
in which he portrayed the Jews of Egypt. This is thirty-five years before the opening of the Suez
Canal and fifty years before the British occupation of the country, when Jews and Christians finally
obtained de jure legal rights with Muslims.

The Jews have eight synagogues in their quarter in Cairo; and not only enjoy religious
toleration but are under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the
Turkish empire. . . . Like the Copts, and for a like reason, the Jews pay tribute, and are
exempted from military service. They are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the
Muslims in general… far more than are the Christians. Not long ago, they used often to be
jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten for merely passing on the right hand of a
Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of
abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been
put to death upon false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the
Kuran or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to
him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.27

Egypt and Libya, November 1945

 The beginning of the month of November 1945 was marked in Cairo and Alexandria [and also
at Mansura, Tanta, and Port Said] by very grave anti-Jewish tumults [10 Jews were killed and 350
wounded]. Student youths and mobs carried out attacks against the Jewish population, both their
persons and their property. The pretext for the attacks was the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
[November 2]. But, as the London Jewish Chronicle explained, in commenting on the events, all the
testimonies received till now on the subject of the turmoil that occurred in Cairo concur in excluding
a spontaneous outburst and show, on the contrary, that they were carefully organised. But whatever
the origin, which seems difficult to detect, the real nature of the events to be understood—as with
those that happened in Tripoli [Zanzur, Zawiyah, Qasabat, and Zlitan in Libya at the same period,
taking the lives of 130 Jews, and wounding 450]—is the precariousness of the Jewish population in
certain Arab countries, where the smallest pretext can trigger aggressions against Jews which,
without being desired or approved by the majority of the Arab population, nonetheless constitute a
grave danger.28

NOTES

The complete English version of “Protected Peoples under Islam” was published in Geneva on
October 30, 1976, by the Centre dTnformation et de Documentation sur le Moyen-Orient (CID). A
French version followed on February 18, 1977. The last document included in the article, “Egypt and
Libya, November 1945,” only appeared in the French edition and has now been translated into
English for this book. Shorter versions of this text by David G. Littman had already appeared in
French in L’Arche (Paris), December 26, 1973-January 25, 1974, and then revised and enlarged for
the European Newsletter of the World Union of Jewish Students, November 1975. All the quoted
texts from French publications were translated into English in 1976 by David G. Littman.
 5
HISTORICAL AMNESIA:
Naming Jihad and
Dhimmitude

Bat Ye’or

In Genesis 2:18-21, God has all the animals pass in front of Adam to be named. Naming is to
define an object for it to be recognized by its characteristics when it next appears. A thing without a
name escapes the understanding, which does not register it and consequently cannot recognize it.
This can be verified also in the realm of abstract knowledge. It applies as well to the concepts of
jihad and dhimmitude, yet they represent a political system that has functioned without interruption
and virtually without change on three continents for fourteen centuries. Although today it is
reappearing with renewed vigor, this system—because it has not been given a name—is not
recognized. It is even totally ignored, even denied, whereas the proofs of its past and present
existence are obvious and manifold.
Although they are intrinsically linked, jihad and dhimmitude form two separate domains. The
first represents a collection of principles, strategies, and tactics of wars and conquests, based on
Muslim religious ideas relating to infidels. The second represents the body of laws that the Islamic
state imposes on all non-Muslim populations (dhimmis) on lands conquered and Islamized by jihad.
Dhimmitude encompasses the way of life mandated by the commands of the Sharia for these
subjugated indigenous peoples.
A considerable number of chronicles written by Muslims and non-Muslims exist containing
information on the methods and development of jihad over the centuries. These texts make it possible
to establish the synchronicity between these Islamic military practices and the prescriptions of jihad,
formulated by the founders of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the eighth century.
These rules of jihad are still taught in Islamic schools and institutes in Muslim countries, Europe, and
the Americas. The wars currently waged by Muslim states or groups in Israel, the Sudan, Nigeria,
Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chechnya, and the United States reproduce the classic strategy
of jihad.

This text was prepared in August 2002. It is published here for the first time.

With the technology of the twenty-first century this modern jihad reproduces the ideological
principles of the jihad against infidels drawn up in the eighth century. It reveals the easily identifiable
features of a worldwide jihad integrated into the process of globalization. It is easy to show the way
in which current practices of war conform to the rules of jihad according to the Sharia. For example,
the military conscription of pubescent and prepubescent children was used in the Iraq-Iran war, in the
jihad against Israel (the intifada), and by Islamist militias in the Sudan. The same is true of the
refusal to return enemy corpses (Lebanese Hizbollah); the taking and ransoming of hostages
(Lebanon, Chechnya, the Philippines); the raids on villages and the abduction and enslavement of
women and children (Sudan, Indonesia); and the terrorist campaigns against civilians regarded as
enemies of Islam (infidels and apostates) and consequently deprived of all rights (terrorism in Israel,
India, the United States, and Algeria).
Other manifestations of jihad include the jihad of the pen (propaganda) and jihad by way of
buying hearts and minds (corrupting politicians, acade-mics, and intellectuals). Jihad can also consist
of dividing the enemy camp. For example, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism in Europe is largely
the result of political pressures exerted by the Arab-Islamic world on European political parties
captivated by the oil mantra. Anti-Americanism divides two allied continents and weakens still
further a Europe eroded by massive immigration, terrorism, and its economic dependence on oil. The
wave of Judeophobia currently raging in Europe aims at isolating and terrorizing the Jewish
communities to make them abandon their solidarity with Israel and to manipulate them against it.
This policy, conceived in the Arab world, is implemented in Europe by the criminal acts of Muslim
immigrants perpetrated against Jews. It is not combated by governments that are impotent in the face
of Muslim criminality and prefer to deny it; at the same time they encourage it through a biased anti-
Israel policy. Lastly, the Judeo-Christian rapprochement, so essential to the two Peoples of the Bible,
is torpedoed by the Islamic exploitation of the traditional antisemitism/anti-Zionism of the Euro-Arab
pro-Palestinian lobbies.
Thus those pulling the strings of the jihad against the infidels hide behind a screen of anti-
American and anti-Zionist Westerners. An Egyptian lawyer, Fouad Abdel-Moneim Riad, who was
referred to in a recent interview as a former judge of an unspecified court on war crimes, talks of
creating an international moral opinion. He calls for universal mobilization of the non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and of the civil society of the Arab and international world in order to set up a
“moral tribunal” that would condemn Israel for war crimes. “Such a tribunal,” says magistrate Riad,
“would be most effective if it were formed of great thinkers from outside of the Arab world.”1 Riad
makes it clear that the condemnation for war crimes must not be limited to a few culpable politicians,
as happened with Hitler, but must embrace all the people of Israel. This is an example of the
essentialist and collective category of the demonization of the infidel which is a fundamental notion
of jihad. Riad’s idea soon found support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an article titled “Build
Moral Pressure to End the Occupation.”2 Consciously or not, the archbishop became the Christian
spokesman for Riad by describing the stages of this orchestration of hatred against Israel, comparing
apartheid with Israel’s self-defense against terrorism, under the accusation of “occupation.”
As for dhimmitude, it dissolves in the limbo of the unknowable, having never been analyzed
or given a name until recently. It is replaced by the terms “golden age” and “exemplary tolerance,”
propagated by pro-Muslim European lobbies. Yet dhimmitude can be observed today in most Muslim
countries. A recently published book by Canon Patrick Sookhdeo throws light on some aspects of the
existence of non-Muslims in Pakistan, a country governed by the Sharia.3 This description reveals a
pattern of suffering that the historical chronicles only suggest, since most often the victims
disappeared without a trace. And yet, however painful it may be, this condition is not an exact replica
of the past, because no Muslim country, not even Saudi Arabia and the ex-Taliban regime, imposes
the requirements of the Sharia in full, as was the case in the past when it constituted the sole
jurisdiction in the Muslim empires. Thus the condition known as “bonded labor” is of particular
interest to the historian of dhimmitude, because it was the condition of the Jewish and Christian
peasantries, so often described in their chronicles from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries. Today,
in Pakistan, this subservience is still maintained by fiscal exploitation and arbitrary indebtedness that
lead to expropriation and the slavery system. Likewise, Sookhdeo demonstrates how the inferior
status of the non-Muslim can validate an abuse, in theory forbidden by law, and make it irreversible,
as with the abduction of Christian women. This crime, also practiced in Egypt today, is a per-manent
component of dhimmitude.
The institution of jihad-dhimmitude constitutes a homogeneous modem pattern rooted in
fourteen centuries of existence. As far as I know it has never been subject to the smallest criticism by
Muslim theologians. The ideology of the jihad against the infidels and its stipulations, so often
described in detail by Muslim and Christian chroniclers—namely massacres, deportations, slavery,
and territorial dispossession—has never given rise to any examination. On the contrary, far from
being condemned, jihad is fervently glorified and piously emulated. Judeo-Christian societies, trained
to constant and rigorous self-criticism, find this total absence of relativism and historical objectivity
bewildering. There are multiple reasons for it, but the principal cause lies in the fact that the eighth-
century Muslim theologians rooted the institution of jihad-dhimmitude in the Qur’an and the Sunna
of the Prophet, that is to say his life, his words, and his actions. These two sources are the foundation
of the Islamic religion, jurisdiction, and civilization. Muslim doctrine postulates as an absolute axiom
the total conformity of the divine will with the revelation (Qur’an) made to the Prophet, and with his
words and his actions (Sunna).
A small booklet titled Islam: The Essentials, published in 1992 by the Islamic Foundation,
England, lists the essential points of the faith. Among them, point 6 declares that Muhammad is “the
Perfect Ideal for Mankind, the perfect servant of Allah and hence the complete and the ideally
balanced manifestation of the attributes of Allah.” Point 8 specifies that the believer must worship
Allah according to the revelations made in the Qur’an, by the method prescribed by Muhammad,
“and hence in accordance with his sayings and practice, known as Hadith or Sunnah.” It is this
doctrinal position that prevents any criticism or change.
Jihad and dhimmitude are compulsorily commanded by the Sharia, the sacred Islamic law,
formulated by the jurists after the conquest of territories stretching from Portugal to the Indus. Their
institutions are at the heart of the dynamic of Islamization specific to Muslim history and civilization
that developed among the conquered infidel majorities. To criticize these institutions would throw
doubt on the moral legitimacy of the Islamization of the infidels’ countries that was achieved.
Further, this Islamization is commanded by the dogma that proclaims the mission incumbent on the
Islamic community. This mission consists of imposing the law of Allah on all mankind. To challenge
the legitimacy of jihad rehabilitates infidelity, unbelief (kufr), the incarnation of Evil opposed to the
Good (i.e., Islam), and discredits the image of the Muslim jihadist fighter. Restoring the balance in
this way is inconsistent with verse 4:140, “Allah will not grant the unbelievers any way over the
believers.” Moreover, it is this absolute demonization of the world of infidelity that in the past had
determined—and still determines today—the dogmatic rejection of its culture and influence or their
adoption in an Islamized form. Thus, the Organization of the Islamic Conference has promulgated the
Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (1990), which, being in accordance with the Sharia,
supersedes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This same cultural anti-Western trend
led to the creation in 1981 of an International Institute of Islamic Thought (HIT), an organization
aimed at the Islamization of Western knowledge by relating it to the Sharia.4
If one understands, from the Muslim point of view, the theological arguments behind this lack
of criticism, how can this historical negationism in the Western democracies be explained? The taboo
that masks this subject leads to the claim that jihad has not made victims. Censorship presents
dhimmitude in Andalusia and elsewhere under the aegis of a caliph applying the Sharia— complete
with harems, eunuchs, and slaves, the majority of whom were Christians—as a perfect model of
multicultural societies for the West to be emulated in the twenty-first century. This general
misinformation enjoys wide outside financial support, and at the political level it justifies the
European Union’s laxity on the immigration question. Widely spread and taught, this myth is in
keeping with Europe’s security concerns and its policies of appeasement and conciliation toward
Muslim countries. Servile flattery is the ransom for economic and terrorist reprisals. Quite recently
Turkey applied pressure on the United States, Switzerland, France and Israel to prevent recognition
of the Armenian genocide (1915-17). Thus the West has barricaded itself into a historical
negationism that is the cornerstone of its economic, strategic, and security relationships with Muslim
countries.
In the context of jihad-dhimmitude it should also be noted that Islamic law imposes the same
status on Jews and Christians. The difference in the ways in which these two communities have
evolved is linked to external demographic and political factors. At the beginning of the conquests, the
Christians constituted immense majorities equipped with powerful religious and juridical institutions,
capable of constituting a threat to the immigrant Muslim minority. Despite their divisions, the
Muslims always suspected them of allegiance to hostile Christendoms (dar al-Harb, “region of
war”). Depending on circumstances, these two factors specific to the Christian dhimmis played an
ambivalent role in the course of history, causing sometimes bloody reprisals that spared the Jews and
sometimes preferential treatment obtained by pressure or money from the Western powers. By
contrast, the vulnerability of the Jews, lacking outside protection, led to the disinte gration of
Palestinian Jewry by Arab colonization and to the decline and even in some cases the disappearance
of the numerous Jewish diasporas of Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Andalusia in the
twelfth century.
In the nineteenth century, the destinies of the two communities totally diverged in the Middle
East. Some Lebanese and Syrian Christian movements militated on behalf of Arab nationalism. This
policy, conceived by France and the papacy, aimed at unifying Christians and Muslims in one ethnic
and cultural identity in order to eliminate the religious context of dhimmitude. Arabism, propagated
among the Christian dhimmis by missionaries, strengthened the influence in the Holy Land of the
Holy See and France, sole protector of the Holy Places of Christendom. From its beginnings, the
Holy See and France utilized this movement to cement an Islamo-Christian alliance and destroy
Zionism, which was supported by Protestant England. Thus the religious and political rivalries of
Europe were played out by the interdhimmi conflicts. During World War II, Christian and Muslim
Arab nationalists—notably from Palestine—supported the fascist and Nazi regimes.
A number of Eastern Christians were opposed to Arab nationalism, which denied their ethnic
identity, their culture, their history, and their rights in their country, since Christianity had grown up
in the ancient civilizations of the Orient well before Arab Islam was imported with the invaders.
These Christians also rejected the extreme Judeophobia that this movement spread. In addition, they
denounced the revival of dhimmitude in Arab nationalism and campaigned for autonomous Christian
territories in Lebanon and Iraq. The failure of these movements, mercilessly combated by the
European colonial powers and broken by bloody Muslim reprisals, fed a large flow of Christian
emigration from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Jews rejected Arab nationalism—a racist, Judeophobic, anti-Christian, and negationist
ideology—that concealed the history, the civilizations, and the rights of the non-Arab peoples of the
Middle East. Faced with Arab pogroms and fearing the fate of the Armenians, the Jews of Arab
countries after World War II emigrated en masse in tragic conditions, abandoning all their
possessions in these lands of dhimmitude, where for centuries they had been exploited, persecuted,
and degraded.
Today, Arab-Muslim behavior toward non-Muslims has scarcely evolved since the seventh
century. Israel, which symbolizes the liberation from dhimmitude of the Jewish people in their
homeland, is attacked by jihad, while the remaining Christian communities live in Muslim countries
under a system of dhimmitude in a precarious present and an uncertain future. The tragic
consequences of Arab nationalism were revealed after the decolonization of the Muslim countries
and in the process of their re-Islamization, which is bringing back the Sharia and consequently a
modern dhimmitude for the Christians, and the jihad threat against the West. Thus the jihad-
dhimmitude institution remains stronger than ever.
This situation is the result of the negationist culture imposed by Arab nationalism, which, in its
war against Zionism, replaced the history of jihad-dhimmitude with the myth of perfect Islamo-
Christian coexistence. Christian Arab nationalists destroyed their memory and their dhimmi identity,
replacing them with an imaginary Arab origin. They fought—as had the janissaries in the past—
against the liberation movements of their Christian brothers in order to keep them in the dhimmitude
of Arabism. Ardent defenders of Islamic interests in the West, they made every effort to graft onto
this amnesia a catalogue of Christian guilt toward Muslims and the latter’s victimization in order to
create an artificial symmetry between Islamo-Christian relations and Judeo-Christian relations.
Since Arab nationalism had been conceived and imposed by Europe, this misinformation
prospered there, aggravated by circumstances connected with the expansion of the oil industries and
international terrorism. In this way Europe has evolved into Eurabia, a new land of dhimmitude
following the traditional pattern. The European ministers of Eurabia, like the Christian dhimmi
notables, obey the commands of internal and external Islamist terrorism. While the dangers of an
international nuclear jihad grew stronger, Eurabia, to assert its existence, fulminated against Israel,
accusing it of threatening world peace by its refusal to surrender to Palestinian terror. The media’s
onslaught against Israel was encouraged by political circles. The general insecurity that is destroying
democratic civil institutions, and the anti-Jewish criminal attacks, testify to the incompetence of the
minister-notables of Eurabia. Like the dhimmis, whose exemplary condition they had vaunted, they
are forced to deny the antisemitic rampages since they are powerless to stop clandestine immigration
or Muslim criminals without incurring economic and terrorist reprisals. Thus historical amnesia has
led to political impotence and the servitude of dhimmitude, which is constantly gaining ground.
 6.
DHIMMI PEOPLES
Oppressed Nations
Bat Ye’or

Loose the bands of wickedness,

Undo the heavy burdens,
Let the oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke.
—Isaiah 58:6

INTRODUCTION

There are peoples roaming the earth who no longer have a soul. Flight and X exile have
enfeebled their memories, dimmed their sight, and stifled their speech. In glancing through history
textbooks, they smile in melancholy: today their nations no longer exist. Vanquished peoples, they
have been rejected by history and have joined the anonymous mass of exploited peoples, whose
blood, tears, and sweat have helped to build the civilization of their oppressors. Thus they wander
through the world, with neither roots nor memories, strangers, forgotten by time, atomized—bearing
their nostalgia like a shackle.
When historians, peering into history through the conqueror’s eyeglass, meet them at the turn
of every century, eloquent in their gloomy silence, they deem “tolerant” the genocide that decimated
these peoples, forgetting that the silence of nations is the same as that of the gulag. Some have
survived, emaciated: these are the Samaritans. Others resist, and when their struggle explodes into
violence, the world remembers the meaning of bravery: these are the Maronites. Others fight alone in
the name of independence: these are the Kurds. Others despair in exile: these are the Armenians and
the Assyrian Christians. Some are resigned to their fate: these are the Copts. And others dig up, from
their liberated land, the ruins of their ancient culture destroyed by the occupant: these are the Israelis.
So numerous and diverse, all these nations have shared a common destiny for thirteen centuries: they
have resisted to the limits of human endurance in order to survive.

First published in English in 1978 by Editions de l’Avenir. Geneva, Switzerland.

 In this year, dedicated to the fight against racism, oppression, imperialism, and colonialism,
we wish to remember them. And bearing in mind the appeal of the Native Americans at the United
Nations,1 we wondered whether martyrdom endured for thirteen centuries does not justify at last the
recognition of the national rights and the human rights of dhimmi peoples, heirs to the national and
cultural values of the most ancient civilizations.

THE DHIMMIS

The fundamental evil in alienation is forgetfulness.

—Robert Misrahi

In this article, it is impossible to go far beyond general propositions. These will be best
appreciated, however, after the reader has been provided with the basic historical framework. This is
why it has seemed useful to specify briefly the socioeconomic background in which the dhimmi
nations evolved, while abstaining, for reasons of clarity and space, from analyzing the historical
context in any depth.
After the Arab conquest, the expression dhimmi designated the indigenous non-Arab and non-
Muslim peoples—Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians (Persians)—whose territories came under Arab-
Muslim domination. It signifies “protected” because these populations—in theory, if not always in
practice—were protected from pillage, slavery, exile, and massacre by the specific conditions of an
agreed covenant between the victors and the van-quished. In return for such protection, the dhimmis
were obliged to submit to a code or covenant (commonly referred to as the Covenant of Umar), a
summary of which is given below. The need to control these foreign peoples naturally obliged the
conquering Arab minority to adopt an oppressive political attitude, which became more and more
severe over the years. In order to justify their oppression, the rulers based their policies on certain
religious values to the exclusion of other Quranic verses recommending charity and frater-nity. Thus
a common geopolitical event—the conquest of foreign lands and the subjection of conquered peoples
—was linked to a religious concept, the jihad, or holy war, which has as its inevitable consequence
the oppression of the infidel. So, although the condition of the dhimmis is typical of religious
intolerance—hardly exceptional in human history—only its political aspect, the spoliation and
subjection of native inhabitants, will be examined here.
A dhimmi civilization is characterized by a language, a history, and a culture as well as
specific political and juridical institutions developed in the national homeland before its annexation
by the Arab conquerors. The expression dhimmi civilization, or dhimmi people, refers to a nation the
ethnic origin of which is associated with a particular geographical area, regardless of that nation’s
present dispersion. People who belong to a dhimmi civilization are individuals who have continued
to transmit to their progeny their specific heritage, despite their wanderings and their present
domiciles, which have resulted from loss of their national independence through occupation,
oppression, and exile. Thus, whether Westerners or Orientals, Jews are part of a dhimmi civilization
if they willingly perpetuate and accept the national and cultural values of Israel. It is the same thing
with the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Maronites as well as other peoples who, after the
conquest of their homeland, were subjected to a legislation that either decimated them or forced them
to live in exile.

Economic Exploitation
 A tax (the kharaj) was levied on the lands left to the indigenous dhimmis. This tax symbolized
the Arabization of the land of the dhimmis, that is, its addition to the patrimony of the Arab-Islamic
community. In the early period of colonization, lands given in fief were exonerated from the kharaj.
Each male dhimmi, with the theoretical exceptions of the aged, invalids, and slaves, had to pay
a poll tax (the jizya), which symbolized the subjection and humiliation of the vanquished.
The dhimmis also paid double the taxes of the Muslims. In addition, ransoms (avanias) were
frequently extorted from the local Jewish and Christian communities under threat of collective
sanctions, including torture and death.

Politico-economic Discrimination

It was forbidden for dhimmis on pain of death

• to carry or possess weapons;

• to raise a hand against a Muslim, even against an aggressor unjustly determined to kill
them;
• to ally themselves with the enemies of the Arabs;
• to criticize Islam, the Prophet, or the angels;
• to convert to any religion other than Islam, and having converted to Islam to revert to their
original religion;
• to be linked by marriage or concubinage to a Muslim woman:
• to hold a position giving them authority over a Muslim.

The dhimmis were obliged:

• to live separated from Muslims, in special quarters of a town, the gates of which were
closed every evening, or, as in Yemen, outside the limits of towns inhabited by Muslims;
• to have shorter houses than those of Muslims;
• to practice their religion secretly and in silence;
• to bury their dead hastily;
• to refrain from showing in public religious objects, such as crosses, banners, or sacred texts;
• to distinguish themselves from Muslims by their exterior aspect;
• to wear clothes distinguished not only by shape (length, style of sleeves, etc.) but also by
specific colors assigned to each group of dhimmis, i.e., for Jews, Christians, and
Samaritans;
• to have different types of tombs from those of Muslims.

It was forbidden for the dhimmis:

• to go near mosques or to enter certain venerated towns, which would thereby be polluted;
• to have headdresses, belts, shoes, ornate saddles, or saddles similar to those of Muslims.

Furthermore, all elements of their exterior appearance were intended to emphasize their humble
and abject status. They were forbidden to ride horses or camels, since these animals were considered
too noble for them. Donkeys were permitted, but they could only ride them outside towns, and they
had to dismount on sight of a Muslim. In certain periods they were forced to wear distinctive badges
in the public baths, and in certain regions they were even forbidden to enter them at all.

The dhimmis were obliged:

 • to make haste in the streets, always passing to the left (impure) side of a Muslim, who was
advised to push them to the wall;
• to walk humbly with lowered eyes;
• to accept insults without replying;
• to remain standing in a humble and respectful attitude in the presence of a Muslim;
• to leave Muslims the best places;
• never to speak to Muslims except to reply.

Any litigation between a dhimmi and a Muslim was brought before an Islamic tribunal, where
the dhimmi’s testimony was unacceptable.
In North Africa and Yemen, the most repugnant duties, such as executioner, gravedigger,
cleaner of the public latrines, and so on were forced on Jews—even on Saturdays and holy days.
Contempt for the dhimmi’s life was expressed through inequality of punishments for the same
offences. The penalty for murder was much lighter if the victim was a dhimmi. The murderer of a
dhimmi was rarely punished, as he could justify his act by accusing his victim of blasphemy against
Islam or of having assaulted a Muslim.
Muslims were strongly advised against social intercourse with dhimmis, but if contact with
them could not be avoided it was recommended that they limit relations to the strictest necessities,
always showing contempt.
This brief summary provides only an outline of the rules that governed a whole system of
oppression, which increased or decreased according to the specific circumstances of each region. In
exchange for these obligations inflicted upon the dhimmis, their existence was tolerated on their land,
which was now Arabized. This tolerance was not final. It could be abrogated in two ways: the
unilateral decision of the ruler to exile the dhimmis or infraction by the dhimmis of the regulations.
The latter case permitted individual or collective reprisals against the dhimmi communities, ending in
pillage or massacre. The enforcement or alleviation of the rules depended on the political
circumstances and the goodwill of the rulers. Some orientalists have considered them “tolerant,” and
this was evidently the opinion of those who benefited from them. But it is obviously not the point of
view of the victims. For how can oppression be justified or esteemed “tolerant” other than by
denying the humanity of those subjugated by it? Every colonizing power maintains that men are not
equal and considers that its yoke is benevolent and tolerant. Nor did the Arabs invent this legislation.
The Byzantine clergy first elabo rated it—thereby giving an ideological arm to the imperial power—
in order to destroy Israel in its homeland and in the diaspora. The Arabian conquerors Islamized it,
developing and using it to annihilate in their turn both oriental and North African Judaism and
Christianity in the political, economic, religious, and cultural spheres.
The situation of the Christian dhimmis was alleviated following Western European pressure to
protect oriental Christians, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and commerce with the Orient. In the
second half of the nineteenth century, European Jewish organizations, aided by European consuls,
were able to improve the condition of the Jewish dhimmis. It was only with European colonization,
which proclaimed de facto equality between Muslim, Christian, and Jew, that the dhimmis, now
liberated from discrimination, could feel free and even achieve some economic progress.
After European decolonization, Arab governments adopted a policy of intensive Arabization.
Wiping out the consequences of European colonization meant, amongst other things, as far as the
indigenous national minorities were concerned, the reestablishment of political, economic, social,
and cultural discrimination, with the aim of limiting those liberties that had been enjoyed during the
colonial period. This discrimination was adjusted to new ideological formulae and was manifested
with strong emphasis on the Arab-Muslim element to the detriment of the pre-Islamic ethnic cultures
and nationalisms. The latter were either attacked, as in the case of the national movements of the
Assyrians, Kurds, Zionists, and Maronites, or paralyzed, like the Copts of Egypt. Thus was
reestablished the superiority and domination of the Arab-Muslim community over the ethnic oriental
nationalisms, while pan-Arabism reaffirmed its imperialist principle of universal domination, which
had been at the root of Arab colonization of the Near East, North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and
part or Italy.

Documents

Dhimmi Edict for the Jews of Yemen, 1905

The imam Said Yahya Ibn Muhammad, religious and political leader of the Yemen, wrote with
his own hand the edict that follows. In 1905 the imam gave it to the Jews and promised to protect
them “if they remained in their former status.” In 1921 the ancient law requiring the forced
conversion of Jewish orphans was renewed and rendered more severe in 1925. It remained in force
until the departure of the Jews for Israel in 1948-50.

Edict promulgated in the Yemen by Imam Yahya:

In the name of Allah, the all merciful and clement

This is the regulation which I ordain for all the Jews who must remain subjected to my
laws and pay the [poll] tax without any change.
I recall to mind the ancient words and their meaning; I recall to mind the obligations
which the Turks have forgotten and which were observed in the time of the pious imams,
before the triumph of people ignorant of the law.
The Jews can remain untroubled and be assured of their existence if they pay regularly
the gizya.
Every male having reached the age of thirteen years is subject to this tax … and by this
their life will be preserved under our domination.
No one can avoid paying this tax before the end of the year … as it is written in the
Qur’an. the book received from Allah….
The Jews must not:

1) Raise their voices in front of Muslims,

2) Build houses higher than the houses of Muslims,
3) Brush against Muslims whilst passing them in the street,
4) Carry on the same trade as the Arabs,
5) Say that Muslim law can have a defect,
6) Insult the prophets.
7) Discuss religion with Muslims,
8) Ride animals astraddle,
9) Screw up their eyes in perceiving the nudity of Muslims,
10) Carry on their religious devotions outside their places of worship,
11) Raise their voices during prayers,
12) Sound the shofar with much noise,
13) Lend money at interest, which can bring about the destruction of the world,
14) They must always rise in front of Muslims and honour them in all circumstances.2
Clothing for Dhimmi Jews (Debdou, Morocco)

They [the Jews] first obtained the usage of this scarf in Morocco [Mar-rakesh] and
Mequinez, as a means of covering their ears. They really wanted to elude the customary insult
 of Moorish children, who delighted in knocking off their bonnets which were a sign of
servitude. They are not allowed to fasten the scarf with a double knot below the chin. This
knot must be a simple one and the scarf removed in the presence of Muslim dignitaries….
They are obliged always to wear the black or dark blue cloak (yalak); it is only by toleration
that they wear the white slam, a small coat, useful against the hot sun. The coat’s hood, made
of blue cloth, must not fold over the head, lest the Jew be mistaken from afar for a Moor; for
the Moor sometimes wears a hood of the same colour, except with a different rim.
Moreover the black bonnet must always be visible. Furthermore, the coat must have a
little opening on the right, and the hood must fall over the left shoulder in order to trouble the
movement of the arm as another sign of servitude.3
1851: No Justice for the Dhimmi

It is my duty to report to Your Excellency that the Jews in Hebron have been greatly
alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan….
The Jews having complained that a freed slave named Saad Allah was more obnoxious
to them than any other person in Hebron and that Abder-rahhman had released him almost
immediately after sentencing him to imprisonment, I applied to the Pasha to have Saad Allah
brought to Jerusalem.
His Excellency gave an order that the offender should be examined by the Council in
Hebron, and if convicted, be forwarded to Jerusalem for punishment.
Accordingly a Council was held there during five hours, and the result was that a report
(Mazbata) was drawn up and signed by the Mufti and Kadi, declaring that none but Jewish
witnesses had appeared, “and we do not receive the testimony of Jews.” Saad Allah was
therefore dismissed.4

FROM DHIMMIS TO A DHIMMI STATE

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
— George Santayana
(inscription on the gate of Dachau Concentration Camp Site Museum)

Among the motivations that contributed to the elaboration of the dhimmi status, the victor-
vanquished relationship in its political aspect appears as the predominant element. A distinction must
be made, however, between the treatment meted out by the Arab-Muslim conquerors to non-Arab
lands on the one hand and to their inhabitants on the other. The conquered lands were permanently
annexed by the Arab-Muslim collectivity, that is, they were Arabized. The fate of their inhabitants
depended on whether they had surrendered as a result of defeat in battle or according to treaty, but in
either case indigenous inhabitants who refused conversion to Islam were tolerated only if they
accepted the dhimmi status. Arabization of the conquered lands was marked by the kharaj tax, which
was levied only on dhimmi-owned land. The tax was paid to the Islamic collectivity, since both the
dhimmis and the produce of their work were considered as belonging to the conquering community
of believers.
Arabization was in fact synonymous with expropriation, for it implied the dissolution of the
bond between the land and its former owner. Henceforth the dhimmis were to be “tolerated” on their
own land by a foreigner who had obtained possession legally—for appropriation by force was
considered legal.
Exploitation of the Dhimmis

Having legitimately dispossessed the conquered populations according to the law of warfare, the
conquerors tried to strengthen their hold by weakening the indigenous population through economic
exploitation and inequitable laws. The decisive reason for the conqueror’s tolerance of the dhimmis’
existence was economic. They were sedentary peoples whose daily work both on the land and in the
towns was productive and necessary. The empire expanded with the aid of a Bedouin army that
benefited from the spoils of war; its maintenance was guaranteed by the exploitation of the dhimmis
throughout the conquered territories. Henceforth the dhimmis became merely an exploitable human
mass from which corvee was obtainable at will. At some periods they were tolerated with
condescension and at others with animosity, according to the empire’s economic and strategic needs
at the time.

Submission of the Dhimmis

The victor-vanquished relationship, being one of force, compelled the master to maintain the
dhimmi in a permanent state of weakness, subordination, and inferiority. The dhimmi was forbidden
to carry arms or keep them at home. He could be condemned to death for raising his hand against a
member of the conquering religion, even in defense when criminally assaulted or attacked by a child.
In certain circumstances, however, the enrollment of dhimmi mercenaries was permitted; on such
occasions the latter enjoyed the same rights as Muslims.
The expropriation and economic exploitation of the dhimmi peoples required a moral
justification. In order to legitimize the conquerors’ right over the person and property of the
vanquished, the ruling power glorified the superiority of the chosen conquering faith as well as the
spiritual values it upheld, contrasting them with the perversity of the vanquished dhimmis.
It was necessary for the dominating group to illustrate by its dignity, authority, and wealth the
divine grace that rewarded the just cause of the con-querors in contrast to the humility, isolation, and
degradation of the vanquished. The conquerors endeavored to debase the very soul of the dhimmis by
imposing on them the outward signs of moral degradation. When the politico-military danger of a
massive revolt on the part of the dhimmis had passed, it was this moral and social degradation of
human beings, justified by the superiority of the true believers, that characterized the dhimmi
condition. But even then the political implications of the victor-vanquished relationship would
survive side by side with that of the dominator-dominated, oppressor-oppressed relationship.
The dominant power felt obliged to expose publicly the imputed depravity of the dhimmis,
especially as their culture—as heirs to the ancient civilizations of the Orient—was incomparably
more developed than that of the conquerors. According to the renowned sheikh Damanhuri (Egypt,
eighteenth century), the dhimmis “must not imitate the garb of the men of learning and honor, or
wear luxurious garb, silk, or, say, fine cloth. They must be distinguished from ourselves in attire, as
the local custom of each area may have it, but without adornment, so that it indicates their
humiliation, submission, and abasement. Their shoelaces must not be like ours. Where closed shoes
are worn, not laced footwear, their shoes should be coarse, of unpleasant color. The Companions [of
the Prophet] agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to
protect the weak believer’s faith.”5
Debasement of the Dhimmis

A code of rules (the Covenant of Umar) based on religious and legal texts, enforced upon the
already despoiled and subjugated dhimmis a moral debasement that reduced them to the outward
appearance of complete contemptibility. They were deprived of all means of defense, either physical
or legal, thus rendering them cowardly in comparison with the courage of their superiors; they were
obliged to grovel in a servile manner such that the victor would appear more generous; they were
forced to live in fear of the next day so that each day they were delivered from death would fill them
with gratitude, stifling their will to revolt against their oppressors, who only spared them because of
their productiveness. According to theologian Sayh Muhammad al-Magili (Maghreb, fifteenth
century), on the day set aside for collecting the jizya, the Jews were to be assembled in a public place,
such as the bazaar, at the lowest and most debasing place.
The tax collectors were to stand above the Jews in a threatening position so that it should
appear to everyone that the latter were to be humiliated and despoiled of their belongings. “They will
then realize what favor we bestow upon them in accepting the jizya and letting them off so easily.
Then they should be dragged away, one by one. . . . While paying, the dhimmi should be slapped in
the face and pushed away so that he will consider that through this form of ransom he has escaped
the sword.”6
Through isolation, infamy, vulnerability, and poverty, the dhimmis became social pariahs. The
game had been won, and from then on the plundering of these subhuman beings, both their person
and their possessions, was interpreted as a sign of the Divine Will rewarding the just cause of the
victor. To claim that the goods and honors that certain dhimmis enjoyed were illegal and sinful was
an easy next step, taken by famous jurist Ibn Taymiyya (Egypt, fourteenth century), who asserted that
it was incumbent on rulers “to humiliate and oppress them [the dhimmis] by compelling them to
observe the commandments of Umar; they have the duty to withdraw them from the important posts
they occupy and generally to prohibit them from access to Muslim affairs.”7
Toleration of such a despicable creature was indeed a token of the victor’s generosity, but it
was not to go unpaid for. Thus, according to the same jurist, the dominant community should tighten
the yoke on its “proteges” so that they may realize that to flee from this condition of infamy would be
punished by reprisals: at every moment they were threatened with death or exile. They were to live in
an atmosphere of permanent menace. The toleration that spared their lives was not to be taken for
granted—it was to be bought with gold and servility, and it could be unilaterally abolished, since the
punishment of the infidel was only temporarily held at bay. This reprieve, in order to be extended,
demanded more gold and more humiliation, more work, and more corruption.
Since the loyalty of the dhimmis to their religion was the cornerstone of their passive
resistance to the conqueror, it was therefore necessary to debase it. The building of new religious
edifices was prohibited, whereas those dating from the pre-Islamic period could be restored only
under certain conditions, providing that no enlargement or embellishment should improve the
original structure. In other words, any restoration merely maintained them in a constant state of
disrepair. Religious objects were looked upon with scorn as symbols of contemptible practices and
were frequently pillaged, burned, or profaned. Their debasement added to the degradation of the few
dhimmi places of worship that had escaped destruction and confiscation.
These, then, were the political, economic, and moral motivations that produced both the
dhimmi status and the whole system of myths that justify the infernal cycle of debasement of man by
man. Indeed, the dhimmi condition was by no means a historical exception. A number of
discriminatory practices already existed in Eastern Christendom, and these were transmitted by
Arabized converts and assimilated into the historical, political, and religious values of the Arab
conquerors.

History Forgotten

Nowadays, when trying to dig up the past of the dhimmi communities, historians are
overwhelmed by the silences of history that cover the deaths of nations. Standing out from the ashes
of abandoned places, only ruined synagogues, churches, and profaned cemeteries are to be found.
Even the humiliation of the past, which symbolized the dhimmis’ resistance against oppression, is
forgotten, or rather denied, by their descendants—for they have been freed by the West and are eager
to forget their ancestral humiliation— and by those who have deliberately falsified or concealed
historical truth.
The silence that smothers the cries of past oppression and humiliation is symbolic of the
dhimmi destiny. People without a past, they are also a people without rights; and in our time, when
petty nationalisms spring up artificially within a decade, acquiring their national slogans at will, the
rights of the dhimmis to national autonomy in their liberated homeland or equal rights with their
oppressors are never mentioned. Remnants of nations—dead yet living peoples—preserved in spite
of a thousand years of silence, based on the principle that all criticism of the oppressor is blasphemy,
they are the embodiment of silent suffering. In the victor-vanquished relationship, they are still today
victims of a totalist policy: absolutely everything for the victor, absolutely nothing for the
vanquished. The conqueror may glory in a triumphantly successful imperialism, in the luster of
pillaged civilizations, in the world’s respect for strength and power. The vanquished must eke out a
subordinate existence, affirming the grandeur of the masters and the contempt that history reserves
for the weak, for the losers.

Israel: Dhimmi State

Is it necessary, it may be asked, to convey a message that no longer resounds in the hearts of a
posterity that denies its past? For one who, herself a dhimmi, has in her quest for identity explored
the abyss of oppression, the world today is full of dhimmis: for the system which produces them, not
having been uncovered in our time, is still at work. The truth is that the dhimmi condition has
reached the free world from the Orient, in the sense that the victims of the Arab economic boycott
and of PLO-inspired international terrorism—banishing by death whosoever blasphemes against Ara-
bism—are also dhimmis. Worse, there is even a dhimmi state, Israel, existing yet denied. The system
of values that produced the dhimmis today decrees that to harass, assassinate, or mutilate the Israeli
population and its sympathizers guilty of rebellion (Zionism) is legal and commendable. The same
penalties were used to chastise the rebellious dhimmis, whose revolt was considered blasphemy—
contesting as it did the dogma of the victor’s superiority and the inferiority of the vanquished.
Racism, imperialism, and colonialism form the hateful cloth of contempt and derision thrown on the
State of Israel in order to disarm and ostracize a country, whose population, largely composed of
dhimmi refugees from Arab lands liberated by Zionism, struggles for survival.
But are not references to the past detrimental to any prospects of peace in the Middle East, and
should not such indictments be pushed into the background? These two points are important. The
first implies that the teaching of history must submit to the political expediencies of the present, a
policy that would result not only in historical falsification but also in the denial of history. If this is
so, world peace will demand the destruction of all the history books of humanity, which henceforth,
deprived of its memory, experience, culture, and intelligence, will revert to barbarism. Once the
utility of human history has been admitted, to deny this principle to the dhimmi nations exclusively,
on the pretext that their past is merely a denunciation of oppression, would raise a moral problem for
history itself. Are persecuted and humiliated peoples to be rejected on the grounds that history is
destined to become the narcissistic reflection of supermen and victors who boast unremorsefully of
their glory, who are steeped in the blood and misery of the vanquished?
It is my belief that an objective knowledge of the past, though not itself the fundamental
condition in bringing about brotherly understanding among mankind, is nevertheless a necessary
stepping stone. To deny the objective data of history reflects the same mentality that once taught, in
defiance of all evidence, that the sun orbits the earth.
And then, there is peace … and peace.
There is the pax arabica imposed by Khaled of Arabia in order to halt Communist progress in
the Orient and to create the requisite conditions for the destruction of Israel: to isolate the Jewish
State, while arming its neighbors to the teeth during a “cold war” aimed at weakening it by the return
to its territory of Palestinized Arabs. That kind of peace is no more than a tactical peace in a strategy
of war.
There could be another kind of peace, however, the only real peace that makes sense in the
geopolitical history of the Orient. And this peace can only come about after a revolutionary recasting
of the values of Arabism, which will, for the first time, bring about a renunciation of totalist concepts
and the acceptance of equal rights and national autonomy for dhimmi nations. But, one might object,
is Israel—a part of whose population is of European extraction—really a dhimmi nation? If the
Hebrew people can resurrect on their ancestral soil the language, the institutions, the historical
geography, the culture, and the pre-Islamic national traditions characteristic of this land, then Israel is
truly a dhimmi nation that has achieved its decolonization. The dispersion of the Hebrew nation
following an imperialist annexation of territory cannot be advanced as a justification for this
annexation. In other words, the defects the victim develops as a result of oppression cannot be used
by the oppressor as a pretext for his oppression (dominator-dhimmi relationship). But it is in fact this
dispersion, resulting from the expropriation of the land of the Jewish dhimmis, that is invoked in
order to legitimize the Arabization of the conquered territory.
Article 20 of the PLO’s National Covenant claims that Jews do not form a real people and are
no more than citizens of the states to which they belong. Article 1 explains the reasoning behind this
attitude: “Palestine is the home-land of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the
Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation”8— which in
modern terminology is the Arab empire.
The rebirth of a pre-Islamic Hebrew language and culture, in a land conquered and Arabized
by force, constitutes a revolutionary defiance of the totalist mentality that has for so long conditioned
the dominator-dhimmi relationship. In Israel, the Hebrew language—the pre-Arabic national
vernacular—enjoys equality with Arabic and is not considered an inferior or nonexistent language, as
is Kurdish, which is today struggling to survive, or Syriac, which has long since disappeared in Iraq
and Syria. And Judaization or re-Hebraization of Arabized lands reinstates a dhimmi culture—
exterminated in some parts, held in contempt in others, particularly in the Land of Israel in order to
affirm and maintain its Arabization—on an equal footing with the conqueror’s culture. Thus it can be
seen that the recognition of Israel must be not merely a tactical toleration for a limited period. A true
recognition would demand from Arabism—as a necessary prerequisite for peaceful coexistence
between Arabs and dhimmi nations, including respect for each other’s rights—a total revision of the
values that assured its expansion and domination. Such a critical revision of pan-Arabism as an
ideological movement would bring to an end the historical perspective in which the dhimmi nations
have been dehumanized for so long and would open the first breach in the totalist mentality.
Against the background of these historical and political motive forces, the territorial aspect of
the Israeli-Arab conflict seems of secondary importance and will finally depend on the evolution of
the mental attitudes elaborated in the Orient during centuries of Arabization. In order that a process
toward peace may last and bear fruit between Arabs and liberated dhimmi nations, it must take into
account the sociological and cultural human substratum fashioned by history. To succeed in making
peace—to work for a peace that is not a temporary expedient—one must know the dhimmis history.

THE LIBERATION OF THE DHIMMIS

The day on which crime adorns itself with the effects of innocence, bv a strange reversal,
innocence is summoned to provide its own justification.
 —Albert Camus

During the sessions of the colloquium on Zionism, which took place at the College de France
(Paris, October 1976), the ideological attitudes of European Zionism were discussed by noted
specialists. With the exception of Mrs. Doris Bensimon-Donath, no one appeared to remark the
absence of that forgotten representative. Oriental Jewry, still waiting for the doors of history to open.
It is important, not perhaps numerically (it forms only a small part of the Jewish people) but by virtue
of the lessons to be learned from its history. Leaving aside the political context and the
misrepresentation of Zionism as Western imperialism, it serves the interests of scientific research as
well as of the Jewish people to discover this other Zionism—the Zionism of fervor. backbone
Zionism, which motivated the transplantation to Israel of entire Oriental communities. It is a Zionism
of the humble that was never spoken about because it was as natural and as necessary to the Oriental
masses as the air they breathed. And if Oriental Jews produced neither great theoretical debates nor
organizational structures, the reason is, judging by their massive Return to Israel, that Zionist
teaching would have been superfluous—and also because, in Arab lands, Zionism was often forced to
operate clandestinely. Moreover, if the emigration of Oriental Jewry were not set in motion until
1948, it was because its leaders understood that the saving of European Jewry was a vital priority.
Besides, Arab pressure reduced the possibilities of emigration.
Certainly, it would be as well for European Jewish intellectuals—particularly for the new
generation overflowing with political generosity—to turn toward this venerable ancestor of Western
Jewry in order to discover the greatness and nobility of its destiny. For Western Jewry, even though it
rep-resents the majority, it does not constitute the totality of the Jewish people, and its history,
although interesting, does not cover that of all the people of Israel. Oriental Jewry, whose past is torn
down and used unscrupulously by political opportunists, can and must make an indispensable moral
and historical contribution to the history of Israel.
The history of Oriental Jewry is interesting from many points of view. First, it gives us an
insight into the significance and specific evolution of Arab-Jewish relations. Second, it explains the
later development of the dhimmi nations, since the fate of the Jews of Arabia foreshadowed the fate
of the dhimmis and was accepted as standard procedure throughout the period of Arab conquest. The
Jewish condition in traditional Islam—similar to that of the Christian—was determined by the
manner in which the Arabs in their expansion refused to recognize the national autonomy of the pre-
Islamic cultures and civilizations whose lands they had usurped. But like all national histories, that of
the dhimmis is not confined to a framework of cause and effect, that is, a chain of facts and political
and economical phases. It spills over into a specific spiritual universe, the moral dimensions of
which, forged in the course of thirteen centuries, are still noticeable in the reaction of peoples when
confronted with history. And the cardinal historical event that changed Jewish life in the Orient was
the massive Return to Israel in a period of less than two decades. So the traditional attitudes of the
Jewish dhimmis show themselves in their return to Zion.
In the first place, this “Gathering in of the Exiles to Israel” is in keeping with the messianic
current that traversed and invigorated the history of dhimmi Jewry—and only this current can explain
the collective determination to remain Jewish in the face of the persecution stemming from this
determination. This hope of Return is expressed in a dual attitude, apparently contradictory: a
collective faithfulness to a national past, paradoxically related to a futurist vision of a better society,
for every messianic expectation necessarily implies faith in the future. The massive transfer of
Oriental Jews to Israel is in accordance with historic continuity; it is the fulfillment of their
messianic-national aspirations, cherished throughout their exile.
In respect of their relations with the Arab world, Oriental Jews also perpetuate the traditional
attitudes of the dhimmis toward the Muslim. Indeed in Islam the dhimmis have a very precise
economic function, which the builders of the Muslim empire conferred upon them and which was
subsequently confirmed in all the legislative texts that governed their status. Caliph Umar, who is
considered the founder of the Muslim empire, had already commanded, during the conquest of Syria,
that the indigenous peoples should not be shared out among the Arabs but should be subjected to
taxation so that the following generations of Muslims might benefit from their labor: “Our children
will live off them indefinitely for as long as they survive and these people will remain slaves to the
adherents of Islam for as long as the latter endure. Therefore, strike them with the poll tax.”9 The
taxes imposed on dhimmis, writes the famous jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058), “are two burdens imposed
on the polytheists by Allah for the benefit of the Faithful.” The dhimmis were thus a human mass that
was to be tolerated as long as it could be exploited.
When the interests of Islam required it, the community of the Faithful was duty-bound to
execute dhimmi males and reduce their women and children to slavery while taking possession of
their belongings; or, as an alternative, they could be expelled, and their property confiscated. Both
measures were legal, and they were left to the whim of the ruler holding the religious and political
authority. In modern times the second alternative was applied to Jews in many Arab countries.
It is true that Oriental Jews had chosen to return to Israel, but nonetheless they did not depart
from Arab countries; in most cases they were expelled under the most painful circumstances, forced
to leave behind them all their belongings while suffering brutality and humiliation—for, it should be
added, the humiliation and degradation of the dhimmis is also the legal prerogative of the community
of the Faithful. Hence, in the twentieth century, Jews were treated as dhimmis—in conformity with
tradition—by the same Arab states that had just obtained their independence. And, curiously enough,
the Jews reacted in exactly the traditional manner of dhimmis. As in the past, they resigned
themselves to suffer massacre, rape, and pillage, being disarmed in the face of violence and the law
by the prohibition to carry arms and the lack of the right of appeal to the courts. Thus in modern
times they silently accepted confiscation of the fruit of generations of dhimmi labor. For thirteen
centuries, men’s justice had relegated them to a condition that was in reality permanent injustice.
Could justice imply for them anything else but nothingness or derision? Such ideas as vindicating
their rights or even imagining that they had any rights were so revolutionary that they were
inconceivable to the dhimmi mentality. Thus the dhimmis never even dreamed of complaining to
international organizations. Neither did they organize themselves into terrorist gangs to kill innocent
Arab civilians in order to take revenge on the governments that had exploited and robbed them. They
never required the international community to provide for their needs. They never exploited the
compassion of public opinion for destructive political aims. Conditioned to submissiveness, to
humility, and to silence by the moral aftereffects of a prolonged condition of fear, injustice, and
oppression heroically endured during thirteen centuries, Jewish refugees from Arab countries were
able to find within themselves the moral force necessary to overcome these ordeals. Because of this,
the psychological and physical problems of social and economic integration affecting about two
million Oriental Jews, including children, are today practically unknown to the world at large or even
to Western Jewry.
How, then, did the modern dhimmis manage? Exactly as their forefathers when driven out,
exiled, and pillaged; they had to face adversity with nothing but their own resources. They returned
to their economic function as dhimmis: that of tireless creative workers. But there was one
difference: they had now broken the pact of servitude and were henceforth masters of their own
destiny.
The Oriental Jews returned to Israel, cultivated the desert, built up border towns, elaborated
the country’s industrial infrastructure, and participated in the war of national defense. And when the
Arab nations, who had exploited, oppressed, and robbed them, hired terrorists to kill their children
and dynamite their new homes, they replied yet again as would dhimmis, with a peace offer—in
other words, with a messianic vision of the redemption of peoples, a messianism that, as has been
seen, was engendered by the determination to remain dhimmis in the hope that one day their
servitude would came to an end.
 The Oriental Jewish refugees who emigrated to Europe and America had to confront
difficulties that were in no way less arduous. Without any help whatsoever they had to integrate
themselves into a highly technical society and provide for their families and the education of their
children. Today, when the Arab economic boycott again threatens the efforts of these refugees, the
Jews of the Orient respond once more with a call for peace.
The study of the dhimmi condition is a rich source of instruction. It invites us to ponder the
destiny of exploited and oppressed human beings, not because of any fatality of theirs (race, color,
social clan) but as a result of their deliberate choice, renewed throughout the ages, to remain on a
spiritual plane higher than that of their oppressors whatever the brand of infamy imposed upon them.
In the oppressor-oppressed dialectic that ensued, one can see the typical profde of the dhimmis: a
courage manifesting itself in silence rather than in words, a tragedy forever overcome because
chosen, the humble nobility of daily heroism reenacted time and again.
This is also the meaning of the extraordinary lesson in bravery given to the world by a handful
of people ready to die, misunderstood, despised, and forsaken: the Maronites of Lebanon.

Document

Jewish Dhimmis of Jerusalem, 1839

From a report dated May 23, 1839, by W. T. Young, British Vice-Consul, Jerusalem to Viscount
Palmerston, Foreign Minister, London (P.O. 78/368 no. 13):

Agreeably to Your Lordship’s commands. I have the honour to report on the state of the
Jews in Palestine, so far as I am able in the present state of the country, when owing to the
Quarantines, our means of communication are very limited. …
The spirit of toleration towards the Jew, is not yet known here to the same extent it is in
Europe—though their being permitted to live in the Musulman Quarter, is some evidence that
the tierce spirit of oppression is somewhat abated. It should however be named that they pay
more than others do for the rent of their Houses, thus they may be considered in some measure
to purchase toleration.
The Pacha10 has shewn much more consideration for the Jews than His people have. I
have heard several acknowledge that they enjoy more peace and tranquillity under his
Government, than ever they have enjoyed here before. Still, the Jew in Jerusalem is not
estimated in value much above a dog—and scarcely a day passes that I do not hear of some act
of Tyranny and oppression against a Jew—chiefly by the soldiers, who enter their Houses and
borrow whatever they require without asking any permission— sometimes they return the
article, but more frequently not. In two instances, I have succeeded in obtaining justice for
Jews against Turks. But it is quite a new thing in the eyes of these people to claim justice for a
Jew—and I have good reason to think that my endeavours to protect the Jews, have been—and
may be for some little time to come, detrimental to my influence with other classes—
Christians as well as Turks [i.e., Muslims].
… another Despatch to Her Majesty’s Agent, on the subject of a new Proclamation
which has been issued here, forbidding the Jews from praying in their own Houses—and
reporting a most barbarous punishment of a Jew and Jewess that took place in Jerusalem this
week….
What the Jew has to endure, at all hands, is not to be told.
Like the miserable dog without an owner he is kicked by one because he crosses his
path, and cuffed by another because he cries out—to seek redress he is afraid, lest he bring
worse upon him; he thinks it better to endure than to live in the expectation of his complaint
 being revenged upon him. Brought up from infancy to look upon his civil disabilities
everywhere as a mark of degradation, his heart becomes the cradle of fear and suspicion—he
finds he is trusted by none—and therefore he lives himself without confidence in any.11

RETROSPECTIVE ON DHIMMI LAND

Judea and Samaria

July. The light blazes in the silence. On every side Judea. There’s a hillock … hardly a hill, a
teardrop on the Judean land. It is Bethar, where once stood the fortress of the courageous Bar
Kochba, the last stronghold of ancient Hebrew resistance. The stones testify in silence, for the earth
cannot lie. It confides its message to whoever listens, without even the need to turn over the soil with
a trowel. All is there, laid bare as in an open book, despite the ravages of conquerors. A square tower
and a wall joining two bastions bear witness to the beauty and solidity of the typical Hebrew
architecture of the First Temple period. Over there, a wall and tower built by Herod more than half a
millennium later. And crowning it all, Bar Kochba’s fortification: a square tower faced with stones,
semicircular watchtowers, and gates. Farther away the traces of the Roman encampment can still be
seen. Here, on the ninth day of Ab in the year 135, the Jewish resistance was annihilated by the
Roman army.
Silence. We have taken cover in the shade of an olive tree. Instantly the children have nestled
in the branches, listening solemnly to our guide. Somewhere a fig tree perfumes the air … or is it
merely the breeze of the Judean hills? Circular gesture by Yaacov Meshorer, chief curator of
archaeology at the Israel Museum, renowned numismatist and former supervisor of excavations in
Judea-Samaria, as he explains.

Excavations in Judea have brought to light flourishing towns possessing numerous

synagogues. The architecture as well as the ornamental patterns are typical of the attractive
pre-Islamic Israelite civilization, represented in Galilee by the synagogues of Capernaum. Beth
Shearim, Chorazim, Kefar Baram. Meran and other places. Between the years 70 AD and the
Arab invasion and occupation in 640. these hills were dotted with Hebrew towns and villages
where an intense national, religious and cultural life prospered. Deprived of its independence,
the nation concentrated its genius by reflecting upon the richness of its national past. This is
the period in which the Mishnah was elaborated and completed in the second century, shortly
to be followed by the Talmud—monumental religious, legal and social compendia. Completed
in about 400. this work was continued for another two centuries, keeping alive an intense
Messianic fervor whose force was to be felt as far as Arabia.
The Arab occupation scarcely modified the Hebrew place-names, and the Jewish
inhabitants, now considered as dhimmis, remained on their land. It was only later that the
relentless mechanism typical of every colonization gradually wiped out the indigenous
population, thereby encouraging a progressive Arabization of the land.

In the former Jewish town of Bethar, there are now fifteen hundred Arabs. They call the place
where the Jewish vestiges stand khirbet al-Yahud, the ruins of the Jews. Nevertheless, were the
Israelis to return, the Arabs would not hesitate to chase them away with indignation, referring to them
as foreign intruders. Mystery of the Oriental mind or logic of the occupant? These Arabs, hardly
interested in a past that is not theirs, ignore totally the history of the places where they live. Of course
they know that the spot was inhabited formerly by Jews, as the name indicates, but these ruins,
relating to a people dispossessed and driven out, are only of interest as a quarry conveniently
providing stones that others have hewn. But the excited comments from the olive tree taught me that
any Jewish child knows more about the history of this place than its Arab inhabitants.
In Eshtemoa, a biblical name Arabized by the occupants into Es-Samoa, the Arab inhabitants
still live in houses built almost fifteen centuries earlier. The architectural elements and decorative
designs, including the menorah. are all typical of pre-Islamic Jewish art. It is common to find Arab
villagers cooking on ancient mosaic floors. In the center of the village was once a three-storied
synagogue, of which only two ruined floors remain. The size of the synagogue suggests that there
flourished here an important community. Like many other indigenous monuments, the synagogue
was destroyed at the beginning of the Arab occupation. Its stones, particularly those decorated with
bas-reliefs, were used by the Arabs and today adorn their doorposts.
At Yata, the biblical name of an Israelite village, beautifully decorated Jewish ossuaries typical
of the first and second centuries CE are scattered around Arab houses and used as drinking troughs
for their cattle. Many troves of coins dating from the second Temple and Hasmonean periods have
been found in this area.
The discrepancy between history and population in Judea and Samaria troubles the traveler
constantly. It is true that the Hebrew place-names have been Arabized, that Jewish religious shrines
have been Islamized—as in Hebron and elsewhere—and that Arabization has succeeded in effacing
all traces of Jewish nationalism. It is also true that from afar the Arab villages seem picturesque. This
is only a superficial impression, however, for if the traveler, endeavoring to account for his troubled
spirit, were to look more closely he would often discover a mere heap of ruins. The neglect of the
surrounding vegetation is so general that one is reminded not of a biblical landscape of wooded
hillsides but of the sandy wastes of Arabia. One is struck with pity, for people do not generally live in
ruins, however poor they are. Ruins are seen everywhere, so much so that they are no longer noticed.
In 1864 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the dean of Westminster, remarked that Palestine, more than
any other country, was a land of ruins: “In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that whilst for
miles and miles there is no appearance of present life or habitation, except the occasional goat-herd
on the hillside, or gathering of women at the wells, there is yet hardly a hill-top of the many within
sight that is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress or city of former ages. Sometimes they are
fragments of ancient walls, sometimes mere foundations and piles of stone, but always enough to
indicate signs of human habitation and civilisation.”12
The hillside terraces that in ancient times were planted with vineyards and olive trees are not
the only aspect of destruction. What could be more distressing than these poor settlements without
streets, houses—or rather, dilapidated cubes—devoid of architecture, haphazardly propped up with
sculptured blocks, broken columns, and capitals ransacked from the monuments of previous
civilizations. Banished or massacred, the indigenous dhimmis have completely disappeared. The
nomads became sedentary; the colonists came. They camped in the houses of others, patching them
up when necessary by destroying monuments they had not built. Its past hardly interested them,
strangers in this land taken from others: it was not theirs. And when the relentless torment of the
Exile brought the indigenous inhabitants back to their land, the fear of this continual return and the
prospect of having to share the land with the despoiled victims resulted in animosity and bloodshed.
Historical evidence is not wanting, but it will suffice to quote one or two testimonies from the last
century. In a report to Palmerston in 1836, Colonel Campbell, the British consul-general in Egypt,
describes how “their Mahomedan fellow-countrymen of Saffet took advantage of the disorderly state
of the country, and fell, on the 16th June, on the innocent Jews of that town, robbed their property,
violated their women, assassinated those who attempted resistance, and continued their lawless
proceedings for thirty-three days.”13 At about the same time, in 1834, American traveler John Lloyd
Stephens describes similar scenes perpetrated against the Jews of Hebron, who witnessed with their
own eyes the rape of their wives and daughters.14
In 1872 English traveler Thomas Jenner was deeply moved during a visit to Nablus by the
distress of two Jews, “the government having chased them from their homes and thrown them into
the street with their belongings because they had need of their abode in order to quarter soldiers.”15
Nothing exceptional about such a measure, for the lodging and maintenance of Muslim troops was
often an obligation imposed by the conqueror on the native dhimmis. At times of rampant anarchy
the invaders were encouraged by such a law to dispossess their predecessors “legally”—especially if
it is remembered that the latter were completely unarmed and their sworn testimony refused. This is
only an insignificant element alongside so many others in the long chain of events that transformed
the dhimmi peoples from majorities to “tolerated” minorities in their own land.
But nowhere else is the tragedy of history so poignant as in Shomron-Sebastia in Samaria.
Nowhere else is the devastation so sinister as in the ruins of this ancient capital of the northern
kingdom of Israel, founded about 880 BCE. Here, more than anywhere else perhaps, the contrast is
striking between the present desolation and the magnificent vestiges of a flourishing and active
population. There are the fortifications and palaces of Omri, Ahab, and Jezebel, the granaries of
Jeroboam II (787^49). Herod built here an avenue bordered with columns. A theater, a stadium, and a
city wall with gates and towers testify to the solid, elegant Israelite architecture of this period.
Today, Shomron-Sebastia is nothing more than a miserable village where thirteen hundred
Arabs camp among the ruins. The church built by the Crusaders, in which lie ancient tombs attributed
to Hebrew prophets Elisha and Obadiah, has become their mosque. Despite the rubble on the floor—
due to an accumulation of centuries of neglect—the building remains impressive. Foreigners to this
past, the present inhabitants ignore it and cover their misery in the ruins. These columns, these
sculptured stones are merely used as material for repairing their poor hovels. Human distress and the
cataclysms of history are brought together here to make of Shomron-Sebastia the symbol of the
greatness and extermination of a people.
This people, victim of the world’s longest-lasting genocide, is represented today by a remnant.
Two hundred fifty Samaritans, no more, “tolerated” by forty-four thousand Arabs in their former
capital of Shechem-Neapolis, Arabized to Nablus. This is not the place to describe the massacres,
confiscations, and persecutions of all kinds that reduced this numerous population of farmers and
skilled artisans to the size of a pathetic remnant. The interested reader can consult the article
“Samaritan” in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), where mention is made of the threat of total
extermination which, in 1842, would certainly have overcome this inoffensive and dying community
of 142 souls, had not another dhimmi community—the Jews of Jerusalem—come to their rescue at
the last moment. Benyamin Tsedaka, a 125th-generation descendant of Manasseh (son of the
patriarch Joseph), explains that the reason for the numerical difference today between Jews and
Samaritans is that his people refused to go into exile: “Our principle was not to leave |the Land of]
Israel.”16 This is the simple explanation of the historical anomaly of a Samaria without Samaritans
and a Judea without Jews. Today the magnificent ruins of Shomron-Sebastia are among the most
moving monuments in Israel. Because they were a Jewish sect attached to the soil, the Samaritans
suffered their “final solution” in the obscure and humble silence in which history has buried the
dhimmis.
Today the dhimmis’ specter, shrouded in hatred, despoiled and despairing of all human justice,
since they have been rejected by it—so often described for those who know where to look—haunts
the deserted hills of Judea and Samaria, where the dhimmis’ destiny was embodied.
Today the populations of these regions are Muslims, with the exception of a few pockets of
Arabized Christians, remnants of the Byzantine occupation or of Crusader times, who have survived
thanks to the protection of European Christendom. The Samaritans have been reduced in their
homeland to 470 survivors, of whom 250 still live in Nablus. Until 1948, Jewish inhabitants of the
region were massacred or expelled, and the right to reside was prohibited to them until 1967. The
Arabization of the region resulted in a judenrein Arab province, that is, “cleaned” of all trace of its
pre-Arab culture.
The indigenous peoples were replaced by Greeks, Arab-Bedouins, Persians, Druzes,
Circassians, Turks, and Slavs, who were thus able to benefit from the Arabized land of the dhimmis.
Yet since 1967 these peaceful villagers, with unperturbed consciences, who justified their Arab rights
established by the martyrdom of the banished or annihilated native peoples, have been experiencing a
nightmare. The Jews, exiled in the wake of successive waves of occupation and its sequelae, or
tolerated in his own homeland but in a state of subjection—these Jews now return. And they come
back no longer as dhimmis—the sole status acceptable for a native—but as citizens enjoying all the
rights of free people. It is true that however scandalous it may seem, such an occurrence is not
unique. Several dhimmi peoples have recovered their independence: Sicilians, Spaniards, Greeks,
and Maronites, but not without leaving open wounds in the pan-Arabic consciousness. “We intend to
fight in order that our Palestinian homeland will not become a new Andalusia,” declared Abu Iyad,
one of the principal leaders of the PLO.17 Should one be surprised that certain Arab circles deplore
the Hispanization of Spain, the Lebanization of Lebanon, and the Judaization of Israel?
Thus the Jews return. With care they search among the ruins and bring to light thousand-year-
old documents bearing Hebrew inscriptions, meaningless to the villagers. The monuments and coins
they discover confirm their history. The Jews, treated as foreigners, reach out to the soil that yields up
its history. A perfectly harmonious dialogue in time and space is established between them.
The nightmare postponed for all these centuries by inhuman laws suddenly becomes a reality.
There is no doubt about it, the natives have returned. And what if they were to take back their land,
restore the destroyed hill terraces, rebuild their innumerable ruined synagogues? What if it were
possible to evaluate the suffering of thirteen centuries of forced exile? If there was exile, then there
must have been occupation—the two concepts are inseparable—and each knows his respective
history. So a resistance is prepared against the gathering in of the exiles in an Arabized land.
But Israelis are not interested in quibbling over the past; all they want is to build a new future.
Without chasing anyone away, all they want is to return home. The Arabs bom and bred on this soil
are in no way responsible for a thousand-year-old imperialism, even if they are its heirs and
benefactors. No one is to be a foreigner; thus Israelis propose a peaceful coexistence in the land of
their history, in the towns and villages that bear Hebrew names. They are ready to share with their
Arab cousins, whose language is so similar to their own. It is all very simple: a discriminatory
legislation, like that to which the dhimmis were submitted, does not exist in either the history or
jurisdiction of Israel. Thus, from the Israeli point of view, there is nothing to impede a normal
relationship of equality being established between the two parties.
The present Arab populations are faced with a choice: acceptance of peaceful coexistence and
a relationship of equality between Arabs and Israelis instead of the traditional dominator-dhimmi
relationship, or a continuance of the traditional jihad in massacring, exiling, or dominating the
legitimate heirs in a renewed effort of total Arabization. “The civil war in Lebanon is not over and
blood will continue to flow! Our war in Lebanon will save the Arabization of the Lebanon. I declare
in the name of the Palestinian movement, and for the national leftwing Lebanese forces, that Lebanon
will remain Arab,” Yasir Arafat declared on November 30, 1975, in Damascus. This choice also
concerns Oriental peoples other than Israel. It apposes a tradition of Arab domination to a
revolutionary liberation movement striving for the rights of other non-Arab Oriental peoples.
With these thoughts in my mind, I strolled through an Arab quarter on the outskirts of
Jerusalem, hardly a hundred yards from Mount Zion. Suddenly a hail of stones welcomed me. A
group of Arab adolescents shielding themselves behind oil drums was hurling projectiles and curses
at me while they screamed their loyalty to the PLO. The movement I made in order to protect myself
took me back twenty years to the Jewish cemetery in Cairo, where I had accompanied some elderly
relatives, widows who were taking leave of their departed, for, as Jewesses, they were effectively
being banished from Egypt. They were startled by a hail of stones thrown by a group of Arabs.
Chased off by jeers, they fled as fast as they could, as vulnerable in their old age as the mortal
remains they were abandoning to probable depredations. And the gesture we then made, they to
protect themselves and I to shield them, was the same as I was now making under Arab projectiles in
Jerusalem, city of David, king of Israel. A gesture repeated for a thousand years by the dhimmis
burying their dead in secret and in haste, or attacked and humiliated in the streets—the traditional
gesture of the Arab, passed on from father to son with the same contemptuous hatred of the
oppressors toward their victims.
In that same month of July 1977, the waves of bomb attacks in Israel and the attempts to wipe
out the Maronites in southern Lebanon reminded me that the spilling of dhimmi blood was still
lawful…

Documents

1884 Origin of the Palestinian Arab Population—the Example of the Plain of Sharon

It is a singular fact that the strip of coast from Haifa to Caesarea seems to have become a
centre of influx of colonists and strangers of the most diverse races. The new immigrants to
Caesarea are Slavs. Some of them speak a little Turkish. Arabic is an unknown tongue to them,
which they are learning. Their own language is a Slav dialect. When the troubles in the
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina first broke out [1875], which led to the Russo-Turkish
war, a howl of indignation went up from the philanthropists. … When it [the agrarian
question] was settled by handing over the provinces to Austria, the Slav-Moslem aristocracy,
finding themselves in their turn persecuted by their former [Christian] peasants and the
Christian power which protected them, migrated to the more congenial rule of the sultan. So
the curious spectacle is presented of a Slav population migrating from Austrian rule to Asia, in
order to be under a Moslem government.
Close beside the new Bosnian colony there are planted in the plain of Sharon two or
three colonies of [Muslim| Circassians. These are the people who committed the Bulgarian
atrocities. The irony of fate has now placed them within three or four miles of colonists
belonging to the very race they massacred. They, too, fleeing from government by Christians,
have sought refuge under the sheltering wing of the sultan, where, I regret to say, as I
described in a former letter, they still indulge in their predatory propensities. In immediate
proximity to them are the black tents of a tribe of Turcomans. They belong to the old Seljuk
stock, and the cradle of their tribe gave birth to the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. They
have been there for about three hundred years, and have forgotten the Turkish language, but a
few months ago a new migration arrived from the mountains of Mesopotamia. These nomads
spoke nothing but Turkish, and hoped to find a warm welcome from their old tribesmen on the
plain of Sharon. In this they were disappointed, and they have now, to my disgust, pitched
their tents on some of the spurs of Carmel, where their great hairy camels and their own baggy
breeches contrast curiously with the camels and costumes of the Bedouins with whom we are
familiar. . ..
The Slav colonists, whose immigration I described in my last letter, are laying out broad
streets right across the most interesting ruins, using the old foundations, appropriating the
beautiful masonry, the white stones which formed the temple built by Herod, and the brown
limestone blocks of the cathedral of the crusaders, quarrying into ancient buildings beneath the
surface of the ground, levelling down the ruins at one place, levelling them up in another, and
so utterly transforming the whole picturesque area that it will soon be no longer recognizable.
.. .
They were the landed aristocracy of their own country, and have, therefore, brought a
considerable amount of wealth with them. A large tract of the most fertile land of the plain of
Sharon has been donated to them by the Turkish government….
The lower or peasant class of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not obliged, when the
country was conquered by the Moslems, to change their religion, and they have continued
 Christians; while the descendants of their masters, who remained the proprietors of the soil,
became bigoted Mussulmans. The consequence has been that now that the country has been
handed over to the Austrians, the Christian peasantry have naturally found protection from the
authorities against the oppression of their former masters, who, unable to endure the
humiliations of seeing the tables turned, and their old servants enabled to defy them with
impunity, have sold all their possessions and migrated to the dominions of the sultan, rather
than endure the indignities to which they declare they were exposed from their new Christian
rulers and their old Christian serfs. . . . Whether they will agree with their Circassian
neighbours remains yet to be seen. They form the avant-garde of a much larger migration
which is to follow as soon as arrangements can be made to receive them.18
The Return of the Dhimmis, about 1949

In 1881 the Jewish dhimmis of Yemen decided on a collective return to the Holy Land. Here are
accounts of these immigrants:

And they celebrated the festival [Succoth] with great rejoicing. And throughout the whole
festival, day and night, men and women spoke only of the subject of Eretz Israel. And all the
Jews who were in Sana’a and all the Jews of Yemen agreed together to sell all their houses and
all their goods in order to use the money to journey to their country. And almost all of them
neither slumbered nor slept at night, out of their longing and desire and the burning enthusiasm
of their love for Eretz Israel. And so strongly did this love break out in their heart, that they
cast away all their money, selling all their houses and possessions at an eighth of the value, in
order to find money for the expenses of the journey by land and by sea.19

A first caravan [of Yemenites) was fortunate enough to arrive [at Jerusalem]…. This
second caravan, and a third one recently arrived from Sanaa and its surrounding mountains, is
blocked at Hodeida. The Turkish authorities have forbidden their departure for Jerusalem. This
order is most iniquitous, for it was only after these poor people had sold to the Muslims the
little which they possessed that the Governor General of Yemen decided to stop their
departure.20

The Yemenite Jews headed westwards and reached the Red Sea. They traveled on
sambouks to Jedda, Hadeida and Aden and from there aboard steamships to Egypt, Palestine
and European Turkey. The last caravan which left Haidan [!], one day’s journey from Sa’dah,
took three years to reach Jaffa. These wretched people reached the sea, and finding themselves
without any means, struck out northwards on foot, crossing the land of Assyr. They rendered
small services to the Arabs—the women doing needlework, the men making pieces of jewelry
—and when they arrived at Jedda, they had accumulated enough money to pay their passage to
Jaffa.21

O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel.

Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
And gather them from the coasts of the earth,
And with them the blind and the lame.
The woman with child
And her that travaileth with child together:
A great company shall return thither,
They shall come with weeping,
 And with supplications will I lead them:
I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters
In a straight way. wherein they shall not stumble.

—Jeremiah 31:7–10

POSTSCRIPT

President Sadat’s Visit to Jerusalem (November 1977)

To know is to understand: those who know well the obsession of the dhimmi Jew stereotype in
the consciousness of the contemporary Arab—particularly of the Palestinian Arab—and its central
polarizing role in the Arab-Israel conflict can understand the courage of President Sadat and the
symbolic grandeur of his act. The historic meeting of Sadat and Menachem Begin and the warmth of
their greetings expressed Sadat’s will to refuse for the future the demonology of the dhimmi Jews—
transposed into that of the Zionists— in order to discover the human face of Israel. Those 70 percent
of psychological elements in the conflict, to which Sadat referred, are founded on the impurity and
untouchability of the supposed dhimmi-Zionists with whom the Arabs have until now avoided all
contact. Isolated in the heart of the Arab world, the Zionists became a symbol of derision, hate, and
aversion. But to talk to an Israeli, to shake his hand, to accept his presence, to communicate with him
by language and reason—all eminently human privileges—is to see him as an equal.
Only a knowledge of history can help one understand that this gesture breaks with traditional
attitudes of the past thirteen centuries. Of course, this does not mean that the Jews should feel a
frenzied gratitude because they have been promoted from subhumanity to humanity: they could as
well deplore the thirteen centuries during which their humanity has been denied. What one should
admire in President Sadat is the act of a man who has attempted to surmount the prejudices of the
past, with all the heartbreak and all the doubts which that implies. He was a man who, first among all
his own people, had set foot on a new road. It is therefore in the particular context of Arabism that
Sadat acquired the stature of a man of exceptional courage and intelligence.
What Israel awaited from President Sadat, from the Egyptian people, and from the Arab
peoples, was recognition of the link, depicted in history and the Qur’an, between the Jewish people
and the Land of Israel—as well as the right to national sovereignty of the Jewish state in its own land.
The courageous initiative of President Sadat must be warmly supported. It opened the way to the
establishment of a just peace that respects the national rights of both Jews and Arabs.

NOTES

This chapter is made up of four parts first published separately in Rond-Point (Brussels—
January. May, and October 1977) and Centrale (Brussels—June 1977). All the texts, revised and with
documents and illustrations, were published by Editions de l’Avenir t(iene\ a) in a twenty-four-page
booklet: I’cuplcs Dhimmis: Nations Mortes-Vivantes (October 23. 1977). A postscript page was
written in December 1977—after the historic visit of President Anwar el-Sadat to Jerusalem on
November 17, 1977— for insertion in the first printing. It was included as part of the second printing
(May 30, 1978). An English edition (Dhimmi Peoples: Oppressed Nations, translated by David G.
Littman) was published on February 28, 1978, with the postscript. A German edition (Dhimmi
Volker: Unterdruckte Nationen, translated by Tania Leshinsky) was published on January 15, 1980.
 7.
DHIMMITUDE
Jews and Christians under Islam
Bat Ye’or

Except for Asia, all the countries that were conquered by jihad (Muslim holy war) in the
course of history—from Arabia to Spain and the Balkans, including Hungary and Poland—were
peopled by innumerable Christians and by Jewish communities. This geographical context is
therefore the true terrain of interaction between the three religions. Actually, it was in Islamic lands
that they opposed, or collaborated with, one another for up to thirteen centuries. I have called this
vast political, religious, and cultural span the realm of dhimmitude, from dhimma, a treaty of
submission for each people conquered by jihad.
The historical field is generally studied in the context of “Islamic tolerance,” but tolerance—or
toleration—is an ambiguous word, since it implies a moral and subjective connotation. Moreover, the
word toleration cannot encompass the historical density and the complexities of the numerous
peoples vanquished by Islam over the centuries, as it is a vague and general notion used irrespective
of space and time.
Instead of toleration, I have proposed the concept of dhimmitude, derived from the word
dhimma. The vanquished, subject to Islamic law, become a dhimmi people, protected by the dhimma
pact from destruction. Islamic legislation governing dhimmi peoples was the same for Jews and
Christians, although the latter suffered more from it—declining from majorities, at the dawn of the
Islamic conquest, to tiny minorities in their own coun-tries. The domain of dhimmitude comprises all
aspects of the condition of the dhimmis: that is, the Jews and Christians tolerated under Islamic law.
Dhimmitude as an historical category is common to, but not identical for, Jews and Christians under
Islam.

Reprinted, with thanks, from Midstream (New York) 43. no. 2 (February-March 1997): 9-12. Written by Bat Ye’or in French, this text was translated into English by David
G. Littman. with the author.

Islamic law governing Christian dhimmis developed from Byzantine Christian legislation
enacted from the fourth to the sixth century. It aimed at imposing legal inferiority on native Jews of
Christianized countries—lands that were subsequently Islamized. These early Christian influences on
Islamic law are not limited to the juridical domain but also appear at the theological level.
The study of the Jewish dhimmi condition necessarily encompasses the theological and
political interaction among the three religions. During the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), for
instance, the Arab churches— yielding to pressure from their governments—strongly objected to the
proposed suppression of the “deicide” accusation against the Jews. Yet the crucifixion of Jesus is not
recognized in the Qur’an; therefore the accusation of deicide is meaningless for Islam. Such
interferences by Arab governments in a strictly Judeo-Christian theological matter were intended to
maintain the delegitimization of the state of Israel in a Christian context. Indeed, it was the deicide
accusation that had structured Byzantine policy of Jerusalem’s de-Judaization and the promulgation
of a specific, degrading Jewish status. It was that same status that Muslim jurisconsults adapted to the
jihad context with harsher modifications, imposing it equally on Jews and Christians. Clearly,
Jewish-Muslim relations also comprise those Jewish-Christian relations that were transposed within
an Islamic context—particularly the Jewish status in Christian legislation. Similarly, the Muslim-
Christian relationship cannot obscure its Jewish dimension, because Islam associates Christians and
Jews in the same dhimmi category—a specific category that was first enacted by Christians for Jews
in a quite different theological context.
The study of dhimmitude comprises these multifarious aspects and requires an approach
devoid of apriorisms. One can try to define the ideology that imposes dhimmitude on non-Muslim
peoples: their obligatory submission by war or surrender to Islamic domination. One could examine
its origin, the legal and political means used to dominate other peoples, the causes of its expansion or
of its regression. Actually, it is a study of the ideology of jihad, whose jurisdiction—based on the
modalities of battles and conquest— must be imposed on the vanquished peoples. How this or that
land or city was conquered will determine for all time the laws to be applied there. Centuries after the
Islamic conquest, Muslim jurists still consulted ancient chroniclers to determine whether churches
and synagogues were legal or forbidden in towns or regions that had formerly been conquered,
whether by surrender or by battles and treaties. Such regulations concerning religious buildings are
still enforced in many Muslim countries today. So one discovers, throughout the ebb and flow of
history, that dhimmitude is composed of a fixed ideological and legal structure. It constitutes an
ideological, sociological, and political reality, since it is integrated into every aspect of the human
societies it characterizes. This is proved by its geographical development, its historical perennialism,
and its present resurgence.
The body of law prescribing dhimmitude originated from a single source: Islamic power. Apart
from a few minor differences regarding the Sharia’s (Islamic law’s) interpretation, the dhimmi status
constituted a homo-geneous unit applied in the dar al-Islam. But the peoples of dhimmitude
comprised all the ethnic, religious, and cultural variations of the Islamized regions of Africa, Asia,
and Europe—thereby implying regional differences. One must therefore study the local history of
each dhimmi group in order to detect if the causes of differentiation were of a geographical or a
demo-graphical nature, or the result of pre-Islamic local factors. Thus dhimmitude should encompass
the comparative study of all dhimmi groups, for territories were not just conquered; their Islamization
could take three or even four centuries, while some regions had already been Islamized by migrations
prior to their military and political conquest. The study of dhimmitude, then, is the study of the
progressive Islamization of Christian civilizations. In this evolution, one detects permanent structures
but also different local factors that facilitated or temporarily checked this process.
The confusion of the political and economic domain is an important element in the
development of the mechanism of dhimmitude. In exchange for economic advantages, non-Muslim
rulers conceded to the Islamic power an essential political asset: territory. This policy appears at the
start of the Muslim-Christian encounter. In modem times, the financial interests of Lebanese
Christian politicians with the Muslim world were decisive in the intercommunal struggle that led to
the final destruction of Lebanese Christianity. In this context of political concessions in exchange for
financial gains, one should emphasize that the economic domain belongs always to the short term and
the conjunctural, whereas the political sphere is long-term and implies power, notably military power.
Hence, this feature of corruption— paramount in the whole system of dhimmitude—which is, in fact,
the surrender of political power (territorial independence) for the economic control by the dhimmi
church leaders over their communities.
It is evident that the civilizations of dhimmitude are extremely complex. The process of
Islamization of such societies rested on several factors, the most important being the demographical
one that transformed Christian majorities into minorities. This result was achieved through several
means that combined legal disabilities and economic oppression in times of peace with destruction,
deportation, and slavery in wartime and during riots or recurrent political instability. Such a
transformation of civilization and of peoples also implied an extensive mechanism of osmosis,
including collaboration and collusion by the elites of Christian nations that were engaged in the
painful process of their self-destruction. Without this perennial collusion, the Islamic state could
never have survived. Christians had collaborated in its development on all social levels and in every
field, either by free choice or otherwise.
It was through Christian patriarchs and Jewish community leaders that the Islamic government
imposed its authority, making of them its instruments in the control and oppression of their respective
populations. Thus entire dhimmi groups collaborated in the growth of the Islamic civilization. One
could also investigate the way in which different Christian and Jewish groups reacted to dhimmitude.
We know that there was a strong alliance between Arab-Muslim invading troops and the local Arab-
Christian tribes, as well as with the Oriental Churches. Some members of the Christian clergy not
only welcomed the Muslim armies but also surrendered their cities.
The Eastern Churches were always associated with Islamic rule and benefited from it,
becoming thereby the sole administrators of millions of Christians. One can examine the role of the
clergy, the military class, the politicians, and the intellectuals in assisting the Islamic advance that
placed their own peoples under the yoke of dhimmitude. Documents of this kind abound concerning
the later Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.
The conflict of interests within the dhimmi populations indicates that different forces were at
work in each community forces of collaboration and forces of resistance. Thus dhimmitude
encompasses various types of relationships at all levels between the Muslim community and the
dominated, tolerated, dhimmis—relationships that were regulated by laws ensuring Islamic
protection and that embrace politics, history, and conjunctural situations. Modern studies on the
Turkish advance in the Balkan peninsula have mentioned the mental climate that prepared a society
for its surrender. One finds an evolution at all social levels, combining compromise, collusion, and
the corruption that facilitated the final submission.
A similar process could have been detected in the modern history of Lebanon from the
beginning of the twentieth century to the recent disintegration of Christian resistance. Here the
internecine conflict between the forces of collusion and resistance brought about the collapse of the
targeted Christian groups. The situation in southern Sudan and in the Philippines provides
contemporary examples of such internecine conflicts that could lead to similar situations.
Dhimmitude also encompasses the relationship between each dhimmi group, the religious
rivalry among churches seeking to use the Muslim power in order to diminish or destroy rivals. This
domain also overlaps with the dynastic, political, and national conflicts among Christian rulers who
obtained power through Islamic help. Since the status of dhimmitude lasted from three to thirteen
centuries, depending upon regions, it allows one to study numerous cases of different peoples—all
theoretically subject to the same Islamic jurisdiction, with differences here and there.
What were the results of Muslim interference on the intercommunity relationships between the
dhimmi peoples themselves? Did it keep their conflicts alive? How did the Muslim power manifest
its protection? (The dhimmis were, of course, protected by Islamic law.) There is also the conflict
between jurists, inclined toward a more severe interpretation of the law, and the caliphs or rulers,
whose policies were sometimes more lenient—a problem still topical today. Therefore the domain of
dhimmitude consists of the interaction of the dhimmi peoples among themselves, with the Muslim
power, and with the outside world. What were the consequences of the protection afforded to each
dhimmi group by the European Christian countries? How did their political and commercial rivalries
affect the interrelationship of the dhimmi peoples and their situation within their Muslim
environment? And to this should be added the consequences of proselytism among the various
contending churches.
 One might think that the history of dhimmitude had long since disappeared into a forgotten
past, but this is not so. Specialists have called political Islamic radicalism a “return,” thus implying
the existence in the past of a political ideology that had disappeared and is now resurfacing.
Optimistic analysts focus only on the economic and political factors that have contributed to the
emergence of Islamic radicalism, although its ideologico-reli-gious causes and traditional roots are so
obvious that they alone would justify the use of the term return.
Jihad militancy and the reintroduction of some of the Sharia’s provisions in countries where
they had been abolished are now threatening indigenous Christians and other non-Muslim
populations. The most tragic cases are found in Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and Upper Egypt (by
Islamists). Aspects of the dhimmi condition—abolished under European pressure from the mid-
nineteenth century on—is returning in these countries and elsewhere.
Even antisemitic statements made by Abbe Pierre in April 1996, firmly condemned by the
French episcopate and public opinion, are a reminder of a pervasive Christian dhimmitude. Abbe
Pierre—one of France’s most popular public figures—reiterated that, because of their iniquities since
the time of Joshua, the Jews had forfeited God’s promise. Apart from being a classic example of the
Church’s judeophobia, such a declaration was clearly aimed at pleasing the Muslims. Since the
Judeo-Christian reconciliation initiated by the Second Vatican Council, the Arab Churches requested
from the Vatican a strictly symmetrical attitude toward Jews and Muslims. This requirement
establishes, in fact, a false symmetry between totally different theological, historical, and political
contexts: the Judeo-Christian relationship and the Muslim-Christian relationship. The Jews were
oppressed in Christian lands but never had any ambition to conquer them and impose their own laws
there, whereas Islamic armies seized innumerable Christian lands, in which only small, vulnerable,
and scattered Christian communities survive today.
Abbe Pierre’s earlier meditations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem were thus symmetrically
balanced by a visit to Yasir Arafat in Gaza, where he begged forgiveness for the West’s creation of
the State of Israel. But the good Abbe could have spared himself such scruples, for Israel’s rebirth
occurred despite the genocide of European Jewry, and from the start the Vatican only supported the
Palestinian cause. But a “Palestinian genocide” has become a symbolic necessity to balance the
genocide of the Jews. Overlooking a span of more than three millennia, Abbe Pierre chose to link—
anachronistically and in a delirious amalgamation—today’s Arab Palestinians with biblical
Philistines and Amalekites in the time of Joshua.
It is this desire for a specious symmetry that reduced to oblivion the tragic and painful domain
of Christian dhimmitude, which could not be paralleled with a similar Jewish domination over
Christian populations. Indeed, much effort has been deployed in Europe to establish similarities
between Palestinians in Israel and dhimmis, especially by blaming Israeli security measures to
counter Palestinian terrorism, which was conveniently glossed over as “freedom fighting.” This
attitude not only expresses a traditional Christian Judeophobia—now totally rejected by the Vatican
and other churches—but also the complexity of Europe’s relations with Israel and with Arab
countries, where Christian rights are challenged by Islamists. As Europe’s policy is determined
mainly by its own strategic and economic interests, it shows no more sympathy to Eastern Christians
than it does to Israelis. Islamic radicalism is feared, as it could provoke in Europe anti-Muslim
reactions leading to economic retaliation and terrorism from Muslim states.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, starting with the Armenian genocide (1896-
1917), then the massacres of Christians in Iraq (1933) and Syria (1937), the condition of the Eastern
Christians (in spite of their involve-ment in Arab politics) has constantly deteriorated. Thus one can
see how dhimmitude still influences the interaction of different religious groups. To be sure, many
scholars have studied their histories separately, but the concept of dhimmitude provides a wider and
unified framework for all those varied communities that have undergone the same experience
throughout history.
 It is interesting to examine the different paths that each dhimmi group felt compelled to adopt,
either by historical circumstances or geography, to regain its liberty and dignity. The national
liberation of dhimmi peoples meant that the jurisdiction of dhimmitude, imposed by jihad, was
abolished; they could then recover their proscribed language, their history, and their culture. The
Christian peoples of the Balkans fought for their national sovereignty, as did the Armenians later, and
the Jews in their own homeland; but Christians of the Middle East chose assimilation in a secularized
Islamic society and became Arabized.
As a result of European colonialism in Arab lands, as well as the rebellions and struggle for
the national liberation of Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire, hundreds of thousands of
Christians were killed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Muslim-dominated
regions. Christians lived in constant fear of further atrocities. The Greeks were saved from a
genocide in the early nineteenth century by the intervention of the Anglo-French and Russian armies.
Their uprisings throughout that century were punished by massacres and the slavery and conversion
of women and children. Similar reprisals struck both Serbs and Bulgarians in their own lands.
The genocide of the Armenians and atrocities in Iraq and Syria compelled the Lebanese
Christians to create a refuge country for their persecuted brethren from neighboring lands. Some
Lebanese were favorable to the restoration of a Jewish state in its historical homeland and were
sympathetic to the Zionist cause, for they knew that the position of Jews and Christians under Islam
was similar. But this current, led by the Maronite patriarch Antun Arida and archbishop of Beirut
Ignace Mubarak, represented a small minority among the Eastern Christians, who remained, like the
Vatican, adamantly hostile to a Jewish state in Palestine and especially to any Jewish sovereignty in
Jerusalem. Within the context of the Jewish national liberation movement, one should remember that
Muslims and the Oriental Churches were hostile to a massive return of Jews to their homeland. Jews
had been condemned to suffering and exile by both Christianity and Islam, and therefore Jewish
sovereignty in Palestine-Israel was totally unacceptable. How much European opposition to a Jewish
state had helped the execution of the Final Solution is a question that concerns historians of the
Holocaust. Clearly, antisemitism is intrinsically linked to the concept of Jewish evilness, which
justifies a judenrein Palestine, especially Jerusalem.
Thus, one finds, in both the political and religious spheres, a hostile Muslim-Christian front
against Zionism and later against the State of Israel. Many of these Oriental Christian leaders thought
that this Muslim-Christian front against Zionism would help secure their position in the Arab world,
first under the banner of pan-Arabism and then under the slogan “the just Palestinian cause.”
Palestinian anti-Zionist Christians, especially their clergy, were in the vanguard of the battle for the
destruction of Israel. Some proudly participated in the worst acts of terrorism. Much of the anti-
Israeli propaganda was formulated by Christian Palestinians in order to exacerbate traditional
judeophobia in the West. Among them were clergymen from the Levant, such as Roman Catholic
archbishop Hilarion Capucci. In fact, many in the West justified the jihad aims and tactics against
Israel—and even against Jews everywhere.
The responsiveness of post-Holocaust Europe to anti-Zionism has many geostrategic and
economic reasons, but it also derives from the easy channeling of traditional Judeophobia into anti-
Zionism. Thus it is not surprising that the PLO’s official Christian representatives were much
appreciated by politicians, intellectuals, and the European media. In antisemitic circles, they were
endowed with a holy mission, embodied in the historic role of the Palestinian clergy. In Byzantine
Palestine, the clergy had forbidden Jews to reside and pray in Jerusalem. One of the worst massacres
of Jews occurred at the instigation of the Jerusalem patriarch Sophronius, who suggested it in 628 to
the emperor Heraclius (610-41). Some years later, when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem from the
Greeks, Sophronius tried to persuade Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab to forbid any Jewish presence in
Jerusalem. So we see that even at this moment of the terrible defeat, slaughter, and anguish for
Christians, the Palestinian patriarch was obsessed by Judeophobia. Sophronius, later canonized, died
a few years after surrendering Jerusalem to the Muslim conquerors. When welcoming Yasir Arafat in
1995 to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for the traditional Christmas mass, Latin patriarch
Michel Sabbah was happy to recall how Sophronius had delivered Jerusalem to Umar in 636; sixty
years later—and until the 1860s—no cross could adorn a church in Jerusalem.
Throughout the centuries, Christian Judeophobia in Jerusalem and Palestine was virulent. In
my books, I have reproduced nineteenth-century reports from French and British consuls who were
shocked by this hatred, which led to criminal acts. In the twentieth century, anti-Zionism cemented
the Palestinian Muslim-Christian alliance with Hitler’s ideology; this collaboration with Nazi
Germany is well known.
Whereas the Holocaust developed in a European context, anti-Zionism belongs to the domain
of dhimmitude. Here the powerless Palestinian Chris-tians—like Sophronius—had to rely on the
Arab-Muslim force to prevent the restoration of a Jewish state. Among the multitude of events from
the twentieth century, historians in the next millennium may well be intrigued by two particularities:
the First concerns the relentlessness shown by many European politicians in exterminating and
pillaging European Jewry; the second concerns post-Holocaust Europe, which is linked to the first by
a similar desire of many to demonize Israel. Yet the twentieth century witnessed important Western
strategic defeats in the Middle East. Armenian independence, promised at the end of World War I (in
the Treaty of Sevres) was never implemented; the same applies to the Kurds. Lebanon, considered a
paragon of the realization of a Muslim-Christian symbiosis, finally collapsed in a bloody tragedy.
Massacres and slavery continue to ravage the Christian and animist populations of southern Sudan;
the war in the Philippines fueled by a secessionist Muslim minority group claimed 120,000 lives over
the past twenty years. Genocidal massacres have been perpetrated in numerous countries, but for
thirty years the main target—constantly highlighted in the media— remained Israel. This
extraordinary blindness was in part caused by the Palestinian clergy, which, with its numerous
religious and secular channels in Europe and elsewhere, helped to uphold the Palestinian issue as the
world’s first priority.
However, the militancy against Israel of the Muslim-Christian front paradoxically led to
increased instability and anguish for Arab-Christians. The reasons are not difficult to find. In order to
maintain this anti-Zionist front, Oriental Christians were obliged to make continual compromises.
They were afraid to mention their own history of suffering and dhimmitude under Islam for fear of
irritating the Muslim world; it became a taboo subject even in Europe. Eastern Christians, especially
the Palestinians, thought that their support for the anti-Israeli jihad would secure their safety in a
hostile environment. But this policy brought negative results: (1) The encouragement of an anti-
Israeli jihad has fueled and developed a rhetoric of war hatred against Christians, because the dogma
of jihad associates them with Jews. The more the Christians fought to delegitimize Israel, the more
they weakened their own rights. (2) This factor had dramatic consequences for the Lebanese
Christians. Like the Jews, their war for freedom in their own country was a struggle to impose on the
Islamic world the respect for their rights to dignity—not to be considered as an inferior group, ready
for a modernized dhimmitude. And as a result of their common destiny with Jews in Islamic dogma,
the jihad aggressiveness rebounded against the Lebanese Christians inadequately prepared for such a
confrontation. And since the history of dhimmitude and jihad was obfuscated in Europe—thanks to
the Christian, pro-Islamic, anti-Zionist lobby—and as the Palestinian cause became the sacred cause
of the international community, when the PLO fought the Christians in Lebanon, the latter were soon
abandoned.
Hence, the concealment of dhimmi history, and of the ideology of jihad— a deliberate policy
maintained for decades in the West—has facili-tated a return of the past, as the same political system
is now inscribed in the program of today’s Islamists.
There is another, no less important, aspect of dhimmitude: the psychological and spiritual one.
The dhimmi mentality appears with no great differences in its Christian or Jewish version. One could
examine it either in relation to the concept of rights or to that of toleration. One should bear in mind
that the study of dhimmitude necessitates an examination of the common condition of both Jews and
Christians, who form one entity the “People of the Book.” They are thus complementary, and the
rules applied to one group likewise concern the other. Another aspect of this complex historical
domain relates to their mutual relationship in the world of dhimmitude and to the manner in which
each group viewed the other. Solidarity and mutual aid in time of persecutions existed, as did
denunciation and revenge motivated by fear and greed. But, in general, a similar condition
contributed to creating mutual bonds of understanding.
Thus, one realizes that the concept of dhimmitude—rather than the term tolerated minorities—
covers a wide domain of research. One can study its dynamic, its evolution, its modalities, and the
interactions of diverse elements within this context that shed light on the areas of fusion,
interdependence, and confrontation between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Dhimmitude is a
neutral concept and therefore a tool for historical investigation.
For me, as a Jew, this insight into Christian dhimmitude represented an intellectual experience
that was not easy to undertake. This was not the domineering face of European Christendom,
persecuting and triumphant, but the discovery of its persecuted, humiliated, and suffering other side.
In short, Eastern Christianity’s history of dhimmitude under Islam is a sort of “Jewish experience”—
endured this time by Christians. This is why this history was so resolutely and intensely denied by
most Eastern Christians, especially Palestinians. For a Jew, this quest constitutes a moral ascesis,
because it is no easy task to find expressions of the same suffering in one’s persecutor. But this
companionship gives a new approach to human trials and opens common perspectives of
reconciliation with Muslims. It makes it easier for Jews and Christians to strive with liberal Muslims,
thus freeing them from prejudices of the past and from the concepts of jihad and “tolerance,”
replacing them with new bonds of friendship and esteem between equals.
For the Jewish people—liberated from Christian antisemitism in its own homeland, as well as
from dhimmitude imposed on them by Islam—this long task of reconciliation with Christianity and
Islam could strengthen respect between the three religions and their respective peoples.
 PART 4*
THE MYTH AND
CONTEMPORARY GEOPOLITICS

Introduction

Robert Spencer

In the modern age we have seen not reform of the dhimmi system of intolerance, but
retrenchment. Never repudiated in theory, the legal superstructure of dhimmitude was slowly set
aside in part in the Islamic world during the decline and ultimate collapse of the Ottoman Empire and
during the height of Western colonialism in the Middle East and other Islamic areas. Today it has
been revived by radical Muslims, as part of their overall deeply traditionalist reemphasis upon the
literal content of the Islamic sources. This part examines various aspects of the survival of dhimmi
attitudes as a cultural hangover in Muslim countries and the revival of dhimmitude as a system as
part of the program of radical Muslims worldwide.
One chilling example of this revivalism comes from Bat Ye’or’s “Past Is Prologue: The
Challenge of Islamism Today.” She notes that “in April 1992, for instance, religious leaders in
Sudan’s Southern Kordofan region—who were ‘publicly supported at the highest government
level’—issued afatwa, 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 recalled the entire ancient doctrinal system of
jihad, which mandated in accord with sura 9:29 that Muslims must fight against non-Muslims until
they convert to Islam or submit as inferiors under Islamic rule; as Bat Ye’or puts it, “Non-Muslims
are protected only if they submit to Islamic domination by a ‘Pact’—or dhimma —that imposes
degrading and discriminatory regulations.” This imperative underlies (as the documents by Walid
Phares, Mark Durie, and others detail) not only the Arab-Israeli conflict but also the mistreatment of
Christians by Muslims in the Middle East and Indonesia.
The same dynamic is now also changing the cultural and political landscape of Europe, as Bat
Ye’or explains in her two “Eurabia” pieces included here. The pieces by Srdja Trifkovic, Daniel
Pipes, and Lars Hedegaard detail just how deeply Europe is being transformed, with hardly any
notice from the world community—although, as my brief piece on the Vatican’s evolving position
toward Islam suggests, that may be changing.
 8
PAST IS PROLOGUE
The Challenge of
Islamism Today

Past Is Prologue. These words are engraved on the pediment of the National Archives building
in Washington, DC. The English source is probably William Shakespeare’s Tempest, and the original
perhaps Ecclesi-astes (1:9). I have chosen this motto for my statement today and shall first give a
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, monolithic, anti-Christian policy. However,
as this structure is integrated into the corpus of Islamic law (the Sharia), it functions in those
countries that either apply the Sharia 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. Muslim-Christian relations were then regulated by two legal-theological
systems: one based on jihad, the other on the Sharia. 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 caliph or ruler, wielding both spiritual and political power, must obey. The jihad practiced now in
Sudan is conducted according to its traditional rules. One could affirm that all “jihad” groups today
conform to these decrees.
It is a 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.

Basic text used by Bat Ye’or for US Congressional Briefing. Human Rights Caucus on the Persecution of Christians Worldwide. April 29. 1997.

In April 1992, for instance, religious leaders in Sudan’s Southern Kord-ofan region—who
were “publicly supported at the highest government level”—issued a fatwa that 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 UN
Special Rapporteur on Sudan, Dr. Gaspar Biro.1 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 cases of Salman Rushdie in 1989, Farag Foda in 1992, and Taslima Nasreen in 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 —that 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 referring only to Christians and Jews, because they share the same
Islamic theological and legal category, referred to in the Qur’an 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 Quranic
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 Quranic jizya; entice a Muslim from his faith; harm a Muslim
or his property; or commit blasphemy. Blasphemy includes denigration of the prophet Muhammad,
the Qur’an, the Muslim faith, the Sharia by suggesting that it has a defect, and refusing the decision
of the ijma —which is the consensus of the Islamic community, or umma (sura 3:106). 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 Qur’an stress religious tolerance
and peaceful relations, which frequently existed. Nonetheless, early jurists and theologians—
invoking the Quranic principle of the “abrogation” of an earlier text by a later one—have established
an extremist doctrine of jihad, which is a collective duty.
The protection system presents both positive and negative aspects: it provides 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. These rules were established as early as
the eighth and ninth centuries by the founders of the four schools of Islamic law: Hanafi, Malaki,
Shafi’i, and Hanbali.
The Sharia is a complete compendium of laws based on theological sources, principally the
Qur’an and Hadith—that is, the sayings and acts of the Prophet. The Sharia comprises the legal status
of the dhimmis: what is permitted and what is forbidden to them. It sets the pattern of 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 Sharia.
The main principles of “dhimmitude” are as follows: (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 nineteenth century and in some regions into the twentieth
century.
Arab-Islamic civilization developed in conquered Christian lands, among Christian majorities
that 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 nineteenth 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 reestablish strict Islamic law.
Why is this persecution ignored by the churches, governments, and media?
The nineteenth 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 Muslim-Christian symbiosis was conceived
toward the end of the nineteenth century by Eastern Christians as a desperate shield against terror and
slavery. This doctrine—which also inluded 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 a Muslim-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 encom-passing legislation, customs, social behavior, and
prejudices—has never been analyzed nor publicly discussed. It is this silence—for which acad-emia
in Europe and America bears much responsibility—that allows the perpetuation of religious
discrimination and persecution today. There are many factors that explain the 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:

(i) Not to foster an anti-Islamic current, which would be wrong, as thevast majority of
Muslims are themselves victims of Islamists in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt,
Turkey, Algeria, etc.
(ii) Christians must continue to live in their historical lands because it is their right, and only
they can transform traditional Muslim men-talities. 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, Christenrein, as they have become
virtually judenrein —through a policy of ethnic cleansing that followed a long historical
period of discrimination.
(iii) If the human rights—and the minority rights—of Christians are not respected in 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.

2. 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 less than 1 percent of that number, under ten thousand 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 for:

(i) being against the implementation of the Sharia;

(ii) demanding equal rights, basing themselves on international covenants;
(iii) and 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 justified the first great massacres of the Armenians a century ago, in 1894-1896,
punished for having rebelled and for claiming the reforms that were promised.
This is why dhimmi communities were always careful to proclaim their enmity to Europe. An
outward oppositon to Christian countries being their life-saving shield against threats from their
environment, they have interior-ized 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 of many.)

3.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
outstepping 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.
 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, who, allegedly,
are in rebellion—or for reasons of “spectacle terrorism” which can serve as a deterrent policy to
fulfill terrorists’ aims.
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.

4. 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 a forbidden, domain because it would imply that Muslim
history had been imperialistic. But culture and history are important elements of a group’s
identity, and there are many Muslims intellectuals who are proud of Egypt’s Pharaonic 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:

(i)recovering “memory,” the long history of the dhimmi peoples, of dhimmitude—the

collective cultural patrimony of Jews and Christians—for without their memory, and their
history, peoples fade away and die; and
(ii)preventing the destruction of Christian historical monuments, either by local governments
or by UNESCO, as was done with Abu Simbel and other sites that now belong to the
world’s cultural legacy.

5.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,
any criticism of Islamic law and history is assimilated to 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, and therefore any criticism of Islamic civilization may become, for Islamists and
others, blasphemy.
The case of Farag Foda, an Egyptian Muslim intellectual who defended the Copts and strongly
criticized some Muslim religious authorities was exemplary: he was assassinated in June 1992 after a
fatwa. In giving his testimony in an Egyptian court of law, the late Sheikh Muhammad el-Ghazali
implicitly justified his assassination on the grounds of apostasy; he stated that anyone opposing the
Sharia was an apostate and thus deserved death.

6. 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
on Islamic Human Rights and that of Cairo in 1990, both conditional on the Sharia, are
insufficient.
7. 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 or anti-Islamic feelings
but to create peace and reconciliation between religions and peoples, without which the
next century will become a bloodbath and a clash of civilizations.
 9.
ORIENTAL JEWRY AND
THE DHIMMI IMAGE IN
CONTEMPORARY ARAB
NATIONALISM
Bat Ye’or

It is not without emotion that I, a Jewess from an Arab land, address you this evening in the
country of Palmerston, Finn, Oliphant, Balfour, Churchill, and Wingate, 1">
to name but six of
the numerous British Zionists of the Christian faith (not forgetting Sir
Harold Wilson, tonight’s chairman) who have, each in his own way, from
the early nineteenth century onward, demanded the recognition of the
human and historical rights of an oppressed, dispossessed, and exiled
people to its ancient homeland. Neither do I forget the struggle maintained
by representatives of British Jewry, beginning with Sir Moses Montefiore,
to restore human dignity to their persecuted brethren in the Orient and
North Africa.
Twenty-one years ago, when my parents and I found refuge in Britain, I was unaware of these
historical antecedents and knew little about the history of Oriental Jewry. Due to religious
discrimination, I was deprived of my Egyptian citizenship and driven from my country of birth by the
fanaticism of a totalitarian regime. I arrived in London a refugee, stateless and penniless. It was in
England that I discovered the meaning of freedom in contrast to the constant fear for one’s life
experienced in Egypt. It was in London that the Jewish Refugee Committee provided me with a
grant, which enabled me to study at the Institute of Archaeology. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the
British authorities and all those who received us with hospitality on these shores in 1957. I extend my
special thanks to the Jews in the Arab Lands Committee, which has invited me to address you this
evening on the subject of Oriental Jewry.

Editions de l’Avenir. Geneva, for WOJAC (World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries), April 5. 1979. English translation from Bat Ye’or’s text by David G. Littman,
with the author.

In the thirty minutes at my disposal, I will speak of the dhimmi condition and the use of the
dhimmi stereotype in modern Arab nationalism. I will not advance opinions on current political
events but will suggest in my analysis how Arab leaders may be encouraged to acknowledge Jewish
sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
In the middle of the nineteenth century. Oriental Jewry was in a critical situation.2 When it
came into contact with European Jewry, it was as if the gates of hope had opened. The Jews of Arab
lands still lived in inhuman conditions, having miraculously survived centuries of oppression. They
were dhimmis. The term dhimmi was applied by the Arab-Muslim invaders to Jews, Christians, and
Zoroastrians after the Arabization and Islamization of their lands from the seventh century onward.
Besides its religious connotations, this Arabic word has also a political meaning. It refers to those
nations that were dispossessed of all their rights by conquest—including, theoretically, the right to
life itself. However, a concession was granted by the victors: dhimmi peoples could buy back their
rights to life and property—except land—on condition that each male adult paid a special poll tax
(the jizya) and that the collectivity agreed to submit to humiliating regulations. Any breach of these
rules, as did happen under benevolent rulers, automatically restored to the Muslim community
(umma) its initial rights over the lives and property of the dhimmis, guilty of desiring equality with
true believers.
In the case of the Jews, once their ancestral homeland had come under Islamic jurisdiction, a
political dimension was added to their previous religious dhimmi status in Arabia. This political
aspect of the dhimmi condition was at the root of the numerous bloody conflicts since the early
nineteenth century, whenever a dhimmi people fought to regain control of its national territory from
Islamic domination, whether Ottoman or Arab, that is, the Greeks, the Serbs, the Romanians, the
Bulgarians, the Maronites, the Armenians, and more recently the Jews.
I would define a “dhimmi civilization” as being characterized by a language, a history, and a
culture, as well as specific political and juridical institutions developed in the national homeland
before its annexation by Arab-Muslim conquerors. The expression dhimmi civilization or dhimmi
people refers to a nation, the ethnic origin of which is associated with a particular country Islamized
by jihad (holy war), regardless of that nation’s present dispersion. People who belong to a dhimmi
civilization are individuals who have continued to transmit a specific heritage to their progeny, in
spite of wanderings resulting from conquest and oppression. Thus, from an Islamic viewpoint,
whether he is a Westerner or an Oriental, a Jew is a part of a dhimmi civilization if he willingly
perpetuates and accepts the national and cultural values of Israel. This principle applies also to the
Armenian and the Maronite Christians, as well as to other peoples who, after the Arab-Muslim
conquest of their homelands, were subjected to a legislation that either decimated them or forced
them to live in exile.
Islamic tradition maintained that from the time of Umar, the second caliph (634-644), dhimmi
peoples could reside in Islamized lands only if their work was beneficial to the maintenance and
expansion of Arab-Islamic rule. Later, this theory was developed into a system of legalized economic
exploitation and oppression based allegedly on divine will. This is not the place for me to describe
fully the dhimmi condition. It is enough to say that the indigenous peoples of the Middle East and
North Africa were gradually reduced—through pillage, ransom, exploitation, oppression,
dispossession, forced conversion, famine, and physical elimination—from majorities to helpless
minorities. Their everyday life was governed by countless oppressive rules, and it became a religious
obligation to humiliate and to revile them. In an age of violence, the law forbade them to carry arms.
Lifting a hand against a Muslim, even in a case of legitimate defense, was a capital offense. In an age
of injustice, their sworn testimony was refused by Muslim courts. Thus, if the aggressor was a
Muslim, the judge would not accept the plea of a dhimmi. They were more defenseless than the
humblest animal, protected by nature with a self-defense mechanism. Deprived even of this natural
right under a system that promulgated inequality in human society and in human relations, many
became servile and corrupt, the better to preserve their existence. They endeavored wherever possible
to amass money secretly, because in times of great oppression they might thereby purchase their
survival. Their blood was considered of an inferior quality to that of Muslims and could be shed
lightly. Dhimmis rarely appealed for justice prior to the nineteenth century. To complain of pillage,
murder, or massacre frequently provoked collective reprisals, thereby reminding the dhimmis of their
proper place.
Dhimmis were often considered impure and had to be segregated from the Muslim community.
Entry into holy Muslim towns, mosques, and public baths, as well as certain streets was forbidden
them. Their turbans— when they were permitted to wear them—their costumes, belts, shoes, and the
appearance of their wives and their servants had to be different from those of Muslims in order to
distinguish and humiliate them; for the dhimmis should never be allowed to forget that they were
inferior beings. The humble donkey was generally the sole beast of burden permitted them, and then
only outside the town and on condition that they would, as a sign of respect, dismount on sight of any
Muslim and mount again only after their superior was out of sight. Even their saddles had to be ugly
and uncomfortable, and often they were forced to mount sidesaddle. In the street, dhimmis were
obliged to walk on the left, or impure, side of a Muslim. Their gait had to be rapid, and their eyes
lowered. Their graves had to be level with the ground so that anyone could walk on them, and in
desert lands it was assumed that the elements would quickly obliterate their remains. These were the
more common rules, which in some regions prevailed into the twentieth century; but there were
other, no less vexing obligations applicable to the dhimmis and to them alone.
Our ancestors plodded on for twelve centuries in this vale of sorrow. Their world was one of
distress and despair, in which they were allowed no dignity and were crushed by humiliation and
misery, by oppression and a perpetual fear of death. Not all were able to resist such pressures, and
many were converted. Those whose souls were not destroyed through such abasement remained
faithful to an ideal of spiritual freedom. They refused to join the ranks of the oppressors, although by
a simple declaration they could have ended their sufferings. They knew that they were the heirs of a
great spiritual heritage, and in order to preserve it for their posterity they preferred to remain in
servitude. They believed that the oppressed would be redeemed, that the slave and the captive would
be freed from tyranny, that the Jews would one day return to Zion and liberate the Land of Israel.
They consoled themselves in their deep distress by escaping to a world of study and mysticism. They
believed that their sufferings were of a providential nature meant to strengthen their faith and their
hope in a future society based on justice for all.
A letter written from Egypt by philosopher (and physician to Saladin’s vizier) Moses
Maimonides to the Jews in Yemen, faced with imminent forced conversion in the late twelfth century,
is worth recalling. Here is an extract:

Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, God has
hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have per-secuted us severely, and passed
baneful and discriminatory legislation against us. . . . Never did a nation molest, degrade,
debase and hate us as much as they. .. . Although we were dishonored by them beyond human
endurance, and had to put [up] with their fabrications, yet we behave like him who is depicted
by the inspired writer, “But 1 am as a deaf man, I hear not, and I am as a dumb man that
openeth not his mouth” (Psalm 38:14). Similarly our sages instructed us to bear the
prevarications and preposte-rousness of Ishmael in silence. … We have acquiesced, both old
and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation, as Isaiah instructed us, “I gave my back to the
smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” (50:6). All this notwithstanding, we
do not escape this continued maltreatment which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much
we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition, as David
predicted, “I am all peace, but when I speak, they are for war” (Psalm 120:7). . . . May God,
who created the world with the attributes of mercy, grant us the privilege to behold the return
of the exiles, to the portion of His inheritance, to contemplate the graciousness of the Lord and
to visit early in His Temple. May He take us out from the Valley of the Shadow of Death
wherein He put us. May He remove darkness from our eyes, and gloom from our hearts. May
 He fulfill in our days as well as yours the prophecy contained in the verse, “The people that
walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1). .. . Peace, peace, as the light that
shines and much peace until the moon be no more. Amen.3

Those who welcomed Sir Moses Montefiore in the middle of the nineteenth century, in Cairo, in
Damascus, in Jerusalem, in Marrakesh, were the descen-dants of the “deaf and the dumb”—the meek
in spirit. But thereafter things changed.
I will not here go into historical details but only stress that thanks to the efforts of Jews and
Christians in Western Europe the condition of the Jewish and Christian dhimmis greatly improved.
However, the more the dhimmi peoples were emancipated from discriminatory legislation thanks to
European influence and later as a result of colonial rule, the more they were hated and threatened in
their Muslim environment, permeated as it was by pan-Islamic ideology and traditions. It is simple to
understand why: the emancipation of the dhimmis was imposed by European powers in the name of
the equality of each individual before the law. This concept was in total contrast to the values of
traditional Muslim societies. Muslim religious leaders saw the social promotion of the dhimmis as a
sacrilege, as an intolerable intrusion of the West, aimed at weakening Islam and humiliating it.
But there is also another, more complex and human reason: twelve centuries of oppression and
humiliation have created a dhimmi stereotype—the stereotype of the Jew and the Christian in Arab-
Muslim lands, or to be more precise in Arabized “dhimmi lands.” This stereotype permeated history,
laws, traditions, behavior, literature, and modem political ideologies. The diabolical attributes of the
dhimmi stereotype were carried along in the current of Arab-Muslim historiography and are still
considered valid. And if 1 have spoken of the past, it is because the present is conditioned by the
past. To a person familiar with dhimmi history, there can be no doubt that the dhimmi stereotype is at
the very root of Arab and Muslim anti-Zionism and the present Middle East conflicts.
Modern Arab nationalism is the spiritual heir of the early-caliphate Arab empire: an empire
that expanded through the Arabization of dhimmi land and by the progressive development of an
antidhimmi jurisdiction. Today the goal of Arab nationalism is total Arabization, an endless struggle
against all non-Arab national—even cultural—revivals of the nations that have survived one of the
longest and most oppressive imperialisms of history.
And Arabization means a return to the dhimmi condition, a condition of alienation, of
subjugation or of exile—not for Israel alone but also for the Maronite Christians and for any other
movement of national independence within dar al-Islam.4
Today, Arabism and Islam are virtually synonymous for Arab nationalists. According to a
Muslim religious tradition, all infidels had to be expelled from Arabia so that Arabs could only be
Muslims. Arab domination is in fact Muslim domination, and this is why the traditional dhimmi
stereotype— absorbed into the legal and religious structures of Arabized societies—has been
reformulated by contemporary Arab nationalists.
The core of the Arab refusal and of the Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
is based on the very principle of the dhimmi condition: the refusal of Jewish sovereignty on its once-
Arabized land. One cannot emphasize enough that in calling itself the vanguard of Arab nationalism
the PLO has become an instrument to fight and suppress every non-Arab nationalism. One has seen it
already in Lebanon. It is the PLO even more than Syria, which, in the name of Arab nationalism,
destroyed Lebanon, the only “Arab” country where indigenous Christian remnants still enjoyed
political expression. One has merely to recall the declaration of Yasir Arafat on November 30, 1975:
“The civil war in Lebanon is not over and bloodshed will continue. The battle we are fighting in
Lebanon is for the preservation of the country’s Arab character. I declare in the name of the
Palestinian revolution and the Lebanese nationalist and progressive movement that every inch of
Arab land will remain Arab and Lebanon will remain Arab.”5
It is in the name of Muslim solidarity that the PLO has raised the banner of jihad against
Israel, the purpose of which has always been to reduce inde-pendent non-Muslim peoples to that of
dependent dhimmis.6
I do not doubt the sincere desire for peace of the Egyptian people and of President Sadat, nor
the liberal views of some of Egypt’s intellectuals, but one should not forget Egypt’s dependence on
the Arab world, particularly on the theocratic, feudal regime of Saudi Arabia. The influence of the
theologians of Cairo’s renowned Al-Azhar University and the Muslim Brotherhood are also not
negligible factors.7
Before concluding, a few words on the psychological aspect of the Arab-Israel conflict are
appropriate. The changeover from dhimmi to Israeli (the Jew liberating his land from Arab
domination) has traumatized the Arab political consciousness. Why? Because Arab-Muslim
domination and the resultant feelings of superiority were confirmed by the abasement of the dhimmi.
If, however, the dhimmi can obtain equal rights, the superior feels himself doubly inferior and is
thereby humiliated. The psychological trauma was particularly vivid for the Arabs in Palestine,
where the treatment of the Jewish remnant was often more severe than anywhere else, as the con-
querors’ aim was to impose their own sovereignty. The less the Israeli image of the Jew fits into the
dhimmi stereotype—a servile, cowardly, debased being—the more violent and bloodthirsty will
become the efforts of the ancient oppressors to force the victims to fit into a preconceived,
discriminatory mold.
Since Israel’s independence, the dhimmi stereotype has been transferred to Israel and Zionism,
thereby justifying the country’s constant vilification in international forums. Israel is the scapegoat,
responsible for every evil which afflicts the Arab world—as well as other regions. Israel is mocked
and defamed, just as the dhimmis were forced to wear despicable clothes. In fact, Israel symbolizes
today the isolation, the hatred, the contempt that formerly crushed the dhimmi communities. And just
as death punished the rebellious dhimmis in the past when they rejected the rules that degraded them,
so the dhimmi state, in rebellion against Arab domination, is today condemned to be destroyed by
pan-Arab nationalism. Its existence must be illegal, for only Arab domination in such a context is
considered legal. And, therefore, killing Israelis is a just cause—in the same manner as the dhimmis
and their wives and children were killed in the past—not so long ago, either, as the Jewish survivors
of the many massacres in Arab countries during the last generation can testify. Racism, imperialism,
and colonialism are the hateful cloth of contempt and derision thrown on the State of Israel in order
to disarm and ostracize a country, half of whose population is composed of descendants of dhimmis.
In our time, the weaknesses of Oriental Jewry are simply the prolongation of the helplessness
engendered by the dhimmi condition. If the majority of Oriental Jewry is, politically speaking,
inarticulate today, it is because its communities were reduced to a state of nonexistence during the
past millennium.
They were destroyed to the very core by segregation and a public stigma of inferiority. They
were destroyed again by their emancipation at the hands of the colonial powers, which by granting
them human dignity and equal rights with Muslims broke the chains of their moral and physical
prison yet alienated them culturally.
If Oriental Jewry is emerging from subjugation in our generation, it is because it has been
rescued from Arab servitude and can measure itself alongside free peoples. But with this awareness
goes a sense of responsibility. Perhaps we Jews of Arab lands can still change the course of history
by building—with all the peoples of the Orient—a future of peace and brotherhood, rather than a
future of hatred and war. With such a past, hatred is futile and debasing—and fatal to humanity.
The struggle for peace will unite us with a past, the greatness of which we have forgotten: a
past characterized by the heroism of spiritual courage and nonviolence in face of violence. It is this
past—not the ephemeral period of the emancipation of the dhimmis imposed upon the Arabs by
Europe—that justifies the peace vocation of Oriental Jews and Christians, a duty that no one can
assume in their place.
This duty consists in provoking a fundamental renovation of Arab political thought: by
liberating it of its traditions of racial and imperialist intolerance and by encouraging acceptance—in
terms of equality—of the other, the different, the non-Arab, the non-Muslim, through a reevaluation
of Arab-Muslim imperial glories as seen and felt by its victims.
It is the role of Oriental Jewry to unmask in Arab anti-Zionism that “infectious current,” that
“plague”—surviving from the depths of the dark ages—that condemned the synagogue and the
church in the Orient to debasement and to segregation—for the East also has its own “enseignement
du mepris” (teaching of contempt), to use the words of historian Jules Isaac. This action should be
used not to accuse but to liberate; not to hate but to seek agreement. It is a difficult path, sown with
mines, but the only possible path for laying the foundations of peace between free peoples.
Courageous men and women have over the years led the struggle against every form of racism.
Equality, liberty, and the respect for the rights of men and women of all creeds and colors have been
the rewards for their efforts. For one cannot eradicate the concentration camps, the gulags, or, for that
matter, apartheid by pretending to ignore them. Similarly, one cannot elimi nate Arab anti-Zionism,
the modern expression of age-old antidhimmi prejudices, by denying these prejudices. Soothing
words, the temporary display of fine feelings, are incapable of modifying attitudes that have been
conditioned by unchallenged stereotypes.
My conclusion is optimistic. At such a crucial epoch for the Jewish people, for Israel, and for
the peace of the world, the voice that yet might restrain the Arab peoples, the voice from the past that
can speak to their collective conscience by portraying the tragic history of the dhimmis—the voice of
justice—has begun to speak out and to be heard.
In 1975 WOJAC (the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries) was founded.
Speaking for nearly two million Jews from Arab lands who live in Israel and in the Diaspora,
WOJAC aims at contributing to the building of a bridge of friendship between Israel and the Arab
countries and all the peoples of the Middle East. It also aims at achieving the realization of the rights
of displaced Jews from Arab countries and a just settlement of their individual and collective claims,
which, based on UN Security Council Resolution 242, is a major and essential condition for peace in
the Middle East.
For centuries, we kept silent when our human dignity and rights were flouted. During the long
night of exile, we held our peace rather than respond to our oppressors. During these dark centuries,
we lived as if we were blind so as not to see our disgrace, as if we were deaf so as not to hear endless
insults—so that we no longer knew how to see, how to hear, how to speak. We kept silent even when
twenty Arab countries, covering 10 percent of the world’s surface—countries that have stamped into
their past and present history the degradation of the dhimmis—condemned Zionism as racism,
condemned Israel of racism, that small homeland of hope and redemption to which two-thirds of the
descendants of the Jewish dhimmis have returned.
We remained silent, for we reacted like a captive people, and captive peoples tend to lose their
identity, their history, and the control of their destiny, re-maining unaware of their rights. The
recovery of our historical identity and our moral dignity will enable us to start a dialogue with the
Arab peoples—as free people and not as servile dhimmis—a dialogue that may transform them and
renew them spiritually. This dialogue, although inspired by the lesson of the past, nonetheless points
to the future: a future of friendship and not of contempt, a future of peace and not of war, a future of
mutual esteem and recognition, of understanding and of reconciliation.8

POSTSCRIPT 2004

After the above lecture was delivered on September 5, 1978, a question was put to Bat Ye’or
regarding what might happen if the Ayatollah Khomeini were to take power in Iran. She predicted
what actually happened, and her words were endorsed by Sir Harold Wilson as chairman, who stated
that he had seen the shah in Iran in the spring, who told him that if ever Khomeini took power in Iran,
then the West would understand the meaning of Islamic extremism and how it would affect the
Middle East.

NOTES

This lecture was given at Jews College, London, on September 5. 1978, at a seminar organized
by the Jews in Arab Lands Committee (Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland): guest
chairman Sir Harold Wilson, former prime minister; Dr. Solomon Gaon, chief rabbi, Spanish and
Portuguese Jews of Great Britain; Eric Moonman, MP, chairman, Zionist Federation of Great Britain
and Ireland; Percy Gourgey, chairman, Jews in Arab Lands Committee; Bat Ye’or, representative in
Switzerland of the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC).
 10.
ASPECTS OF THE
ARAB-ISRAELI
CONFLICT
Bat Ye’or

Wars, as historians of conflicts know, far from being spontaneous phenomena, are rather the
climactic phases of violence resulting from conflict situations. These chronic—albeit dormant—
conflicts, although they undoubtedly stem from economic and political tensions, are often affected on
a psychological level by collective stereotyped images rooted in the traditions, culture, and history of
peoples. This is why modern historians, notwith-standing the economic and political factors in Nazi
Germany, have also included among the causes for the genocide of the Jews during World War II the
influence of a Jewish stereotype in the collective German subconscious.
The relevance of such an analysis is not confined to the societies of Europe. However varied
the ethnic or cultural differences that geographical diversity has produced, human behavior is
determined everywhere by the same constants. My reason for citing a familiar instance from recent
European history is to illustrate the importance of these pulsations resulting from the collective
stereotypes that reside within each and every society, and not only in democracies where freedom of
expression allows negative aspects of the collective psyche to come to light. To denounce exclusively
the collective psychoses of a single particular milieu—in this case Europe—means not only to limit
oneself to a partial interpretation of what is a general phenomenon, but also to patronize one
oppressed group at the expense of all other victims of similar social behavior throughout the world.
The only real difference is that in one case such social evils are opposed and condemned, whereas in
the other they are permitted to thrive on connivance or silence. It is with the intention of extending
the application of certain theories beyond the limited European context that some of the antiracist
arguments of European writers are here examined. The present article thus makes no claim to
originality except insofar as it tries to utilize what has already been said or written elsewhere, in order
to pinpoint the psychological element in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will touch upon certain general
aspects in the range of the emotional, historical, cultural, and traditional resonances within the Arab
psyche.

This article was originally published in the Wiener Library Bulletin (Institute of Contemporary History, London) n.s.. 32, nos. 49-50 (1979): 67-74. It was translated from the
French by David G. Littman, with (he author’s collaboration.

Firstly, one could ask whether a Jewish archetype similar to that encountered in other societies
exists in the Arab-Islamic consciousness. It can be established, without going into the causes that
motivate ethnic or religious archetypes, that in the traditional Arab-Islamic civitas, a special legal
status separated the infidels from the community of believers. The principle of cultural and religious
differentiation should not be condemned outright, since it allows freedom of expression in a plural
society. It becomes a manifestation of intolerance only when it is motivated by a desire to diminish
politically, economically, socially, and spiritually one group in favor of another. Discrimination exists
then as intention in the mind of the legislator, prior to its implementation through the regulations that
will govern the social status of the designated group. It is clearly this discriminatory process that has
pro-gressively degraded the dhimmi,1 whose caricature has thereby been indelibly etched into the
history and customs of the Arab-Islamic peoples. This dehumanization reveals and motivates the
dhimmi archetype, an archetype that in the collective mind is itself no more than the reflection of the
dhimmi condition.
If the archetype of the Jewish dhimmi is in fact the principal psychological element in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, and in particular in the consciousness of the Palestinian Arab, it is essential to
define the specific characteristics of the dhimmi when they first become discernible under the second
caliph, Umar (634-644), and especially after the period of the great Arab conquests. What is the
strategy reducing an entire nation to a dhimmi people? It is the jihad, an expansionist holy war
aiming at the Islamization of non-Muslim territories, that transforms a conquered people into a
dhimmi people; while Islam, the force behind jihad, spreads Arab values. This is why Islam and pan-
Arabism are still today inseparably linked in Arab political thinking, whereas in non-Arab Muslim
countries, the acceptance of jihad will depend on the extent of the Islamization of the state
institutions. The example of Iran is noteworthy. While the secular regime of the Shah accepted
significant, albeit unofficial, relations with Israel, the religious leadership of the newly proclaimed
Islamic Republic has joined those Arab leaders who have declared a jihad against Israel. It is of
interest in this context to note Yasir Arafat’s message of February 11, 1979, to the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, for whom Israel is an offense against Islam: “I pray Allah to guide your steps on
the read of faith and jihad in Iran, which will continue the struggle until we reach the walls of
Jerusalem, where we will raise the flags of our two revolutions.”2
Bearing in mind that the concept of jihad was established in the seventh century and that it
aims at the triumph of Islam, the extermination or conversion of pagans, and the conversion or
humiliation of Jews and Christians, one may question the real meaning of the “secular and
democratic state” slogan proclaimed by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s PLO.
As jihad, according to the sacred texts, implements the divine will on earth, it starts an
irreversible process of Arabization or Islamization. Consequently, any reversibility of jihad—for
instance, the recuperation of national territory by a subject people—amounts to a “sacrilege.” Allah’s
will, expressed in divine law ordaining the supremacy of the Arab-Muslim peoples and the
humiliation of the dhimmis, is thereby flouted. The occupation of their homeland through jihad
condemns the conquered to live forever as a landless nation. The choice is either to remain in their
homeland on sufferance at the mercy of the conqueror or, threatened by extermination, to flee into
exile. The subjected nation, stripped of its political rights and forbidden to carry arms, thus becomes
powerless; its language, culture and values are replaced by those of the Arab metropolis, thereby
modifying both populations and towns. Its national identity is completely extinguished. It is reduced
from a nation to the level of a tolerated religion, by which process confes-sionalism was developed.
So the dhimmi condition may be considered a collective and hereditary one. It characterizes
the conquered group as morally inferior, thus reducing it to permanent incapacity. The right to live is
granted in exchange for the benefits accruing to the conqueror. This asymmetrical relationship
between conqueror and conquered forms the basis of the covenant of tolerance. This paternalism lasts
as long as the exploitation of the dhimmi is profitable, an aim that requires the dhimmi group to
remain inferior and unequal. Tolerance is withdrawn if the dhimmis rebel or try to recover their
homeland and their independence—or if, rejecting the imposed degrading servitude, they acquire
rights and privileges reserved exclusively for the ruling class. Such “inso-lence”—to use the word
generally applied to such abuses—substitutes an equal relationship for the asymmetrical one that
guaranteed the dhimmis’ existence. From then on their life and property are no longer protected, and
they can legally be put to death. The covenant can also be broken if the ruler decides unilaterally to
withdraw his “protection.” In either case, the sentence hanging eternally over the subjected dhimmis,
temporarily suspended by the grant of “protection,” now becomes applicable. They can be
dispossessed, massacred, or exiled, according to the method chosen by the conqueror.
The dhimmi communities are not only marginalized by their inferior status; they also serve as
scapegoats. Excluded from a society that only tolerated them the better to exploit and degrade them,
they are the victims of every conflict. In times of instability, brute instincts are unleashed, leading to
the pillage and the massacre that periodically decimated these defenseless people, whose survival
depended on a special conception of goodwill inextricably bound up with self-interest. Moreover,
uncleanness and impurity is attached to the dhimmi condition. This physical repugnance leads to the
death penalty for sexual relations between dhimmis and Muslim women. This desire to restrict social
contact with a group considered theologically unclean motivates the numerous meticulous laws
governing the clothes, segregation, and travel of dhimmis, as well as the vexing and humiliating
prescriptions restricting their religious and social activities. The broad outlines of the dhimmi
archetype are now clear. At the political and collective level, it represents a nation whose land has
been Islamized by jihad, a process that, theologically, implies the purification of that land from sin.
At the metaphysical level, the dhimmis represent evil, the perversity of the infidels who, refusing the
superiority of the conquerors’ beliefs, prefer their inferior faith. They suffer for their stubbornness by
exile, or, if they choose to remain they purchase back their existence with an imposed condition of
humiliation, destitution, and servility.
Can it be affirmed today that the dhimmi condition remains, from an Islamic viewpoint,
applicable to Jews and Christians in dar al-Islam?3 This question necessitates a distinction between
the archetype and the actual juridical status of the dhimmis. Although the legal status is based on a
com-plex of laws and customs, the archetype seems at first to be an abstract and fluid purpose. The
archetype determines the status, which is merely its implementation in reality. Enriched by popular
imagery, nourished on the degradation of the discriminated group, the archetype is petrified over the
centuries into a phantasm that justifies and consecrates the condition of the dhimmis. Archetype and
condition are dialectically linked, the one reinforcing the other. Contingent political circumstances
may abolish the dhimmi condition by ending the asymmetric relationship, but the archetype will not
necessarily be destroyed, since it exists within the collective psyche, independent of written laws,
from whence it inspires the ideology. Deriving from history its obsessive force, it selects from the
political currents of the present those elements favoring its realization at a more propitious time. Thus
the archetype conserves and projects the condition into the future, even if it is temporarily suspended
or abolished by historical contingencies such as the successful revolt of a dhimmi people or its
expulsion from dar al-lslam. Thus the archetype, even emptied of its substance, survives in its own
ideological structure, whose function is to elaborate and select the factors that will implement it.

To know to what extent the dhimmi condition still keeps its validity, one would have to examine
how its ideological structure is formulated in present-day Muslim societies. In this article, only the
more obvious manifestations will be mentioned. The jihad, for example—which may be considered
as the basis of the dhimmi condition—has often been proclaimed against the state of Israel. Its
strategy as well as its tactics are applied by the PLO and the Arab Rejection Front. The dhimmi
condition which results automatically from jihad (i.e., the Islamization of a land) is implicitly
confirmed for the Jews of Israel. Even on the philological level, the claim that the land of Israel is
Arab implies that the Israelis are a landless people condemned to accept Arab suzerainty over its
homeland. In the logic of Arab history, “Arab Palestine” and Jewish dhimmi status are synonymous.
They are two aspects of the same reality—the conqueror’s usurpation and domination, and the
exploitation and subjection of the conquered. One can therefore maintain that the whole political and
ideological context of the slogan “Arab Palestine” is influenced by the Jewish archetype—a
dispossessed people whose land has been definitively Islamized. The terms “Arab Palestine” and
even “Palestine”—the latter inherited from Roman imperialism—foreshadow the implementation of
the dhimmi condition for the Jews, when the propitious hour will come.
Should this condition once again bring about a national dissolution for the Jews in their
homeland, they would find themselves obliged, as before in their history, to seek refuge among other
nations in order to survive. Thus the factors conducive to exile, persecution, and degradation would
be reunited according to the dhimmi archetype, which, from an abstract project—albeit permeating
the present ideology—would be fulfilled in reality. One could therefore answer the question raised
above by unmasking the dhimmi archetype behind the frequent calls to jihad, in the affirmation that
the land of Israel is Arab, and, more directly and concretely, in the numerous declarations by Muslim
political or religious leaders which explicitly or implicitly confirm that the dhimmi condition is an
obligatory status for Jews within dar al-Islam.
As far as the realization today of the archetype is concerned, or the extent to which Jews have
actually been obliged to live as dhimmis, collective measures taken by Arab leaders against Jews in
Arab countries and the specific attitudes of their peoples show that even until recently Jews were
considered as dhimmis. Once the process of decolonization was over, the unofficial policy of Arab
leaders (with the exception of King Hassan of Morocco and President Bourguiba of Tunisia) was
either to expel Jews or hold them as hostages. Other measures included arbitrary confiscation of
property; political, economic, and social discrimination, including deliberate humiliation; physical
maltreatment and imprisonment; and summary executions and expulsions. As a justification for such
measures, the political and theological authorities referred to the traditional status of the dhimmi.
Today—with the exception of Morocco, Tunisia, and, more recently, Egypt—the situation of the
Jews remaining in Arab countries perpetuates all the essential characteristics of the dhimmi
condition: insecurity, marginal-ization, discrimination, and humiliation.4 The fact that the victims—
some young people, but the majority old men and women—are unable to escape to freedom, nor even
to imagine its existence, and bow to their fate, does not alter their objective situation. The submission
of serfs does not mean that their state of serfdom has ended.
At the collective level, the bloody pogroms suffered by Oriental Jewry illustrate the extent to
which it was used as a scapegoat in an Arab world trau-matized by colonization and Western
penetration. In his study of the Libyan pogroms of 1945, Harvey E. Goldberg examines the symbolic
meaning behind the social pattern of these bloody scapegoat rituals.5 These outbursts were not
confined to Libya but were repeated throughout the Arab world. Moreover, the virulent Judeophobia
found in Arab countries is rooted in the traditional demonizing of the dhimmis, even if some
observers, unaware of the various aspects of the dhimmi condition, maintain that it stems from
Western ideology. Thus not only pronouncements by political and religious leaders but also modern
literature and the collective behavior of the masses all point to the survival of the dhimmi archetype.
It took on concrete shape against Israel, its avatar, or against the still-existing Jewish communities
within the Oriental Diaspora.
Obviously neither the average Muslim nor the popular consciousness understand the archetype
and the dhimmi condition as clear concepts. Car-ried in the ebb and flow of history from the
collective unconscious to a political formulation, they appear at many levels—in proverbs and
popular speech, in literature and jurisprudence, in customs, tradition, collective psychosis, and
political ideology. A critical reflection on the national rights of dhimmi peoples would consequently
imply not only a complete reversal of contemporary Arab values but also a reinterpretation of Arab
imperialism along universalist values and not, as heretofore, in terms of an Arab epic. Sociocultural
conditioning and the lack of freedom of speech are only two of the many reasons why such a
reevaluation—which would amount to nothing more than an acknowledgment of the human and
political rights of the other—has never been undertaken by the Arab intelligentsia. Instead, the latter
attempts to update traditional modes of thinking so as to adapt them to changing historical
circumstances. With regard to the submissive and sometimes servile behavior of dhimmi
communities—resulting from unconcealed threats, discrimination and insecurity—it stems from their
dual role as scapegoats and hostages. To this should be added the almost total destruction of their
national identity. Today, as in the past, “tolerance” is granted to victims only if they accept their
inferior status. Complications arise should they reject this role, refuse to play the game, and, breaking
the chains of moral alienation, claim emancipation and liberty. In the case of the Jews, the psychosis
at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict is precisely the traumatism caused by the desynchronization
between the millenary archetype of the Jew and the claims of the Israeli liberating his homeland from
Arab-Muslim domination.
Numerous books on the racial persecution of Jews, blacks, and Arabs within Western societies
reveal the harmful effects of caricatural archetypes on the collective consciousness. It has been
shown that a modification of the relations between oppressors and oppressed—whether through
emancipation, assimilation, or, as in the case of the colonized Arabs, national liberation—does not
necessarily dispel the demonological archetypes attached to the discriminated groups. On the
contrary, the emancipation of dehumanized collectivities gives rise to new forms of morbid,
collective psychoses. In fact, the more the reality is different from the traditional image, the more
emphasis will be laid on the stereotype in order to bridge the traumatizing gap between phantasm and
reality. Hence, the more the Israelis differs from the archetype of the dhimmi Jews, the more hideous
becomes their caricature and the more violent and bloody are the oppressors’ attempts to adjust
reality to the phantasm. Arab societies being no different in this respect to European, Arab attitudes
towards their colonized peoples (the dhimmis) are hardly different from those of other colonizing
powers in analogous situations. The only really different element is that of time. The longer and more
reassuring the implantation, the fiercer becomes the hatred against the rebellious victim, and
conversely the louder are the victim’s cries for justice and right.
These general principles appear at two levels in the Arab-Israeli conflict. First, they influence
collectively Arab attitudes toward Zionism and toward the remaining Jewish communities in the
Arab world. Second, and on a far more traumatic level, they explain the relationship of the
Palestinian Arabs to Zionism. Whereas in the Diaspora the relationship of the Jews to their
environment is that of a religious minority, in the land of Israel it is determined by four thousand
years of history and is, and always will be, that of a people despoiled of its national territory. And this
is true whatever the demographic asymmetry resulting from oppression. The discrimination against
Jews was greater in Palestine than anywhere else because of a political dimension— territorial
usurpation. The special relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people motivated a persecution
that was cruder there than elsewhere. Never was a nation so systematically humiliated and destroyed
in its national expression (demography, history, language, and culture) than was the Jewish remnant
in its own homeland. The conquerors’ goal being to impose their sovereignty and values eternally
over the country, the land of Israel was thus rendered judenrein (the use of this anachronism is
justified, as the policy preceded the invention of the word).
The reason for such a policy is that the Arabs had no doubts about their imperialist mission, in
which they gloried. The Qur’an, as they are well aware, makes frequent mention of both the land of
Israel and its people, and Muslim chronicles and other sources have made the Arabs familiar with the
history and progress of the conquest. They also know that the only town they founded during thirteen
centuries in Palestine was Ramla and that the towns, land, and cultivated areas that they appropriated
belonged to others. They are also aware—from the Qur’an Arab legends, and the hadith (opinions
attributed to the Prophet)—that the Jews would one day return to their ancestral homeland. The
persecution of the Jews of Palestine helped consolidate Arab foreign penetration, forcing Israel to
wander in exile for thirteen centuries. In modern times, however, an ever-changing situation worked
against the occupant under whose rule the country had become a desert, supporting only 10 percent
of its former population. The weakness of the Turkish government allowed European countries to
protect the non-Muslims of the Ottoman empire from the persecutions and massacres that had been
their lot as dhimmis.
 Development of the press as well as modem means of communication and transportation
enabled Zionism to emerge into a coherent, worldwide movement of national liberation. Modern
technology compensated for numerical inferiority. The times had changed: the small regional waves
of returning Jews—previously neutralized by the persecution, expulsion and massacre that awaited
survivors reaching Palestine—grew into a movement of mass emigration that was to result finally in
the establishment of an independent Jewish state.
This historic context explains the traumatic effect that the progress of Zionism had on the Arab
consciousness. On the level of the collective image, the behavior of European Jews was at variance
with the classic archetype of the dhimmis (the Oriental Jews or Christians), whose dehumanization
confirmed and justified feeling of superiority and domination of the Muslim community (umma). The
rise of the dhimmi to equality with their oppressors was considered by the latter as a degrading
humiliation, reducing them to the level of their former victims whom they had regarded as a social
outcast for twelve centuries, to be tolerated only as long as they were useful. Politically, the rebellion
of the dhimmis came as a tremendous shock to the Arab political consciousness, throwing into
question the legitimacy of Arab sovereignty over territories conquered by jihad and threatening to
undermine the foundations of Arab nationalism’s ideology. For this ideology—in which
“nationalism” has a meaning so ambiguous as to be almost contrary to the European sense of the
term—is to create an Arab empire on the model of the Arab-Islamic empire, an empire that was only
able to expand by jihad, by territorial usurpation outside Arabia and by the political and spiritual
oppression of indigenous populations, reduced to the dhimmi status.
Consequently, contemporary Arab nationalism as the heir to territorial spoils of jihad and the
guardian of its values has recast the dhimmi archetype in modern form. It has answered any
expression of non-Arab nationalism by eliminating the few pockets of resistance that for thirteen
centuries have withstood one of the longest and most alienating oppressions in history. Oriental
Christendom, more directly threatened by the dhimmi archetype than Israel, has recently discovered
what a Herculean task it is to secularize Arab nationalism. This much is evident from the conflict in
Lebanon. There it was the PLO that, as the spearhead of Arab nationalism, massacred the Maronites
in the name of Arabism. As the PLO considers itself the vanguard of Ara-bism, it conceives its
mission as a struggle against all non-Arab and non-Muslim liberation movements in the Middle East.
Christians of Lebanon (ancient Phoenicia) and Jews of Israel, who for centuries had shared the
common bond of dhimmi existence, thus came to renew their historic ties.
The religious implications of an ideology that retrieves the values of the past are evident: the
revolt of the dhimmis contests the divine will expressed in jihad-inspired conquests. The result
entails metaphysical chaos and the rule of Satan. Israel is an “inexpiable sin” by its very existence, an
apoca-lyptic sacrilege. The demographic concentration of dhimmis accentuates their demonological
characteristics. These project on the dhimmi state, as on a “gigantic mirror,” the horrific features of
the dhimmi archetype. Israel, the symbol of the dhimmi state—half of whose population is composed
of descendants of dhimmis—is the reflection of the dhimmi status. Israel is made the scapegoat
responsible for every evil that afflicts the Arab world— as well as other regions—and is defamed in
international forums. In fact, Israel symbolizes the isolation, the hatred, and the contempt that
formerly crushed the dhimmi communities. Arab ideas about the dhimmis and their destiny are found
underlying Arab (particularly Palestinian Arab) writing on Israel, even the most sophisticated.6
It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that all these various elements are heightened in the
consciousness of the Palestinian Arabs, who are directly concerned by the territorial aspect of the
conflict. That a land Arabized by jihad should have been lost to a dhimmi people by the beneficiaries
of the dhimmi condition during thirteen centuries is considered a catastrophe of cosmic dimensions.
For the Arabs to have to live now under the law of Israel when for thirteen centuries the opposite had
been the case can only be a sin against Allah. The Palestinian Charter shows a total commitment to
the ideology and the conquests of jihad: “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it
is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people is an integral part of the Arab
nation” (art. 1). Such a claim necessarily denies the national sovereignty of the Jewish people. Thus
“claims of historical and religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of
history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood” (art. 20).7
The ideas of uncleanness and impurity associated with the dhimmis are transposed to the
Israelis. The Israeli presence on the esplanade of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem or at the tombs of
the Hebrew patriarchs in Hebron offends the Islamic mind: for the Jewish dhimmi religion is
encroaching on the privileges of the “superior” Muslim religion. In a UNESCO declaration, PLO
representative Ibrahim Souss [who later became Arafat’s brother-in-law] stated that the Israelis were
desecrating the sanctity of the mosques in those places.8 Nostalgia for former times, when death
punished dhimmi entering the precincts of sacred Muslim shrines? The PLO spokesman did not limit
himself to this religious observation but declared that the Israeli (hence Jewish) presence was defiling
the whole of Palestine. The link with tradition and with the archetype is unmistakable: it was this
religious idea of impurity that prompted the expulsion of the Jewish and Christian Arab tribes in the
seventh century from the pure soil of Arabia. To this day, no church or synagogue is permitted to
“defile” it.
The Jerusalem Post carried a report that a group of Arab villagers in Israel, rejoicing at a
wedding celebration, had been heard chanting, “The Arabs will soon be cutting the throats of the
Jews.” The words “Arabs” and “Jews”—these simple villagers were ignorant of the niceties of
propaganda—express that visceral connection with times past, when the law was Arab and the
dhimmis were animals to be stripped and slaughtered. Every available weapon, from burning trees
and fields9 to expulsion and massacre, from terrorism to corruption at the United Nations in order to
obtain votes, all these tactics of jihad have been and are still used to further its strategy against the
rebellious dhimmis.
Researchers have demonstrated how the successful liberation of a colonized people may
traumatize their colonizers. The impotent rage of the oppressors at the victims’ revolt is expressed
through hatred, revenge, and a desire to exterminate—that is, commit politicide, in the case of a state.
The attainment of equal rights by a dehumanized group humiliates the dominant group, which,
deprived of its superiority, seeks compensation through bloody phantasms. The mechanism has been
closely analyzed in the literature dealing with racist phenomena.
Arab leaders officially distinguish between Judaism—the tolerated religion of a dhimmi
people—and Zionism, the national liberation movement of the same people in rebellion against Arab-
Islamic domination on its land. Whereas Jews are tolerated if they submit to the system, Zionists
deserve death. This theological and political conception justifies PLO-inspired terrorism: Israelis and
Zionists are fought by jihad in accordance with its sanctions against the enemies of Islam or any
subject people in rebellion. This policy is not new; it was applicable whenever possible.
For example, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Ottoman government strove to
crush the national revivals of its subject peoples by car-rying out wholesale massacres of Christian
Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Bulgarians, Maronites, and Armenians; on the other hand, it took
measures— often inadequate—to protect these same peoples, scattered throughout the empire, where
they were resigned to their traditional status.
This demonstrates that anti-Zionism in the Arab-Islamic geopolitical context is, in many
respects, different from European antisemitism. It also explains the motivation behind the various
campaigns launched by some Arab leaders, especially the PLO—and by the Ayatollah Khomeini—to
win over Jews. Such attitudes, deliberately aimed at isolating and weakening the State of Israel, are
nothing but political tactics that the laws of jihad allow. Thus Jews are to be used in fighting against
their own national interest. History provides many examples of alienated members of a religious or
national group being manipulated by the dominant power. Christian Arab nationalists are themselves
a vivid illustration of this phenomenon. If it is true that the destruction of racist myths is a necessary
precondition for establishing a better world, by the same token it must follow that the elimination of
the dhimmi archetype is a precondition for true peace in the Middle East. Such a precondition would
imply a recognition of the link, depicted in history and the Qur’an, between the Hebrew people and
the land of Israel—as well as the right to national sovereignty of the Jewish people in its own land.
For the Arabs it would imply an acceptance that the gains of jihad are reversible, that the holy war is
not a divinely infallible decree but has a terrestrial dimension common to all imperialistic exploits
and that decolonization is a universal process applicable to Arabs also. Pernicious myths that are not
denounced will continue to determine the collective behavior of peoples and consequently the fate of
the world, in spite of the seductive ideological dress in which they may masquerade.
Seen in the perspective of history, the destiny of the Jews as dhimmis has specific meaning as
a special testimony, since Israel’s straggle is none other than a fight to destroy a dhimmi archetype
that has bewitched the Arab consciousness with a destructive and nostalgic dream of hegemony,
irreconcilable with principles of decolonization or with the rights and liberties of peoples. This
context gives the peace initiative of President Sadat, supported by the Egyptian people, a
revolutionary significance, in contrast to the reactionary position of the PLO-led Arab Rejection
Front. Not only has it thrown off the weight of the past, but it has also created new realities, new
trends of thought. It has abolished the asymmetric relationship between a dominant Arab-Muslim
people and the Jews, thereby opening the road to a future of peace and mutual esteem among all the
peoples of the Middle East. One can only hope that, in spite of considerable obstacles, this
courageous policy will triumph over that of the reactionary opposition.
 11.
EURO-ARAB ANTI-ZIONISM
Bat Ye’or

Peace in the Middle East implies the peace of religions. We will try to clarify here the
pathways from Judeophobia to anti-Zionism in Christianity and Islam, respectively, and their
convergence and fusion on the theological and political levels. This analysis will require a study of
past and current zones of confrontation, including brief retrospective surveys of theological and
historical developments.
It must be emphasized that the anti-Zionist policies analyzed here do not represent the full
range of European and Eastern Christian opinion. Anti-Zionist attitudes are contested and in some
quarters strongly opposed. Nevertheless they still shape the anti-Israel policy that has prevailed in
postwar Europe. The obsessive pathological denigration of the Jewish state, officially or secretly
encouraged by governments and religious institutions, has conditioned reticent public opinion. Like
the antisemitism of past centuries, anti-Zionism is now integrated into the European mindset and
fulfills an essential function in Europe’s international politics. Modifications in Judaism and the
emergence of a sovereign Jewish state have led to the transfer of theological Judeophobia to the
political sphere of state anti-Zionism.

Text written in 1998. two years before the courageous pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II in Israel. His moving presence at Yad Vashem and the Temple Wall is a symbol of
friendship, reconciliation, and peace between the two religions. This analysis was originally published as “L’Antisionisme Euro-Arabe,” chap. 1 in [Nouveaux] visages de
I’antisemitisme: Haine-passion ou haine historique? (Paris: NM7 editions, 2001). pp. 23-70. This version, adapted by the author, was translated by Nidra Poller.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The name Palestine does not belong exclusively to Arab Muslim-Christianity. The Roman
conquerors of Judea (Judaea Capta, in 70 CE) coined the name in 135 to designate the Jewish
province of their empire. In Byzantine Palestine, torn by intra-Christian conflicts, Jewish
demography remained important, especially in Galilee, despite persecution by monks starting in the
fourth century. A juridical corpus, the Jerusalem Talmud, was composed during this period.
Hadrian’s edict (135) prohibiting Jewish presence in Jerusalem did not apply to the rest of Palestine,
and, in fact, the prohibition had gradually lost its force until it was recuperated and applied with great
severity in fourth-century Christianized Palestine. Christian persecution of Palestinian Jews was
stimulated in the fifth and sixth century by the anti-Jewish laws of emperors Theodosius II and
Justinian, inspired by the Church Fathers. In the seventh century, Jewish depopulation was
aggravated by the insecurity and expropriation resulting from Arab clans emigrating from Arabia and
settling in the countries conquered by jihad. The devastation of the Arab conquests, attested by
Christian and Muslim chroniclers, was not restricted to the Jews; Christians and other non-Muslim
indigenous peoples were also victims in all the lands Islamized by jihad. Muslim chroniclers
recorded the Arab tribal settlements in the colonized territories, including Palestine.1 These
irrefutable historical documents show that the Arab-Muslim Palestinians are definitely not the
descendants of the Canaanites, Jebuzites, or Philistines. The Islamization of Palestine was achieved
by land expropriation of native populations as prescribed by the injunctions of jihad and according to
the regime of dhimmitude imposed in the Arab colonization of the Middle East and elsewhere.

THEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ANTI-ZlONISM

Christianity

Judea became the site of the most intense conflict between the burgeoning Church and
Palestinian Judaism integrated into its ancestral homeland for more than a millennium. The alliance
between the reigning political authority and the Church hardened the anti-Judaism of the Church
Fathers, namely those from the Orient, into theory and jurisdiction. Saint Augustine (354-430),
bishop of Hippo (Bona), stated the classic view of the Jewish people: a fallen deicidal people cursed
by God, who rescinded the promise and condemned them to exile, wandering, and abjection. Because
of its geographical localization, the Palestinian Church stood thereafter as the intransigent guardian
and support of this condemnation, proclaiming itself the Verus Israel and rightful heir of the Jewish
heritage. The replacement theology justified the exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem and their
oppression in their own country. The suffering and destitution of the Jews testified to the election of
the Church, the true Israel. The Palestinian Church, guardian of this belief, persecuted and humiliated
the Jews in their homeland, while other dioceses implemented the same policy in the Diaspora.
The first massacre of the Jews (ca. 628) in the Byzantine Empire was decreed after the Persian
wars by the emperor Heraclius, at the instigation of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Some years
later, according to Christian sources, Sophronius entreated the Muslim conquerors to maintain the
total exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem, based on the Christian theological principle of rejection.2
Thus Christian Judeophobic policy was passed to Islam.
After the Arab conquest of Palestine (634-640) the Christians lost their privileged and
dominant position. Palestinian Jews and Christians, expropriated by the jihad laws that applied
throughout the dar al-Islam, endured the scourges of conquest and colonization by Bedouin tribes
emigrating massively from Arabia to inhabit the Byzantine territories. Palestine was divided into
provinces attached to different Syrian administrative towns, as it had been in the Byzantine period,
losing its geographically circumscribed national unity, while Jerusalem lost the centrality it had in the
Jewish kingdom. Insecurity prevailed in a country devastated by Bedouin migrations following the
transhumance of their herds. In the course of time the dhimmis were reduced to a few agglomerations
with prestigious biblical names, where they paid dearly for a precarious security.
Over the centuries, conscious of their role as guardians of the infamous Jewish status,
Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic clergy inflicted endless humiliations on Palestinian Jews,
especially in Jerusalem. Invoking an imaginary finnan, they legalized the murder of Jews who dared
to pass in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a punishment maintained until the turn of the
twentieth century. Various religious orders and the masses of Christian pilgrims, notably at Easter,
exacerbated the latent popular fanaticism. Their hostile acts, aimed at persecuting the Jews in their
own country, illustrated the election of the New Alliance and the abrogation of the Old, making the
persecution of Israel in its homeland an act of piety. It is precisely this religious theory that explains
the extreme Judeophobia characteristic of Palestinian Christianity throughout history, which
scandalized many Western Christians.
Islam

Quranic replacement dogma is formulated in approximately the same terms as Christianity’s

assertion to be the accomplishment of Judaism. Islam claims to precede the two biblical religions that
it completes and corrects (sura 5:52). Islam, religion of God (sura 3:17), existed at the origin of
Creation and the biblical characters, including Jesus, were Muslim prophets, preaching Islam.
However, the Quranic and biblical notions of prophecy, revelation, election, and exegesis differ. The
influence of the Church Fathers appears in the Quranic anti-Jewish polemic, which echoes the
Judeophobic imprecations of John Chrysostomus and Saint Augustine’s image of the Jewish ped-dler
(sura 62:5).
These Islamic borrowings of Christian anti-Judaism and replacement theology mark important
zones of convergence and fusion of Muslim-Chris-tian anti-Zionism and Judeophobia. Christian
condemnation of the Jews to exile and degradation is recuperated by the Islamic doctrine but
incorporated into a different theological construction that associates Christians and Jews and includes
all infidels in one and the same infamy.

JURISDICTION

Christianity: Jewish Statute

Discriminatory dispositions against the Jews, often couched in insulting terms, were introduced
into civil law codes and juridical collections on the basis of council decisions and pressure exerted by
bishops on the Byzantine emperors and subsequently on the royal authority. This is the origin of the
Jewish statute applied with variations throughout Christendom, in the West as in the East, where it
originated. Abolished in some European countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by
secularization and modernization movements, the statute was reinstated by the Nazis (1933), the
Italian fascists (1938), and the collaborationist Vichy government of France (1940).

Islam: Statute of Jews and Christians (Dhimmitude)

The ideology of jihad demands the implementation of Sharia (Islamic jurisdiction) in all lands
taken from the infidels. Under Islamic law the Jews, who were a minority within the conquered
populations, had the same statute as the Christians, whereas Zoroastrians and other pagan peoples
were relegated to inferior categories and more severely oppressed.
Reciprocal borrowings between Islam and Christianity were not limited to the theological
sphere. Caliphs and sultans governed multitudes of subject peoples under a jurisdiction that, though
based on interpretations of the Qur’an and the Hadith,3 had integrated pre-Islamic laws and customs
of the conquered countries into an Islamic structure. This system of governing vanquished peoples
(dhimmis), which I call “dhimmitude,” has determined the demographic, religious, and ethnic
modifications of lands occupied by jihad. The term dhimmitude encompasses all aspects and
complexities of this political system, which shaped Jewish and Christian civilizations of dhimmitude
over the centuries.
Some of the humiliating discriminatory dispositions imposed on Jewish and Christian dhimmis
are the same as those imposed on Jews in Christendom: obligatory segregation; exclusion from all
honorific and public positions giving authority over a Muslim; and prohibition against owning land,
acting as a witness, and building places of worship, to name a few examples. The reciprocity of
borrowings is obvious: distinctive signs, hats, and badges imposed on the Jews by the Fourth Latran
Council in 1215 were directly inspired by Islamic codes going back to the eighth century, which
obliged Jewish and Christian dhimmis to wear distinctive discriminatory clothing and colors.
European Jews in the late Middle Ages had to wear ostensible signs reminiscent of discrimination
much more perverse and severe that was imposed on non-Muslims throughout the Muslim empire
from the eighth century on.
The dhimmi status in Islam was shared by Jews and Christians, but the latter perceived this
equal treatment as a deliberate, supplementary humiliation imposed by Islam. That attitude
contributed to the willful obfuscation of the history of dhimmitude, that is, the same juridical and
theological rules for both Jews and Christians.
Dhimmitude does not only apply to relations between Islam and the People of the Book (Jews
and Christians); it also concerns relations between Christians and Jews. Christian anti-Jewish
doctrine and legislation are integrated into dhimmitude. Thus the Arab-Israeli conflict is an
exemplary case of dhimmitude because it encompasses—albeit with dissimulation—a Judeo-
Christian conflict. Interactions among these three monotheistic religions throughout the twentieth
century and up to the present have remained within these traditional historical patterns, which
constantly reproduce the same conflictive relations. It is important, therefore, to recognize the
structures and mechanisms of these interactions if we are to master their noxiousness in the twenty-
first century.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is but a small recent element in the vast geographic confrontation
provoked and sustained for centuries by jihad ideology. Islam considers its relations with Jews and
Christians from a theological and a political viewpoint. Theologically, they are assigned a legal status
as tolerated but inferior tributary infidels (dhimmis or rayas) in their own country Islamized by jihad.
The political aspect—linked to Zionism in the Jewish case—falls into the problematic of a dhimmi
people that has liberated its country from the dhimmitude imposed by the laws of jihad. The political
disposition in the case of rejection of dhimmitude, meaning refusal of the legal framework imposed
on submissive infidels, remains the same for Jews and Christians.
Muslim countries are torn today by numerous conflicts involving different aspects of Islamist
combat. Jihad strategies of territorial reconquest operate in Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia; in
Sudan and elsewhere in Africa; on several fronts in Europe; and in Israel and Lebanon. Other Muslim
countries, for example, Algeria, are ravaged by bloody politico-religious intra-Muslim wars. The
Islamist concept of jihad against the infidels has filtered through to the general public in recent years.
From Sudan to Afghanistan, from Gaza to Madrid and New York, from Egypt to Algeria, calls for
jihad repeat the same themes inscribed in the same ideological structure. Such homogeneity cannot
be improvised and cannot result from external circumstantial conditions. On the contrary, it is
inherent to a historical constant based on juridical, ideological, and cultural foundations.

ANTI-ZIONISM

Anti-Zionism refers to the strategy aimed at the elimination of the State of Israel. This strategy
uses various techniques: military warfare, local and international terrorism, delegitimization through
a defamatory campaign with strong media support, and usurpation of Israel’s history.
Though anti-Zionism is composed of two currents, Muslim and Chris tian, the latter is not
easily identifiable because it hides behind the Islamic movement that it guides and enriches with
traditional Christian anti-Judaism.

The Islamic Current

 Islamic anti-Zionism is rooted in the politico-religious concept of jihad, which proscribes all
non-Islamic political authority. It grants in theory peace and security to the People of the Book (Jews
and Christians) in exchange for their territory and solely on condition of their submission to
dhimmitude. This is the base of the Muslim peace with non-Muslims. The war against Israel is a war
against dhimmis who rebelled, a war to restore the supremacy of Islamic law. Muslim countries that
repudiated these outdated concepts and made a commitment to modernity, such as Turkey or the
shah’s Iran, have had good relations with Israel. In the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turkey was
forced by the European powers to recognize the autonomy and independence of its former Euro-
Christian provinces. It integrated into its empire, notably in Armenia, Palestine, and Syria, millions
of Muslim refugees chased out of the new central European Christian states, liberated from centuries
of dhimmitude after bloody wars.
Muslim anti-Zionism denies all national features of the Israeli people— language, history,
civilization—recognizing only the religious rights of dhimmis, as it does with other Christian ethnic
groups. This ambiguity between war and tolerance has misled many analysts who are unaware of the
jihad and dhimmitude context.

The Muslim-Christian Current

Islamized Christianity, a historical current that has been active since the origins of Islam, was a
fundamental force throughout the history of Islamic conquests and their hold over subjected Christian
peoples. This current, which encompasses intra-Christian rivalries and conflicts, led to the political
and military collusion and collaboration of some Christian religious hierarchies. It appeared in a
syncretic religious form when countless Eastern Christian and European monks were Islamized in the
course of invasions and wars. We will examine it here only in its modern anti-Zionist expression,
forged in the Holy Land by religious missions polarized by the theological and political rivalries of
European powers. However, it is also a potent anti-Christian and pro-Islamic movement
instrumentalized by jihadist policies.

The Palestinian Context

European policies toward Palestine that were forged in the nineteenth century held the Jewish
people both hostage and victim to a genocidal war in the twentieth century. These policies were
articulated around the geostrategic and economic rivalries of European powers with the Ottoman
Empire, and they were envenomed by divergent theological and eschatological Christian visions of
the Holy Land and the Jewish people.
Since Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition, France had dreamed of lording over a great
Arab empire in the Levant. To this end France tried to reinforce the power of Muhammad Ali,
Egyptian pasha and vassal of the Turks. In 1829, planning to unite the three regencies of Tripoli,
Tunis, and Algiers with Egypt, France encouraged its protege Muhammad Ali to conquer Syria,
Palestine, and Mesopotamia. In 1832, Ibrahim Pasha was able to undermine the power of the local
chiefs and place Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine under the government of the Egyptian pasha. As
protector of Vatican religious interests, France was authorized to develop a network of Catholic insti-
tutions there. This was the beginning of a grand Franco-Egyptian strategy to ensure French and
Catholic predominance in the Mediterranean. Publications praised the splendid virtues of the Arabs
and the incalculable benefits expected from close collaboration with them.4 But the fiscal exactions
and cruelty of Ibrahim Pasha in Syria provoked Druze and Maronite rebellions. The British
government rushed to help the insurgents with English advisers, money, and arms, determined to
counter the expansion of French ambitions in the Arab Ottoman provinces, which, combined with the
increasing influence of the Holy See, endangered strategic British interests.
Theological Conflicts

The breakup of the Ottoman Empire opened Palestine to political and religious competition
among the three dominant Christian currents: Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. All three developed
missionary activity directed at Jewish and Christian rayas (dhimmis) and obtained political and
financial support from governments to intensify programs of pilgrimage, construction and restoration
of churches and monasteries, and, from 1836 on, to foster the Christian population of Jerusalem and
the Holy Land by land acquisition. Under French diplomatic protection the Holy See broadened its
implantation in the Orient by way of Uniatism, profiting from substantial subsidies for the Uniate
raya churches. This attachment of the raya churches to Rome incited the sultan to issue a firman in
1834 prohibiting passage from one Christian communion to another. Contributions for the holy sites
flowed into Palestine from Catholics everywhere while Russia, concerned by the Uniate movement
that transferred Orthodox rayas from Russian tutelage to that of France and the Holy See, reinforced
its religious and political implantation.
This policy of re-Christianization of the Holy Land by two rival Christian currents conflicted
with certain Protestant notions favoring the restoration of Israel in its heritage as a prelude to its
millenarian conversion. Thus, three opposing projects divided Christianity: the Russian Orthodox
worked through the Orthodox rayas; the Roman Catholics, hiding behind Arabism, used the Catholic
rayas to infiltrate and extend the influence of France and the Holy See; and the millenarian Protestant
movement envisaged the return of the Jews to their homeland and pursued its own penetration in the
Holy Land. A fundamental debate in Christian teaching about the Jewish people—deicide or chosen
people—was being played out in the Palestinian context of dhimmitude.
In the 1830s, under the impetus of Lord Shaftesbury, the Protestant current strove to grant
British consular protection to Palestinian Jews, thereby providing them security from Muslim and
Christian fanaticism. This protection widened the British zone of influence and introduced a
Protestant presence in the Holy Land, where a French religious protectorate had dominated since
1535. In 1838 the British obtained authorization from the Ottoman sultan to open the first vice
consulate in Jerusalem, with responsibilities extended throughout Palestine. The British authority
used biblical history as a basis for mapping the limits of the Palestinian territory at a time when it
didn’t exist on maps and when its districts were administratively attached to separate provincial
capitals. As the only country with a consulate in Jerusalem at that time, Great Britain also obtained
authorization from the sultan to build a large Protestant church, Christ Church, near the Citadel and
the Armenian Quarter.
This encroachment of Anglo-Saxon and Prussian Protestantism troubled the French, who had
exercised an exclusive protectorate of the Christian sanctuaries since the seventeenth century
(through the firman of 1620, confirmed in 1740). French influence in the Ottoman Empire was
further reinforced by support for the papal politics of Uniatism that assembled raya churches under
the wing of the Holy See. Paris and ultramontane circles opposed British penetration in the Holy
Land, which competed with France’s closely connected religious and economic interests and its
ambitions for political expansion. The ultramontanes detected a double danger looming behind the
Protestant advance, because the British did not hide their intentions to protect the Jews and favor
their restoration. This Jewish return to the homeland contradicted the doctrine of the fallen deicide
people condemned to expiate the crucifixion by wandering and exile. On the political level, the
emergence of a Jewish state threatened French prestige and expansionism in the Holy Land.
The French supported the claims to Syria and Palestine of their ally Muhammad Ali, using
him to instrument their Arab policy and oppose the proto-Zionist British Protestant penetration. The
implantation of numerous Roman Catholic missionary institutions under French protection in the
Levant united native Catholic and Uniate Christians under French patronage, favoring France’s
political and religious influence in the region. A tug-of-war between London and Paris for the control
of Syria and the holy sites ensued. Beyond the French-English strategic and economic rivalries, two
fundamentally opposed theological conceptions collided: the French-Catholic notion of the Jewish
deicidal people and the Protestant restorationist view. Meanwhile, populations revolted against the
excesses of Egyptian oppression. In Crete the Egyptian governors, backed by French officers,
terrorized Christians and Turks, threatening them with a general massacre.5 In Syria the whole
Lebanese mountainous region rose up against Ibrahim; the Maronites, who had been allies of France
for centuries, rallied to the British, who promised the restoration of Israel in the Holy Land and a
Christian state in Lebanon— both opposed by Paris. France’s position was seriously compromised.

Political Conflicts

It was in this context, where the political and religious interests of the great powers tangled and
conflicted in the Levantine region and especially in Palestine, that the alleged assassination of Father
Thomas, a Capuchin monk under French protection, and his servant Ibrahim Amara provoked a grave
crisis. In February 1840 the French consul in Damascus, Count Benoit Ulysse-Laurent-Francois
Ratti-Menton, and the Egyptian governor, Sherif Pasha, accused the Jewish community of Damascus
of blood libel. Crowds of Christians and Muslims, stirred up by ecclesiastics from the highest hier-
archical level of all the communities, called for the massacre of the Jews and the plunder of their
belongings.6 The Father Thomas blood libel broke out at a time when hard bargaining divided the
Quadruple Alliance (Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria), led by the British, who were
determined to expel Muhammad Ali from Syria and Palestine. France, excluded from the alliance,
would be isolated and cornered if it persisted in backing the pasha and would have to fight alone
against the European powers. French prestige was tarnished. Great Britain had shattered the dream of
a French Arab empire extending from Algeria to Alexandretta (Turkey). The Egyptian pasha was
ordered to restitute to the sultan Crete and the Syrian provinces, where even the Maronites had
abandoned France. Moreover, Austria and the Protestant countries condemned the barbaric behavior
of the French consul in Damascus. In Europe, Catholic and especially Protestant theologians revolted
against the accusations of blood libel and the torture inflicted on the Jewish martyrs of Damascus.
In France, the Thiers government gave full support to its consul, while ultramontane and
government newspapers exploited the affair with a contin-uous campaign demonizing Judaism.
Throughout Europe books, commentaries, and articles related with sadistic details the alleged ritual
crimes of Christian victims attributed to the Jews. Ratti-Menton became a national hero invested with
the sacred mission of revealing to Christians and Muslims, united in their horror of Judaism, the
satanic actions of the Jews and their hatred of Christians. Alone in the face of the occult corrupting
forces of “international Jewry” he defended the prestige and glory of France and Catholicism.
This demonization of the Jews by the French government spread in a European political
context that strongly opposed Jewish emancipation, while serving the precise objectives of France’s
Arab policy. The struggle against Great Britain led to a close association of French ambitions with
those of Muhammad Ali. The French consul—supported by the Egyptian governor of Syria, who was
Muhammad Ali’s son-in-law—proclaimed France’s right to protect all the Catholics of the Ottoman
Empire against the alleged crimes of Israel. This maneuver restored a tarnished French influence in
the Orient and on the international scene. In Europe, the criminalization of the Jews strengthened all
the currents hostile to their emancipation.
In the Orient, the French tactic of defaming Israel discredited the British vision of Jewish
restoration in a Palestine that was escaping French control. Furthermore, it aimed at excluding the
Jews from the edict of Gulkhane, promising the abolition of the dhimmi status, promulgated two
months previously on November 2, 1839. Oriental patriarchs felted that emancipation should be
granted only to the Christian rayas in the Ottoman Empire but not to the Jews. Both Orthodox and
Catholic communities in the Holy Land protested against the abolition of the legal degradation of the
Jews; invoking the accusation of deicide, they insisted that they alone were worthy of equality with
the Muslims.
 The accusations of murder in Damascus could not be substantiated, and the corpses of the
alleged victims were never found, but France refused to reopen the trial as requested by Jewish
delegates from France and Great Britain: Adolphe Cremieux, Sir Moses Montefiore, and Solomon
Munk. The delegates cast doubt on the alleged assassinations and confessions extorted under torture
and pressure, including the arrest of children, taken from their parents and jailed in a house. Those
confessions of fabricated Jewish crimes were useful for the constitution of a political case against
Jewish emancipation in Europe and as a means of countering the Protestant proto-Zionist movement
in a context of French-British and Catholic-Protestant rivalries. These rivalries were pursued during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries throughout the Orient and especially in Palestine. When, by
the subterfuge of foreign protections, Ottoman Christians were able to own land, they rejected the
extension of these rights to the Jews who, as dhimmis, should not have the right to own land in
Muslim countries. Humiliated by an emancipation granted also to the Jews, Levantine Christians
exacerbated a Judeophobic climate by a defamatory press and frequent accusations of blood libel.
The Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration (1917) backed by Protestant Great Britain
aggravated this trend.
France’s hopes for a great Arab uprising against the Ottoman sultan failed in 1839 for lack of a
unifying concept among ethnically diverse and mutually hostile populations. Missionaries rushed to
the Levant to make up for this lack. From the 1840s, they undertook to teach and modernize the Arab
language, which would be the centralizing pole of a future Arab nation that would separate the
Arabophone provinces from Turkey. Thus the concept of the Arab nation was born in the French
Catholic missions.
The “Damascus Affair” marked the beginning of French anti-Zionist strategy. It combined the
political and economic interests of French imperialism in the Arab world with the exploitation of
anti-Judaism. This policy promoted the Arabization of Eastern Christians in a perspective of Muslim-
Christian rapprochement and political patronage. The Damascus Affair initiated a defamatory anti-
Jewish tactic that was renewed by frequent accusations of blood libel, pursued in the Ottoman
Empire as in Eastern Europe and Russia up to the period of World War I (Beilis affair, 1911-13).
France, asserting its right of patronage of Catholicism in the Turkish Empire, united all the Levantine
Catholics in its Arab anti-Zionist policy. This was the beginning of the polarization of Eastern
Christianity, Arabized by the Catholic missions and enlisted in the combat against the Jews.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, migratory flows toward Palestine included
European colonists, Jews, Christians escaping from Muslim massacres in the Levant (1840-60), and
Muslim emigrants from Egypt, Russian Crimea, the Christian Balkans, and French Algeria. European
powers started acquiring large estates and fostered the Christianization of the Holy Land, where
Christian demography had dropped to a minimum after a millennium of dhimmitude. The Holy See
was able to reestablish the Latin Patriarchate in 1847 and strengthen its implantation in the Holy
Land by purchasing land and creating a network of religious and educational foundations,
encroaching by Uniatism on rival Orthodox ambitions.
Waves of Syro-Lebanese Christian immigrants in Palestine were followed, after World War I,
by Armenian, Syriac, and Nestorian Christian refugees fleeing from Muslim massacres in Anatolia,
Iraq, and Syria. Christianity in the Holy Land was, consequently, distinguished by its heterogeneity,
unlike the other ethno-religious dhimmi groups rooted in their ancestral homeland: Assyrians, Copts,
Armenians, Maronites, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians. This historical context explains the specific
characteristics of Christians in Palestine.

FROM ANTI-JUDAISM TO ANTI-ZIONISM

 Antisemitic passions were unleashed in Europe by the return of the Jews to their homeland,
concomitant with the immigration of Levantine Christian refugees in Palestine. The essential themes
that would determine the extermination of European Jews a century later were already manifest in the
1840s: the Jewish-Freemason conspiracy, allied with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to reestablish the
kingdom of Israel; the satanic essence of this kingdom; its war to destroy Christianity and the
Church. These themes that present the Jews and Zionism as irreducible enemies of the Christians
polarized the strategy of war waged on them by antisemitic parties in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
The progress of Zionism in Ottoman Palestine in the 1880s provoked hysterical propaganda
and warnings of an imminent “Jewish peril” that threatened to engulf all of Christendom in
unspeakable suffering and humiliation. At the turn of the century, religious and extreme right parties
in France demanded the abolition of Republican laws, the confinement of Jews in ghettos,
reestablishment of their traditional discriminatory statute, and the abolition of their civil and political
rights. The Eastern Churches—especially in Palestine—associated closely with European antisemitic
movements and integrated the mechanism of hatred that would lead to the Holocaust, serving as
transmission and connections in the Euro-Arab war against the Jews.
In Europe, the anti-Zionist reaction developed in both theological and political strategy
involving European interests in Muslim countries. France intended to keep the privileged position it
had maintained for centuries as protector of the Christian holy sites in the Holy Land. After the first
Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, The Protocols of the Elders ofZion were fabricated and used in the
joint Muslim-Christian anti-Zionist war. We will limit our study to the latter aspect here.
After the Balfour Declaration (1917) and especially after the recognition by the League of
Nations of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine (1922), The Protocols became a success,
particularly among Levantine Christians and Europeans. The themes of The Protocols were used in a
racist perspective in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and spread all over Europe, making the project of
spoliation and extermination of the Jews an acceptable banality. Many studies have been devoted to
political anti-Zionism in Europe in its numerous aspects. In the period of European colonization of
the Middle East, anti-Zionism was a primordial factor in the Christian rapprochement with Islam by
focusing Muslim hostility on Israel.
Christian immigration, apace with Jewish immigration in the Holy Land in the nineteenth
century, furthered a policy of re-Christianization in a situation of European religious rivalries and
Muslim persecution of Christians. The Christian immigration was sustained by political and financial
means far beyond what the Jews could muster, drawn from competing European powers: France, the
Holy See, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later Germany for the Protestants, and Russia and
Greece for the Orthodox. In this context of Christian political and religious imperialism, Zionism was
per-ceived as a danger that could not be fought by military means because the Jews were a civilian
population dispersed in many different countries and protected by their respective governments.
Consequently, the war against the Jews used different strategies, such as defamation, incitement to
hatred, and calls for extermination that intensified as Zionism progressed in Palestine.
The anti-Jewish strategy spread over Europe and the Ottoman Empire, especially through
religious channels, playing on political, racist, and religious registers. In Palestine itself, primary
focus of Christian interest, European anti-Zionist propaganda could intervene only through local
Christians. But the Christians were politically powerless, scattered, divided minorities detested by the
Islamic environment. The only way European antisemites could defeat Zionism was by making
alliances with the Muslims; Islam would thus become the savior of Catholicism and Orthodoxy,
endangered by the return of the Jews to their homeland. It must be stressed that this policy was
specific to Euro-Arab antisemitic movements; it was not shared by all European or Eastern
Christians.
The religious heterogeneity of Christians in the Holy Land and the fragility of traumatized
Christian refugees made them a privileged medium for intrigues and manipulation by foreign
imperialists. By uniting Christians and Muslims in the war against the Jews, Arab nationalism
compensated for fragmentation and centrifugal shifts in the churches. However, this policy was not
unanimously accepted by Eastern Christians. Many opposed both antisemitism and national self-
denial in the form of Arabization, imposed by the clergy and Western imperialists protecting their
own religious and political interests. In the Holy Land, Christian advocates of Arabism found recruits
among sympathizers in religious hierarchies, the civil service, Western Arabists, and intellectuals
with strong ties to the Vatican and France.
Meanwhile, irrepressible Jewish immigration undermined the judenrein policy for the Holy
Land that had been maintained by Christian and Muslim replacement theology for over a millennium.
The Syro-Palestinian Christians, charged with the sacred historical mission of fighting the Jews,
denounced Jewish immigrants and acquisition of land to the Turkish authorities, and they maintained
a virulent Judephobic press campaign aimed at Muslims. Nevertheless, anti-Jewish discrimination in
Palestine was subverted by European emancipation, Zionist funds, and Christian support. We can
follow the exacerbation of antisemitism in the French press at the turn of the century in step with the
growing assertion of Zionism. Though national factors such as the Dreyfus Affair also came into
play, demands by anti-semites before World War II for application of the Jewish statute and
confiscation of Jewish property were intended also to neutralize Zionism.
Palestinian Christians, especially the clergy, poisoned the Muslim world with European
antisemitism transmitted through their networks to all comers of the Levant. The Arab-fascist and
Nazi movements that collaborated with the Axis forces developed within the Palestinian Christian
communities; the extermination of European Jewry was the final solution for Zionism.
Christian attitudes in Palestine can be divided into an Arab phase, from 1922 to 1967,
followed by a Palestinian phase, from 1967 to date. In the first phase. Christians were exclusively
committed to Arabism, refusing all regional nationalisms, including Palestinian, which was claimed
only by the Jews under the Mandate. The Palestinian phase initiated a search for identity built in
opposition to Israel but modeled on Jewish identity and, consequently, drawing on Christian sources
because Christianity, unlike Islam, adopted the Bible. By Christian mediation the Bible was
confiscated from the Israelis and transferred to the Palestinians. Differences between these two
phases are superficial; in both phases Arab Palestinians acknowledge that they belong to the Arab
nation and claim legitimacy from historical precedence over Israel. We can thus distinguish three
different but convergent currents in anti-Zionism:

• The Arab-Islamic current articulated within jihad ideology places Israelis with the countries
of miscreants destined to disappear. This current is as much anti-Christian as anti-Jewish.
• The Arab-Christian theological current dissimulates traditional Oriental and European
Judeophobia behind the Arab cause. The Christian contribution is revealed in political
discourse structured to seduce Western opinion with various registers of Christian
antisemitism screened by ideological disguises. More sophisticated Christological themes
and the replacement theology that transfers Israel’s historical heritage to the Arabs are
easily identifiable. We have seen that the concept of an Arab nation was a French
fabrication, reworked by religious establishments in the Levant. The Vatican’s engagement
in the Palestinian cause and its ties with the PLO are common knowledge.7 The combat for
Arab Palestine is simply the Christian mask of the war against Israel; the aims are the
same, only the rhetoric is different.
• The European political current sustains, guides, and supports the Arab-Christian
theological current both financially and politically. The serious doubts on Israel’s
legitimacy expressed by Charles de Gaulle at his November 27, 1967, press conference
opened the way to French ideological and political support for the elimination of the Jewish
state.8
RELIGIOUS ANTI-ZIONISM

The Christian concept of the Jews as a fallen deicidal people fuses theological anti-Judaism and
political delegitimization of the State of Israel. Writing from Jerusalem in a letter dated January 25,
1919, and forwarded to British prime minister Lloyd George, Cardinal Bourne declared that Zionism
“appears to be quite contrary to Christian sentiment. . . but that they [the Jews] should ever again
dominate and rule the country would be an outrage against Christianity and its Divine Founder.”9 In
the course of debate at the League of Nations on the modalities of the British Mandate for Palestine,
Lord Balfour complained that “the extent of the campaign undertaken can scarcely have been realised
in London.” Lord Balfour added that one could, without exaggeration, attribute the hostility of
countries like France, Poland, Spain, Italy, and Brazil to objections communicated to their
governments by papal delegates.10 In 1922 Gen. Ronald Storrs, military governor of Jerusalem, made
a voyage to Rome at his own expense to reassure Pope Pius XI, who “had evidently been receiving
alarmists reports as to the ‘preponderating influence of Jews.’“11
In his analysis of The Protocols, Pierre-Andre Taguieff points out its clerical origins and anti-
Zionist motivation.12 The revised 1905 version of The Protocols claims to reproduce the “minutes” of
the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The manuscript was written in French in Paris.

POLITICAL ANTI-ZIONISM

The symbiosis between Arab nationalism and The Protocols is revealed in Le Reveil de la
Nation Arahe (The awakening of the Arab nation) by Syrian Negib Azoury, published in Paris in
January 1905.13 Azoury, a Catholic close to the Jesuits and former deputy of the Turkish governor of
Jerusalem, lived in Paris at the turn of the century.
In his book, Azoury entreats the whole Christian and Muslim world to unite under the banner
of France and the joint moral authorities of an Arab caliph and the Vatican to crush evil, meaning the
future Jewish state. This imminent cosmic danger calls for an immediate alliance of Islam and
Christianity, which can only operate through the mediation of Arabism. Since all the Churches of
Christendom are dispersed throughout the Arab territories and, whatever their doctrinal differences,
they are all represented within the Arab nation, it follows that Palestine contains this Christian
totality in miniature. Consequently, Arabism is the link that assembles and unites the various
branches of Christianity. Moreover, Arabism welds the alliance of Christendom with Islam within the
Arab nation. This Arab nation, which represents the alliance of Islam and the whole of Christianity, is
endowed with the sacred mission of protecting humanity from the “universal Jewish peril.” What is
this Jewish peril that threatens the world? It is Zionism, the return of the Jews to restore their
independence in their homeland, including Jerusalem, thus annulling Jewish expiation for the
crucifixion. Zionism is sacrilege and, as proclaimed in a widespread slogan of the period, it is the
enemy of Christianity: “The Jews, that’s the enemy!” was the slogan launched by Abbe Chabauty in
1882, taken up by Abbe Martinez in 1890, and by Abbe Hippolyte Gayraud in 1896, who declared, “I
consider it axiomatic, theologically, historically, and canonically, that the Jew is the enemy.”14
In his preface, Azoury points out that the Arab movement “comes to destroy Israel’s project of
universal domination just when it is so close to success.” And he announces the publication of his
second book, Le Peril Juif Universel: Revelations et Etudes politiques (The universal Jewish peril:
Revelations and political studies), which completes the first. “With the aim of facilitating intelligence
of the Jewish peril,” he explains, “I will limit my study to the detailed geography of Palestine, which
is an accomplished miniature of the future Arab empire.” Azoury claims that Le Reveil de la Nation
Arabe and Le Peril Juif Universel “will allow the reader to grasp the unique idea that we envisage in
these two works.” This idea is to prove the reality of a universal Jewish peril that endangers humanity
and to propose the sole solution—an Arab movement uniting the joint combat of Christians and
Muslims to destroy Israel.
In the foreword, Azoury claims to expose the universal nature of the Jewish peril from an
entirely original new viewpoint. He says that he resigned from his post “to undertake a sacrosanct
work of patriotism, justice, and humanity,” and spent six years in Palestine studying this question.
During the period of gestation of Le Reveil de la Nation Arabe and Le Peril Juif Universel, the
author, living in Paris and Cairo, remained “intimately linked with our compatriots and in constant
contact with the Jews,” watching their “silent and pernicious efforts.” In his calls for Muslim-
Christian unity— under the joint spiritual authority of the pope and the caliph in an Arab nation
under a French protectorate—Azoury proclaims himself the author of Le Peril Juif Universel and
develops the themes of an anonymous pamphlet that would appear later that same year: The
Protocols of the Elders ofZion.
The Christian tradition condemning the Jews to wandering, exile, and debasement, which
remained unchanged until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), together with the Islamic
doctrine of Jewish dhimmitude. sealed the Muslim-Christian anti-Zionist alliance.
It is important to study the anti-Jewish arguments that united Christians and Muslims because
they determine political developments from the early twentieth century to the present day. In a letter
addressed to General Storrs, military governor of Jerusalem, on March 23, 1919, the Palestinian
Muslim-Christian Association (MCA), Jerusalem Section, wrote, “One of the most important rules of
the country is preventing the Jews from permanently settling in Palestine, but they are allowed to stay
for a short period after which they are required to return from whence they came.”17
This is the foundation of the religious policy of exclusion of Jews from Palestine that resulted
in their expropriation and the sufferings of imposed exile. The MCA stated the following principles:

• The exile and dispersion of the Jewish people is required and must be maintained.
• Palestine belongs exclusively to Christians and Muslims who should inhabit and control it
—the Jews don’t belong there.
• The Jews have no religious relics or any other connection with Palestine and, consequently,
no historical rights there.
• The Arabs lived in Palestine before the Jews.
• Arabic is the only recognized language—the use of Hebrew as official language is rejected,
as is the use of biblical names of cities and provinces.
• The peril of a State of Israel is demonstrated by the numerous diabolical characteristics of
the Jews, borrowed from European antisemitic press and literature.
• The Arabs are the creators of the sciences and civilization, and the Jews are the agents of
evil and destruction.18

THE INTERWAR PERIOD

The MCA themes, constantly hammered in by the Euro-Arab current, combine the Christian
views of replacement and deicide with the Muslim theo-logical principles of jihad. The MCA statutes
were drawn up on May 20, 1920, under British aegis, represented by Chief of Staff Col. B. H. Waters
Taylor. In 1922 Storrs observed that Arabism was practically nonexistent “even when reinforced by
the Vatican and by the relics of pan-Islam.”19 The British military and civil Administration reinforced
the Arab Muslim-Christian camp: “Zionism had at least united (for the first time in history) the Arab
Muslims and Christians, who now oppose a single front to the Mandatory.”20
From the start, the association received financial and moral support from the British
administration,21 which was so violently antisemitic that Colonel Wedgwood, testifying in 1937
before the Peel Commission, described it as “an Administration of ‘crypto-fascist bureaucrats,’
whose objections to Parliament had taken the place of objections to the Jews.”22
On the occasion of his visit to the seven basilicas of Rome on April 17, 1937, Msgr. Eugenio
Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, declared, “Bow your head, my Christian brethren, before these
sacred altars and remember that a crucified God intended to make us the Chosen People, and that He,
destroying the only Temple which the ancient deicide people had been granted, revealed the infinity
of his compassion by taking delight in being with us and among us.”23
Even after World War II, L’Osservatore Romano could declare, concerning the foundation of
the State of Israel, “Modern Zionism is not the true heir of biblical Israel, it is a secular state and for
this reason the Holy Land and its sacred places belong to Christendom, the true Israel” (Vatican City,
May 14, 1948).24 An article published in La Documentation Catholique in Paris on July 17, 1949,
stated that “[we] have now, after careful investigation, arrived at least at part of the truth, and we can
only agree with a statement frequently heard that Zionism is Nazism in a new guise.”25

EURO-ARAB ANTI-ZIONISM: THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE

Shortly after World War I, the mechanism of anti-Zionism in Muslim-Christian and Euro-Arab
relations was set in motion with (1) Muslim-Christian rapprochement; (2) the alliance and
cooperation of Euro-Arab antisemitic Nazi movements, notably in the extermination of the Jews
during World War II; and (3) the deflection onto Israel of the hostility of Muslims colonized and
humiliated by European powers.
A variety of factors are involved in the political operation of European anti-Zionism.
Government anti-Zionist policies were tailored to the nation’s economic and geostrategic interests in
their Muslim colonies; these policies hardly differed from the nineteenth-century “Eastern Question,”
concerning Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire. However, public opinion tried to temper
government cynicism when it affected Christians and their churches but, with some exceptions,
accepted Judeophobia with general consensus. Guilt feelings were aroused by the Armenian genocide
(1915-17) that Europe could prevented and by the sacrifice of Armenia on the altar of Euro-Muslim
entente. The situation evoked this bitter commentary from Ronald Storrs: “The supposed indignation
of ‘His Majesty’s sixty million loyal Indian subjects,’ who appeared alternatively under the
journalese disguise of ‘Moslem Susceptibilities,’ delayed many reforms in the Near and Middle East,
kept several million Orthodox Christians as ‘Rayahs’ under Ottoman domination; and helped to
paralyse intervention in the torture and massacre of countless innocent Armenians.”26
In the first years of World War I, a Christian people was massacred by Muslims in the Turkish
provinces of Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, and later in the Caucasus. They were not rescued by the countries
of the Entente. Guilt toward the Armenians, particularly from Germans and Austrians, who were
allies of the Turks, was poured on the Jews, who were instrumental in the United States in joining the
war to defeat Germany. At the end of the war, a policy of appeasement of Muslims and Arabs
blocked the emergence of a Christian Assyria and lent a deaf ear to Armenian voices. However, the
League of Nations recognized the “Jewish national homeland,” despite an unprecedented campaign
of defamation and French efforts to have Palestine attached to Syria in their zone of attribution.
Historians have shed light on the sources and mechanisms of Judeophobia in the interwar
period, a genocidal structure that led to the Holocaust. Irreducible opposition to the restoration of a
Jewish state had filled the Judeophobic press and literature since the 1840s. The propagation of
hatred conditioned public opinion for determined political purposes. Religious channels spread this
hatred on an international level. Repeated calls for war on the Jews and their total extermination led
inexorably to the Holocaust. Palestine was active in this war: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, president of the
MCA and mufti of Jerusalem, encouraged thefarhud (massacre) of the Jews of Baghdad (June 1-2,
1941), precipitated by allegations made by his Greek Orthodox Lebanese friend Georges Antonius,
an advocate of Arabism. Al-Husseini fled Baghdad at the end of May and reached Berlin on
November 6, 1941, where he and a number of his Palestinian Christian colleagues took refuge with
the Nazis. In 1941 an Arab-Nazi military unit (Deutsch-Ara-bische Lehrabteilung), wearing Nazi
uniforms, started operating in Greece, reinforced by Bosnian and Albanian Muslim volunteers
recruited by al-Husseini. Muslims from the Caucasus were integrated into SS units and sent to
Poland. At the end of 1944 the mufti assembled Palestinian Arabs for military training by the Nazis
in Holland.27 Hunted by the Allies in 1945 as a war criminal, al-Husseini took refuge in France under
the protection of de Gaulle’s government; the mufti claimed that de Gaulle intervened personally in
his favor and encouraged his political activities.28

THE MODERN PERIOD

Even after the Holocaust and the restoration of the State of Israel, the anti-Zionist war was
pursued in Europe in the 1960s by defamation, incitement to hatred, delegitimization, negationism,
and, above all, by moral support for Palestinian terrorism. Although many Arab clergymen
collaborated with this terrorism, other Christian intellectuals and theologians debated, denounced,
and fought against these abuses.

The Second Vatican Council, or the Tactics of Ambiguity

The rapprochement with Judaism initiated by the Second Vatican Council provoked virulent
opposition from Eastern Churches and Arab states. The latter went so far as to threaten the existence
of local Christian communities, taking the Vatican and the process of Judeo-Christian reconciliation
hostage and, further, interfering in theology and biblical exegesis to impose Islamic demands on
Catholics. The Nostra Aetate (In Our Era) declaration provoked violent Arab demonstrations against
Christians. However, Arab concerns proved to be unfounded because the Vatican compensated for
this rapprochement with the Jews by faithfully supporting the PLO and intensifying the Catholic
campaign against Israel. In this way the principle of the con-demnation to wandering prevailed, and
reconciliation with Judaism could accommodate the eventual disappearance of Israel. Moreover, the
condemnation of antisemitism did not include complete rehabilitation of the Jews. This ambiguity
facilitated the association of visceral hatred of Israel with compassion for the Jews, whose suffering
testified to divine wrath as established in the conception of the “witness.”
In the same way that the Jews were accused by antisemites of being the source of all evil,
Israel was blamed for all Euro-Arab problems. The transition was abetted by the tireless activism of
Palestinian and Arab Churches allied with the PLO and Western sister Churches in one and the same
circuit of political indoctrination. The liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 exacerbated this trend. Over a
period of three decades Western media, in different degrees, shaped anti-Israeli public opinion that
reproduced, on the political level, the theological teachings of contempt. This constant attack was
aggra-vated by the passage of United Nations Resolution 3379, assimilating Zionism with racism, by
UNESCO in 1974 and in November 1975 by the General Assembly. It should be mentioned,
however, that other, more positive positions were expressed in national episcopate declarations in
France and other countries in 1974 and thereafter, while there was also significant progress on the
level of liturgy, theology, and teaching.
We will outline here the most common Judeophobic anti-Zionist themes.

Political Themes
Europe as Protector of Palestine and the Muslims from Israel

Europe’s attitude as the protector of Muslims against the rapacious Jews appeared
simultaneously in French Algeria and Palestine toward the end of the nineteenth century. French
colonists in Algeria, claiming that “Arabs [were] exploited, expropriated, impoverished” by the Jews,
demanded the abolition of the Cremieux decree (1870) and the restoration of the Jewish statute,
which is the Christian version of dhimmitude. “The antisemite presented himself as the Muslim’s
friend and teacher, his natural protector against the rapacious Israelite.”29 Genevieve Dermenjian
notes: “The stamp of the anti-Jewish league showed a colonist and an Arab stepping on a Jew lying
on the ground. It should be noted that the antisemites who made it their duty to protect ‘Arabs against
the Jews’ and who had long reckoned on Arab antisemitism, wanted to associate Arabs with the
Europeans in anti-Jewish engravings.”30
The same structure was transferred to Palestine, where Arab Christians, the Vatican, and
European antisemitic parties acted as self-proclaimed pro-tectors of the Arabs against the Jews. After
the Holocaust and decolonization, former Vichy collaborators and bureaucrats, ministers, and
intellectuals stationed in Algeria slipped into the ministries under presidents de Gaulle, Gis-card
d’Estaing, and Mitterrand. The ideological Judeophobic arsenal was later recycled in the “Palestinian
cause.” Interlocking economic and strategic interests had nourished the Euro-Palestinian war to
delegitimize Israel pursued over the past thirty years, with its postcolonial transfer of guilt feelings.
The globalization of the Palestinian cause, conceived and developed in post-Holocaust Europe,
followed the same religious, intellectual, political, and media channels as the internationalization of
antisemitism in the interwar period. It shifted onto Israelis the hatred of Muslims colonized by
Western European powers and the Soviet Union. Palestine was an opportunity for an absolving
transfer, combined with neocolonialist economic development in Muslim countries. The Arab-Israeli
conflict was maintained through political support for Palestinian radicalism, reinforcing European
collaboration with the Arabs against the common enemy and procuring profitable military contracts.
Some European anti-Zionist currents, disappointed by Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements,
abandoned Arafat, considered too conciliatory, and turned their support to Hamas.

Inversion

We will cite just two out of the multiple inversion attitudes: (1) The exoneration of the
persecutor by transfer of the crime to the victim; Nazism is projected onto Israel. The diabolization of
Israel counterbalances revelations by historians of collusion among the Nazis, Arab nationalists, and
the ecclesiastic networks that helped Nazis escape, notably to Arab countries. (2) The inversion of
ignominious Palestinian dhimmitude into fair and just government; Israel is held guilty of liberating
itself from this condition. In other words, Israel’s dhimmitude in Palestine ratifies the criteria of
justice.

Isolationist Strategy

Euro-Arab anti-Zionism isolated Israel and confined it in a political ghetto. Islamic theology
actually associates Jews and Christians in numerous Quranic verses, hadiths, and legal dispositions of
theologian-jurists; Christians, particularly Syrians, humiliated by being placed on the same level as
Jews, rejected this common condition. Modern analysts claim that Quranic-verses that mention Jews
and Christians together refer to a Christian sect that disappeared back in the eighth century. But this
argument is belied by a millennium of jihad against Christian countries, pursued long after the
disappearance of this sect, and it is contradicted by the prevalence of Christian dhimmitude in some
Muslim countries today.
 Verses that mention friendship between Jews and Christians are also attributed to that extinct
sect and interpreted as a reference to friendship of Christians with Christians and Jews with Jews,
given that Jews and Christians cannot be friends with each other. The most virulent critics of my
research on dhimmitude take me to task for studying Christian dhimmitude “in tandem” with Jewish
dhimmitude—as if dhimmitude could be something other than a common, complementary condition
of Jews and Christians. I am criticized for adulterating the images of churches in my book by placing
them close to illustrations of synagogues. Thus principles of separation of Jews and Christians
maintain division and hostility among the People of the Book, in accord with Islamic desiderata.

Christological Themes

Replacement

The theme of replacement, which has been strongly opposed by both secular Christians and
theologians, was transferred to Palestinian Arabs, making them the heirs to biblical Israel. The State
of Israel is stripped of its history and identity and treated as an impostor that has usurped a name and
a land to which it has no rights: Zionism in Zion is labeled imperialism, and the Jews in Judea are
called colonists.
In the same way that the Nazis Aryanized Jewish property, Israel’s heritage is Palestinized. It
should not be forgotten that up to the period of the Mandate, individual ownership of real estate in
Palestine was prohibited under the rules of Islamic conquest, which designates land confiscated from
conquered non-Muslim indigenous peoples as war booty (fay) that belongs to the caliph. Except for a
few properties conceded by the sultan to European states in the nineteenth century or purchased
under a regime of Capitulations, all the land in Palestine belonged to the Ottoman authority. With
rare exceptions, neither the Arabs nor the non-Muslims in Palestine owned their land. Calling Israelis
living in Judea “colonists,” when the Arabs had extended their dominion to Africa, Asia, and Europe
and the French had colonized the entire Maghreb, Syria, and Lebanon, not to mention lands in Africa,
Asia, and the Americas, is cynical to an extreme.
The theme of delegitimization fits into the precedent: the transfer of Israel’s historical heritage
to the Palestinians, who replace the Jews, leads automatically to the delegitimization of the state of
Israel. This replacement policy is the work of Christians, as illustrated by Palestinian recuperation of
David’s slingshot, the favorite replacement image of Western media, which does not figure in the
Qur’an.

Demonization

The theme of demonization is expressed in various registers. Nonreligious Christians like

Jacques Berque or Georges Corm project onto Israel the image of a deicide people of diabolic
essence: Israel, being evil, is mentioned only in a negative way. The religious and political spheres
are fused, and Israel is held responsible for discrimination against Christians in Muslim states and the
latter’s animosity against the West. In fact, this discrimination is inherent in the laws of jihad and
Sharia, drafted starting in the eighth century, and Muslim hatred is a reaction to European
colonization. The Arab-Israeli conflict is used to disguise a whole range of factors that explain
Muslim-Christian contention, and Israel is held responsible for Islamic Christophobia. This strategy
of incriminating the Jews for Muslim persecution of Christians and Christian persecution of
Muslims, as occurred during the war in Lebanon, has been employed regularly throughout a
millennium of dhimmitude. In our day it serves to spare European political interests that are tributary
to Muslim-Christian anti-Zionism. The vital node of this Euro-Arab alliance is the myth of fraternal
Muslim-Christian empathy that was destroyed by the State of Israel—a pious lie exposed by the
widespread, albeit obscured, return of dhimmitude.

The Crucifixion

The thematic of a Muslim-Christian Palestine crucified by the deicidal Israelis was used as a
means of pressure on the Second Vatican Council. The theme has been widely exploited for the past
thirty years by Muslims and Christians, often conjointly even if the Christian hand is dissimulated
under a Muslim signature. The Islamophile scholar Norman Daniel wrote that if there is any hope of
a future for Islamo-Christian ecumenism, this is the direction it must take31—meaning that the
Judeophobe concept of a deicide people is the sole grounds for Muslim-Christian rapprochement.

Perverse Symmetry

On the theological level, the principle of perverse symmetry is illustrated by the use of anti-
Zionism, which contributes to Arab policies, as a counterforce to the Vatican’s rapprochement with
the Jews. This strategy presumes symmetry between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs with respect to
Europe and Christianity. But no such symmetry exists. The theological reconciliation of the Church
with Judaism emerged out of the context of the Holocaust and the theology of replacement and
deicide; this unique situation, specific to Judeo-Christian relations, is effaced by the imposture of
false symmetries. The Church proclaimed itself the new Israel, never the new Islam. The Holocaust
was the response of European antisemitism to Zionism, which had been fiercely opposed by the
Vatican and many Reform churches fervently militating for a Muslim-Christian Palestine. Worldwide
propaganda for the Palestinian cause, which contrasts sharply with the consensus of silence that
reigned during the Holocaust, illustrates the principle of replacement and consequent delegitimization
of the State of Israel. The facade has been redecorated, but the dogmatic positions stood unchanged.
The rehabilitation of Judaism served as a screen to hide the demonization of Israel. Christian love
and compassion was poured on the fallen people, while Jewish national sovereignty was unstintingly
opposed. Judeo-Christian rapprochement was being poisoned by the perverse principle of false
symmetry between Israel and Palestine.
On the historical level, perverse symmetry wipes out thirteen centuries of Jewish dhimmitude
in Palestine, placing Jewish victims and Arab oppressors on grounds of equality. Arab Palestinians,
who claim membership in the Arab nation, call for the destruction of the State of Israel on its national
territory, whereas the Israelis do not contest Arab independence in its historical homeland, Arabia, or
in any of the vast countries Arabized by jihad. The perverse symmetry that equates totally opposite
policies obscures Israel’s specificity and subtly reinstates the concept of replacement.

The Palestinian Dodge

This strategy was articulated by the Lebanese Abbe Youakim Moubarac who declared,
immediately following the Second Vatican Council, that the Christian conscience must “know that
[henceforth] the Judeo-Christian dialogue, whatever the occasion, will always and essentially include
a third party, the Muslim world.”32 This assigns Islam the role of referee in Judeo-Christian relations,
as if the Vatican had to examine two thousand years of Christian Judeophobia through the Muslim-
Palestinian prism. And the Palestinian cause, used by Christians to dodge a doctrinal reform of their
relations with Jews, is enhanced with immense symbolic value. This Palestine-idolatry, vulgarized
since the mid-1960s, rehabilitates anti-Judaism and hinders Judeo-Christian reconciliation. There is
no equivalence between the Christian persecution of the Jews and the Palestinian cause other than the
falsified equivalence used to justify keeping the Jews in dhimmitude by the negation of Jewish rights
in their own country.

Arab Christians and European Guilt

Europe’s guilt toward Arab Christians is freely expressed in anti-Zionist circles. Kenneth Cragg,
a former Anglican deputy bishop of Jerusalem, imputed Muslim reprisals against Eastern Christians
to European resistance against the jihad armies.33 According to his reasoning Europe bears a heavy
historical and moral responsibility for fighting against the invaders and consequently inviting the
destruction of Eastern Christianity by Muslim powers.
Cragg deplores the lack of European guilt feelings; in fact this guilt is inferred from Christian
reflection on anti-Judaism and the Holocaust. Cragg seems unaware that the Christians he abusively
calls Arabs (Copts, Greeks, Armenians, Syriacs) were not always scattered powerless minorities;
they were national majorities, they had armies. Their tragic fate, for which they are partially
responsible, was a result of intra-Christian conflict and corrupt religious and political elites. There is
no symmetry between these situations, however tragic they may be, and the belief of deicide with the
ensuing legal and political consequences for Jewish minorities in the Christian Orient and Occident.
Christian reflection on relations with Israel is situated on an altogether different theological and
political plane from these false symmetries. Cragg blithely concocts a parallel between the history of
jihad on three continents, the history of Europe along the same paths, and the history of a recent
Jewish settlement in Gush Emunim—or orthodox religious Jews in Judea! Apparently unafraid of
appearing ridiculous, he gives equal weight to a mil-lennium of worldwide Islamic and Christian
imperialism and a tiny political group in Israel.
In the same vein, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, suggested that “just as
Western Christians had had to repent for the treatment of Jews, so Jews would have to repent for their
treatment of Palestinians.”34 In other words, the Jews should apologize for breaking the chains of
dhimmitude imposed on them in their own land by Christians and Muslims.

DEMONIZATION OF ISRAEL AND TRANSFIGURATION OF PALESTINE

The above-mentioned mechanisms, and many other similar means developed by European and
Arab Christian theologians, operate within a fixed theological system in which the Jews and Israel
symbolize the essence and the empire of evil, an eternal evil enemy of the good and of justice,
equated with Palestine. The Palestinians, incarnation of Jesus, crucified on the Cross, wearing the
crown of thorns, stand in the face of this demonic principle embodied by the Zionist state or Zionism.
This is why, insists Cragg, Pales-tinity bears an indissoluble essentiality—as evil is essential to Israel
—that does not exist in any other nationalism in the world. This Palestinian essentiality lies in its
eternal mission to denounce by its suffering the nature of evil, which is Israel. This denunciation
should be tireless and endless so that evil will never be forgotten or ignored but always proclaimed,
pilloried, unmasked in its true nature. Thus penetrating the heart it is integrated into the person who
perceives it instinctively in its essentiality. “Evil,” says the author, “that one can compare to Judas
Iscariot and to the crown of thorns.” “It is not,” he continues, “a political solution, draws no maps on
territories, negotiates no treaties. But it liberates from the evil imprisoning the future and releases
hope from the bondage of the past.”35 In other words, the constant demonization of Israel will
produce the fruits of this hatred in the future—a second Holocaust. When Cragg explains why the
Palestinians are a martyred people, as were the Poles and the Armenians, we must assume that he is
unaware that the latter were also victims of Syrian Arabs. And he insists that an eventual peace
settlement will change nothing, because the evil and injustice (Israel’s restoration) will remain. So the
war must continue by other means, in the form of theological hatred, to restore the former state of
justice, which is the nonexistence of Israel.
If the mission of Palestinian Arabs is to suffer in order to denounce evil, we can understand
why the Arab Churches and their Western relays are pathologically obsessed with proclaiming the
demonic essence of Israel and exposing it to shame. Publications on the genocide of the Jews
provoke a reactive transfer of this Jewish martyrology to the Palestinians. The more horrible the
Holocaust, the more guilty the victim of bearing witness, the more indispensable to the persecutors
the Palestinian mediation in the symbolism of the transfer. This Palestine crucified by the State of
Israel is a morbid, essential necessity uniting the passions of all the neo-Nazi and Judeophobic
currents of Europe. As figurehead of the conquest of the Orient and idol made in Europe, this
crucified Palestine propels an insidious war against Israel. What does it matter if the Palestinian
Christians were never more than a barely tolerated dhimmi minority who used their Judeophobia to
facilitate integration? What does it matter if the Palestinian Muslims have at their disposal at least
twenty countries where dhimmitude made millions of victims, where Jews were plundered and
massacred and forced to flee, leaving all their property behind? What does it matter if Christian wars
of liberation from dhimmitude in the Balkans provoked large-scale exodus and massacres of Muslims
and, incidentally, reprisals against the Jews, prologue to their extermination in Central Europe during
World War II? And what does it matter if behind this Palestine of justice, an image created and
imposed by Europe, flows the blood of Christian Lebanon, the stifled cries of the Copts, the
mutilated victims of Saddam Hussein, the victims of genocide in southern Sudan—while Europe and
its Churches stand by in silence?

Is Palestinian Christianity innocent of the role it is made to assume in this Euro-Arab policy
against Israel? Yes and no. Here, as elsewhere, attitudes toward Israel are not uniform. Forced to
wear a costume tailored by two thousand years of Christian Judeophobia and hide from view the real
criminals, Palestinian Christianity is torn and divided precisely in this confrontation with Israel.

CONCLUSION

As mentioned in the introduction, this incomplete survey of the thematic of Judeophobic anti-
Zionism does not represent the full range of opinions about Israel. This cannot be emphasized
enough, in tribute to those who fought against that policy at the cost of immense sacrifices. The
spectacular progress of Judeo-Christian reconciliation results from the constant efforts of secular
Christians and theologians, famous and anonymous, an immense transnational population, partner in
history and in solidarity with the spiritual adventure of Israel. Despite the importance of these fertile
reunions, they can only be mentioned in passing here.
And we will not be able to examine here the situation of the silenced Eastern Christians
subject to dhimmitude, hostage to Europe’s determination to protect its interests, its Western religious
institutions, and their dhimmi relays. This has aroused strong tension in communities in Lebanon,
Sudan, and Pakistan, for example, as well as in the Coptic Diaspora. And the determinant factor in
this somber tableau can be mentioned only in passing: the colossal political and economic pressure
exerted on the West by Islamic anti-Zionism, with its international terrorist potential and threats of
reprisal against Arab Christians. In addition, it is difficult to determine whether the anti-Zionism of
Europe’s media and culture is motivated by traditional Judeophobia. hunger for profits, or surrender
to threats of massacre of vulnerable Christian communities in Arab countries. Perhaps all three at the
same time. The fact remains that two Muslim countries, Turkey and the shah’s Iran, were able to
have friendly relations with Israel while protecting their own non-Muslim communities. Thus it
seems that from the beginning anti-Zionism resulted from the fusion of European and Arab
Judeophobia.
This clarification results from our analysis of zones of convergence and fusion in European
and Arab currents of political and theological anti-Zionism. The analysis of relations among the three
religions, which of course pertains to the field of dhimmitude, is transposed to the political sphere
with the emergence of the State of Israel.
The consequences of a century of hostility against Israel are dramatic. Europe lost its soul in
the Holocaust. The ensuing political anti-Zionism shaped Euro-Arabian policy and collusion with
international Palestinian terrorism. The teachings of theological contempt were replaced by forty
years of constant anti-Israeli indoctrination. The survival of Eastern Christianity was sacrificed to the
Palestinian cause, keystone of an illusory, self-defeating Euro-Arab policy. In 1982 Lebanon’s
president-elect Bashir Gemayel attributed to Europe’s traditional Judeophobia the abandonment of
Lebanese Christianity, sacrificed on the altar of the demonization of Israel.
The strategy of isolating Israel economically, politically, and diplomatically operated notably
by pressure from France and the Vatican on third-party countries. Support for a Muslim-Christian
Palestine to oppose Israel was a deathly cause for Europe. It gave momentum to the process of
extermination of the Jewish people during World War II, with the deliberate consensual silence of
governments and religious hierarchies. In the postwar period its ideologists and agents, camouflaged
by various political labels, recycled the war against Israel into “the Palestinian cause,” integrating the
Christian concept of deicide and the Muslim doctrine of dhimmitude, even though the latter applies
to Christians as well as Jews. The varied anti-Zionist strategies that reject the fraternity of Jews and
Christians led Euro-Arabism and Muslim-Christian relations into political and ideological traps.
Support for the Palestinian cause, conceived as an arm for the destruction of Israel, had
consequences on both a political and a theological level.

Political Level

1. Support for jihad against Israel justified the same jihad policies against Christians in Arab
countries, condemning them to silence under the yoke of dhimmitude. Negation of the rights of one
of the Peoples of the Book developed the same process of necrosis against its twin, regardless of
Christians’ belief in their own superiority.
2. Thirteen centuries of Jewish and Christian history in Islamicized countries were obscured
for the following reasons: (i) the Muslim-Christian union against the Jews was weakened by
acknowledging persecutions endured by the dhimmis; (ii) these facts of history rehabilitate Zionism;
(iii) dhimmitude places Jews and Christians in the same condition with regard to Islam. This leaves
the crucifixion, in that it rejects Israel, as the only theme that upholds Muslim-Christian ecumenism.

Theological Level

Historical amnesia blocks efforts for critical Islamic exegesis, notably concerning relations with
the People of the Book and other infidels; this exegesis is all the more urgent now that millions of
Muslims have emigrated to Europe.
Christian anti-Zionism could not possibly strengthen Christianity because it is based on
theological prejudice that is rejected and opposed by the majority of Christians today. Maintaining
these prejudices encourages the excesses of pagano-Christianity and the Islamization of Christian
theology. The latter current, reworked by Louis Massignon, is the source of Palestinian liberation
theology—meaning, of course, liberation from Judaism. The Islamization of Christian theology by
rejecting its Jewish roots unwittingly sustains the same Quranic replacement principle that denounces
Christianity as a falsification of its original prior form, which is Islam.
 Perverse symmetries gave Christianity guilt feelings toward Islam modeled on its relations
with Judaism, but these situations have nothing in common.
This guilt is based on the fabrication of artificial symmetry between five million Israeli Jews
living in their tiny country and a billion Muslims, of whom several hundred million live in countries
that used to be Christian. These false symmetries are political traps today.
This triangular context reveals the signification of Israel. By liberating itself from the bonds of
a definition imposed by Christianity, Israel also liberated Christianity from a source of self-
destruction and barbarian excesses and allowed it to achieve its true mission in human history.
By the abolition of dhimmitude, Israel obliges Islam to redefine its relations with the People of
the Book, and with all peoples, in a perspective of equality and reconciliation. This liberates Muslims
from the baneful concepts of jihad and dhimmitude and encourages deepening of the Quranic
spiritual message. The Return of the Exiles after so many deserts crossed brings Israel out of the
swamps of history. Universal reconciliation can flourish in the multiple faces of human diversity
united by mutual respect of other religions.
 12.
THE OPPRESSION OF
MIDDLE EAST CHRISTIANS
A Forgotten Tragedy
Walid Phares

Extraordinary diplomatic efforts in recent years have been undertaken to resolve some of the
world’s most complex, divisive conflicts—in Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East. However, the
latter is no closer to resolution. For in the troubled Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism, which is
seeking to reignite the Arab-Israeli conflict, is targeting Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims
throughout the Islamic world.

MIDEAST CHRISTIANS: LOCATION AND NUMBERS

Egypt. The Copts of Egypt—Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants—are estimated to be between

10 to 12 million, dispersed across the country. They are the descendants of the ancient Egyptian
people living under the pharaohs. Their number shrunk after the Arab-Muslim invasion in 740 CE
and flour-ished under the British in the nineteenth century. One million Copts live in the diaspora,
particularly in the United States and Canada.

Iran: Five hundred thousand Persian, Armenian, and Assyrian Christians of all denominations
live in constant fear under the Islamic Republic of Iran. Christian spiritual leaders are executed by the
government.

Iraq. About one million Christian Assyrians, Nestorians (Orthodox), Chaldeans (Catholics), and
others (evangelicals, Jacobites) live in Iraq. Most of the Christians are concentrated in the north. The
Assyrians are submitted to cultural and political repression. Around one million Christian
Mesopotamians live in North America, Europe, and Australia.

Reprinted with permission from Chaldeans On Line.

Lebanon. The Christians—Maronites, Orthodox, Melkites, and other communities, including

Protestants—number about 1.5 million. Since 1975, hundred of thousands were massacred,
displaced, or exiled. After 1990, the Christian areas of Lebanon are under Syrian occupation. There
are more than 7 million Lebanese Christians in the diaspora. More than 1.5 million Americans are of
Lebanese descent.

Sudan. Seven million black Africans live in the south. Most of these tribes are Christians—
Anglicans, other Protestants, and Catholics. Since the Islamic conquest, the Africans of Nubia were
displaced to the south. As a result of an Islamist takeover in the north in 1989, they are submitted to
ethnic cleansing and forced to abandon their faith. One million south Sudanese are exiled.

Syria. One million Christians are Syrian citizens. Deprived of their cultural and educational
rights, Syria’s Aramaeans, Armenians, Orthodox, and Melkites are present in the northeast and the
major cities.

MIDEAST CHRISTIANS UNDER ATTACK

In Lebanon, where Christians enjoyed constitutionally guaranteed equality until a few years ago,
hundreds of Christians are arrested, tortured, and jailed by pro-Syrian forces. In the south of
Lebanon, thousands of Christians are bombarded constantly by Hizbollah. In the event of an Israeli
withdrawal, the Christian community would be threatened by Islamist militias. Similarly, dozens of
Christian villages in Egypt are routinely attacked by the Islamists. As an example, the village of
Manshiet Nassr in Upper Egypt has been attacked by Islamic fundamentalists repetitively. Dozens
have been killed or injured. Today, south Sudanese Christians are being killed by the Islamist forces
of Khartoum. Entire villages are being destroyed by the Arab government of the north. Yet these
tragedies, like others in the Muslim world, go unreported by the Western media and unchallenged by
Western leaders.
These examples are not isolated events. Nor is the neglect they receive from the press and
world governments. Thus the public in the United States is largely unaware of the “Middle East” that
non-Muslims of the region know all too well. Non-Muslims are targeted by Islamic fundamentalists,
who are tacitly encouraged by governments of the region, who, at best, do nothing to stop them and,
at worst, are actively leading the pogroms.

THE COLLECTIVE SUFFERING

Middle East Christians suffer collectively. Yet few people in the West are aware of the size of
the Christian communities in the Middle East. The common image of Middle Eastern Christianity is
that it is limited to a few groups or individuals among the Palestinian population. In reality the
Palestinian Christians are only a fragment of the millions of Christians from Sudan to Armenia: more
than 10 million Copts live in Egypt, 7 million Christians and animists in south Sudan, 1.5 million
Christians in Lebanon, about one million Assyro-Chaldeans in Iraq, 1 million Christians in Syria, and
five hundred thousand in Iran, among others. The fact is that the Middle East is neither entirely Arab
nor entirely Muslim. The Arab-Israeli confrontation is not the only conflict in the Middle East.
Centuries earlier, a major invasion occurred from Arabia, ushering in domination by Arabs and
Muslims in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt. Gradually the new conquerors attempted to
assimilate millions of Christians, transforming the conquered nations into “Arabized” and
“Islamized” populations. Those who were not assimilated by the Arabs became second-class citizens
called dhimmis, deprived of their basic political, social, and economic rights.
SURVIVAL AND RIGHTS

Despite the continuous oppression of these Middle Eastern communities for thirteen centuries,
many national groups survived and struggled to restore their freedom. At the beginning of the
twentieth century the Copts of Egypt, the Assyro-Chaldeans of Iraq, the south Sudanese, and the
Lebanese Christians tried to obtain independence. But the Arab powers in the region denied these
Christians their natural right to self-determination. At the expense of the Middle East Christians,
Arab identity and Islamic domination were established in the region.

THE IMPACT OF ISRAEL

The creation of the state of Israel was perceived as a major positive development in the eyes of
other non-Arabs. Indeed, Middle East Christians con-sidered the rebirth of Israel and the ingathering
of the Jewish people on its historical land as a promise of their own future liberation. The Jewish
success demonstrated that Christians can achieve similar goals. For decades, secretly or openly,
Christians from countries including Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan have praised the Israeli model and
attempted to imitate it. This attraction between Israel and Middle East Christians challenged the
Arab-Islamic order in the region.

THE ARABIST STRATEGY

In reaction to the Jewish state, the Arabist strategy since the forties has been the following:

• To claim that the Middle East is an Arab and Muslim region; this claim is directed not only
at Israel, but all non-Arab, non-Muslim populations in the region;
• To isolate non-Arab, non-Muslim groups from one another;
• To eliminate minorities within their borders, by one means or another.

These strategies have been in effect in the Middle East for decades. The Assyrians were
massacred in Iraq, then the south Sudanese, followed by the Chris-tians of Lebanon and the Copts in
Egypt. For example, in 1982, the Arabs applied overwhelming pressure to the United States and other
Western governments, using all their influence to abort any agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
This episode was followed by the massacre of thousands of Lebanese Christians throughout the
eighties and the invasion of their free enclave in 1990.
To continue with the example of Lebanon because it is instructive and consistent with patterns
throughout the area, one should also note how the Arabist strategy has carefully included a
disinformation campaign in the United States. Throughout the war, which dragged on for about
fifteen years, the “Arabs” were wrongly referred to by the press as a collective group and were
routinely portrayed as the victims. Israel was the “aggressor,” whereas the Syrians were carelessly
called “peacekeepers” by all too many. What is worst, the public has been all too often misled by
Middle Eastern Christians, often of Lebanese descent, who have historically been the leaders of the
Arab lobbies in this country. These individuals, who do not represent the causes of their motherland,
perpetuated the interpretation (and sometimes even advocated the demands) of the Arabists, both in
the region and in the United States.
Another trend was to block favorable US policies toward the Christians of the Middle East and
toward Israel, within the administration and throughout the various bodies of government. More
particularly, efforts were aimed at destroying any attempt to build bridges between the Middle
Eastern (specifically Lebanese) Christians and the Jewish community. The Arab lobby waged several
campaigns to discredit the Middle East Christians.

THE MIDDLE EAST CHRISTIAN STRATEGY

Since its inception, the Middle East Christian Committee (MECHRIC) has advanced the
following strategy as a way to rebuild the legitimacy of the Christian cause in the Middle East:

• To confront the Islamist strategy through alliance. This effort is currently aimed at building
a coalition of Copts, Lebanese Christians, Assyrians, and south Sudanese in order to
represent these forgotten Christian nations. As of 1992, MECHRIC is speaking on behalf
of these resistance movements in the diaspora;
• To reach the American, European, and worldwide Christian public and involve them in
supporting the struggle of Middle Eastern Christians;
• To build an open and historical alliance between American and Middle East Christians on
the one hand and American Jews and Israelis on the other. This union could offer testimony
that could expose the Islamist falsifications and lay the grounds for the emergence of a free
and democratic Middle East, which includes and protects all its nations, and in which the
Christian peoples of the Middle East, the Jews of Israel, and the Arab Muslims can live in
harmony.
 13.
A CHRISTIAN MINORITY
The Copts in Egypt
Bat Ye’or

The clashes that began in 1971 but broke out in 1972 between Christian Copts and Muslims in
Egypt prompted the Egyptian government to set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry to
investigate the causes of these dis-turbances. According to the official report, they “were the result of
tensions aroused by a strong religious undercurrent, tinged by fanaticism.”1 According to the same
report, one of the causes of unrest was a law, passed in 1934, that permitted churches to be built only
if ten conditions were fulfilled, one of which was the absence of any mosque in the vicinity. In
practice, however, no sooner was any plot of land set aside for the building of a church than a
mosque was immediately erected nearby, thereby dashing the hopes of the Christian community.
The Coptic population numbers about six million today out of a total Egyptian population of
approximately forty million.

THE PAST

The Copts descend from the early Egyptian Christians. Before the Arab invasion, Egypt was a
province of the Byzantine Empire. Egypt’s inhabitants were primarily Christians, and the land was
covered with numerous churches and monasteries.

This article in French under the pen name Y. Masriya was published by the Geneva Centre d’lnfor-mation et de Documentation sur le Moyen-Orient on January 19. 1973. It
was enlarged, revised, and corrected by the author and translated into English by David G. Littman for Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: A World Survey,
ed. Willem A. Veenhoven and Winfred Crum Ewing, published for the Foundation for the Study of Plural Societies, vol. 4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 79-93.

At the end of the second century, the famous Catechetical School of theology and exegesis of
early Christianity was founded in Alexandria, then the centre of Hellenistic culture. It was renowned
due to the writings and teachings of Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, who opposed
Hellenistic paganism. After Alexandria became the spiritual capital of Christianity, cenobitic life
extended into the desert along the valley of the Nile and deep into the oases. Communities of
anchorites and monks were founded under the leadership of Paul, Anthony, and Pachomius (292-
346), who established the monastic rules and vows that were to serve as a model for the religious
orders of Europe in the Middle Ages. In 323 Constantine the Great declared Christianity the state
religion of the Roman Empire. Religious strife broke out throughout the Empire among pagans,
Christians, and heretics. The national struggle of Egypt against the Byzantine yoke took a religious
form. The Church of Alexandria, orthodox at first, later adopted the monophysite creed (one nature
of Christ) and fought against the Byzantine Orthodox Church. At the time of the Arab conquest,
Egypt was the scene of bloody reli-gious battles between the Melkites, followers of Byzantium, and
the more numerous Jacobites, adherents of the monophysite doctrine.
In 640 some Egyptians welcomed the Arab conquerors, but most opposed them. The Arab
army of occupation made no changes in the administration of the conquered territories, and the Copts
retained their posts. But this tolerance was due to the particular circumstances of the conquest—the
necessity for the Arab army to control a large Christian population—and was short-lived. In fact, the
relations between the Arab army and the subjected indigenous population changed as the Arab
domination grew firmer and became an irreversible phenomenon of history as a result of the
elaboration of a system of colonization: the dhimma.
Originally, the dhimma was the treaty concluded between Muhammad and those he subdued.
The tolerant character of these pacts, defining the obligations and duties that bound the indigenous
populations to the conquering Arab Muslims, determined the sedentary populations of the towns and
villages to capitulate before the advancing Bedouin armies. In theory, life and property—as well as
religious liberty—were guaranteed to those who accepted this pact, on the condition that they did not
transgress any of its stipulations; but very soon the interpretation and the application of its conditions
transformed the dhimma into a codified system of legal tyranny that was spiritual in theory but in
practice often led to genocide and was at the base of the Arabization and Islamization of the Christian
Orient. Its evolution, in the course of centuries, was governed throughout by the irrefutable belief in
the superiority of Islam and in its universal supremacy. The following words are attributed to the
caliph Mu’awia: “I found that the people of Egypt were of three sorts, one-third men, one-third like
men, and one-third not men, i.e. Arabs, converted foreigners, and those who pretend to be Muslims,
the Copts.”2

THE PACT OF UMAR

The Pact of Umar, generally attributed to Umar II (717-740), regulated the discriminatory status
imposed upon the dhimmis, the non-Muslim native population living under the domination of Islam.
They had to pay the jizya, a poll tax symbolizing their subjection to Islam, and also higher
commercial taxes than were paid by the Muslims. The ownership of their land passed to the Muslim
community, and in order to have the right to cultivate it they had to pay a special land tax, the kharaj.
Very often, whole communities were burdened with arbitrary impositions. At the beginning of the
conquest, the Muslim occupants paid no taxes, and therefore the Arab state and army were subsidized
by the non-Muslim peasants and town dwellers.
The construction of new churches or the restoration of old ones, as well as the use of bells,
banners, sacred books, crosses on churches or borne in procession, and any other non-Muslim cult
object were prohibited. So as not to disturb Muslims, the dhimmis had to hold their services in
silence and abstain from lamentation at funerals. The social discrimination of the dhimmis and their
exigency for security compelled them to live in separate areas. Their inferior and humble dwellings
and tombs had to differ from those of the Muslims in size and decay. Marriage, sexual intercourse
with a Muslim woman, and blasphemy against Islam were all punishable by death. Relations between
dhimmis and Muslims were forbidden, but as this proved impracticable, relations were strongly
discouraged. The dhimmis were not allowed to exercise any authority over Muslims and could not
testify in a legal tribunal against them. Their movements were restricted, and they had to go unarmed.
As the dhimmis were considered inferior to Muslims, they had to differ in their outward
appearance—for instance, in early Islam Christians had to shave their brows. They were denied the
use of certain colors—such as green, which was the color of the Prophet—and were forbidden to
wear the clothes, belts, shoes, and turbans worn by Muslims. Numerous decrees regulated in detail
the colors and shape of clothes, ill-fitting and ridiculous headgear, belts and shoes that the dhimmis
and their slaves were obliged to wear so as to be easily recognized and humiliated in the streets. A
little bell around the neck, or a similar distinctive sign, made them recognizable at the public baths.
Noble mounts such as horses and camels were reserved for Muslims; the dhimmis were only allowed
to ride donkeys and use pack saddles. In some periods they were forbidden to ride their donkeys
within the towns; in other periods the Christians were humiliated by being forced to ride their
donkeys facing the tail.
Other vexing measures also governed their everyday life, such as the obligation to stand up
and remain standing in the presence of Muslims, to address them in low and humble tones, and to
give them right of way on the sidewalk by walking along the narrowest section of the street, on their
left side—the impure side, for a Muslim. Dhimmis could not assemble in groups to converse. For a
more detailed study of the life of dhimmis (Jews and Christians in Muslim lands), the reader should
consult the authoritative monographs on this subject.3
The jizya was paid in the course of a ceremony during which dhimmis were publicly
humiliated by receiving a slap in the face or a blow on the back of the neck. The dhimmis were then
issued with a receipt that allowed them to travel; however, should they lose it, they could be put to
death. When a census was taken of monks in Egypt (715-717) they were obliged to wear a metal
bracelet bearing their name and the date and name of their monastery. Any monk found without his
bracelet was liable to have his hand cut off or be executed.
The kharaj, the tax on non-Muslim land, reduced the Copts to destitution: they abandoned
their fields and mass conversions occurred, but they were forcibly brought back by the army and
obliged to pay the taxes (694-714). To prevent the Copts from abandoning their villages, the Arab
army conducted a census and branded them on the hand and brow (705-717). No Christian could
travel without a passport. Boats on the Nile that carried Christians without passports were set on fire.
In 724, twenty-four thousand Copts converted to Islam to escape ruinous taxes. The conversions
impoverished the state; to discourage them, the jizya was also imposed on new converts.
Furthermore, they were forbidden to sell their lands to Muslims, as these lands would then have been
exempt from the kharaj; later a fixed sum was levied on the Coptic community, which covered any
lost revenues from new converts. At the beginning of the eighth century, Usame ben Zaid, governor
of Egypt, wrote to Caliph Abdel Malik (715-717), “I draw milk; if it stops, I draw blood; if it clots, I
press the skin.” The same caliph used to say, “Draw milk until it ceases to flow, draw blood until it is
exhausted.”
In Tinnis, in the eastern Delta, taxes reduced the Copts to such destitution that they abandoned
their children in slavery to the Arabs.4 Those who did not pay were thrown into jail or tortured. Under
the Abbasids, dhimmis who could not pay their taxes were put into cages with wild animals. Church
leaders were often held responsible for the sums levied on the community. If unable to pay, they were
thrown into jail and tortured. Around 718, Abdel Malik ben Rifaa, governor of Egypt, had Patriarch
Michael thrown into a windowless cell dug into the rock, had a block of wood attached to his feet,
and had a heavy collar put around his neck. He remained in this cell for thirty-one days until the
required sum was paid. The exorbitant taxes and the tortures used to extort them provoked numerous
revolts, which were brutally crushed. Thousands of Copts were killed, women and children enslaved,
their property confiscated by the Arabs, who thus became more numerous in towns and villages.5
As the Pact of Umar forbade dhimmis to exert any authority over a Muslim, they could neither
become civil servants nor join the army. In every period, numerous decrees resulted in the dismissal
of Christians from the posts they held unless they converted to Islam. However, the Copts were
indispensable, as all the Egyptian bureaucracy was in their hands. The Muslims accused them of
purposely trying to complicate the administration in order to retain their posts. These deviations from
the dhimma provoked riots: the mob would then plunder the Christian quarter, massacre the Copts,
and destroy their churches.
 In every period, monasteries and churches were despoiled, burned, and destroyed. Caliph al-
Hakim (996-1020) renewed the clauses of the Pact of Umar. All the churches and synagogues in his
empire (Egypt, Syria, and Palestine) were then looted and demolished or converted into mosques.
The mob pillaged the Christian and Jewish quarters, and the caliph forced the dhimmis to convert or
leave his dominions. At the end of his reign, he allowed them to return to their religion and to rebuild
their places of worship. In 1058 all churches were closed, the patriarch and the bishops thrown into
jail, and the Copts ransomed for seventy thousand dirhams. The slightest incident could provoke a
massacre. In 1377 the mob was incensed at the sight of a Christian maltreating a Muslim and
immediately clamored for the dismissal of Christian and Jewish public servants in the service of the
emirs and then for their conversion or death. The Christians went into hiding, but the mob ransacked
their quarter, massacred them, and forced the women into slavery. Some Christians were grouped in a
horse market; a pit was dug into which they were to be thrown and set alight—all converted to
Islam.6 A Christian was riding by the Al-Azhar mosque; his spurs and handsome saddle angered the
Muslims, who pursued him with the intention of killing him. Riots broke out, forcing the sultan to
summon the leaders of the Jewish and Christian communities and remind them that they were subject
to the shame and humiliation of the dhimma. When they left the sultan, they were attacked by the
mob, which tore their clothes and beat them until they agreed to apos-tasize. Stakes were set alight
for the Jews and the Christians. The churches and houses of dhimmis that rose higher than those of
the Muslims were destroyed. The dhimmis even feared to go out into the streets. In 1343, Christians
were accused of starting fires in Cairo; in spite of the sultan’s efforts to protect them, they were
seized in the street, burned, or slaughtered by the mob as it left the mosques. Anti-Christian violence
raged in the main towns. To enable Christians to go out into the streets, Jews would sometimes lend
them their distinctive yellow turbans.
The history of the Copts is a lengthy tale of persecution, massacre, forced conversion, and
devastated and burned churches. Thousands of Copts fled to Abyssinia, but the greater part found
refuge by accepting Islam.

THE PRESENT

The founder of modern Egypt, Muhammad Ali (1801-1846), undertook the cultural and
industrial revolution of his country with the help of a team of French scientists. Tolerant and
politically minded, he tried to mitigate religious discrimination in the face of the opposition of a
traditionalist population. The Copts made use of this period to build schools and acquire modem
skills; when the British occupied the country (1882) the Christians were prepared to act as civil
servants in a modern administration. The British occupation brought stability and economic
development to Egypt. Schools were founded, and new opportunities were created in the developing
commerce, industry, and agriculture. The Copts perfected their skills and distinguished themselves in
the liberal professions and in government service.
In spite of the liberal, albeit limited, trend that favored the secularization of the state and the
equality of its citizens, the rise of the erstwhile dhimmis did not occur without shocking, even
traumatizing, Muslim susceptibilities— as their former abject status had been the basis of the
superiority and domination of Islam. To make matters worse, the abolition of the discriminatory laws
against non-Muslims in 1856 did not stem from an evolution sui generis in the Arab mentality but
was imposed by the West.7 In retaliation, thousands of Christians were slaughtered in the Syrian
provinces in 1860. This massacre prompted France’s brief intervention—in agreement with the other
European powers—and the establishment of an autonomous Christian region in Lebanon, which
remained nonetheless under Ottoman suzerainty.
 Having thus been emancipated by Europe, the Christians—remnants of pre-Islamic cultures—
in a cynical paradox of history, were automatically associated with imperialism. Their hard-won
equality was considered by the Arabs as an additional humiliation imposed on them by the Western
powers. This is the reason that the struggle for national independence, with its rejection of the West
and its return to Islam, has also manifested itself in the persecution of minorities. In fact, justified as
it may have been, the anticolonial struggle was never conceived of as a national war in the European
sense. It was a jihad—a holy war of Islam against Christianity. Inevitably then, religious fanaticism
linked Eastern Christians to the West, which had not only liberated them, but, furthermore, by
protecting them, had delivered them from a traditional humiliation, thus violating the tenets of Islam
established in the eighth century.
Worse, the situation of the minorities became more complicated by the fact that in any
litigation between Muslims and non-Muslims, Islamic law was applicable, and then, as neither the
testimony nor the oath of a non-Muslim was admissible due to the infidel’s congenital depravity, the
Muslim was automatically acquitted. In order to protect their lives and property, the minorities tried
to obtain consular protection or a foreign citizenship, thus benefiting from the system of
Capitulations. By this device, they could escape from the discriminatory Islamic courts; on the other
hand, this link with the West compromised them even more. Thus, in the short or long run, no matter
what they did, the political situation of the religious minorities was foredoomed.
Under the British protectorate, the fact that a few Copts and Jews became high government
officials created the illusion of liberalization, despite a violently xenophobic pan-Islamic current that
was the manifestation of the revolt of Islam against the political and cultural supremacy of the West.
Professor W. C. Smith has written, “Most Westerners have simply no inkling of how deep and fierce
is the hate, especially of the West, that has gripped the modernizing Arab.”8 This same hatred has
accused the minorities of collusion with Western imperialism.
Charles Issawi attributes these anti-Coptic feelings in part to the high intellectual level of the
Copts, but primarily to Islamizing tendencies, which resulted in economic discrimination against the
Christians in the early thirties.9 During this period the Egyptian monarchy led an active pan-Islamic
campaign in the Arab countries. The progressive Islamization of national life inspired the rector of
Al-Azhar, the renowned Islamic University of Cairo, to declare in 1928 that nationality is religion.10
Already in 1927, Muslim political and religious associations proliferated, such as the Society
of Young Muslims, the Society for the Benevolence of Islamic Morals, the Good Islamic Way, the
Society for the Preaching of Islamic Virtues, the Society for the Revival of Religious Law, the
Salafiya Society, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Young Egypt. Cairo became the center of a religious
nationalism from which missionaries went forth to the Sudan, Japan, and India.11 This proselytism
carried with it a current of xenophobia, which manifested itself also against European orientalists,
accused of undermining the faith of Islam. In March and April 1928 the activities of Christian
missionaries were violently criticized. They were accused of utilizing dangerous drugs and hypnosis
to gain new converts.12 In 1933, in Kafr el Zayat, the Franciscan Sisters of Mercy were forced by a
menacing crowd to release the pupils in their care.13 The nationalist element in this religious current
is best illustrated by the words of Christian author Salama Moussa, who stated in 1930, “Islam is the
religion of my country, my duty is to defend it.”14
In 1936 Makram Ebeid, the Coptic finance minister, declared, “I am a Christian, it is true, by
religion, but through my country I am a Muslim.”15 From which it follows that to be an Egyptian it
was necessary to act as a Muslim.
In 1937 King Farouk, with the help of his former tutor, Mustapha el-Maraghi, rector of Al-
Azhar, attempted to abolish the constitutional govern-ment and transform Egypt into a theocratic
state. The Wafd, the nationalist party, which was very popular, became the main obstacle to royal
ambition. In order to discredit the Wafd, Maraghi resorted to religious xenophobia, accusing the
Wafd of being controlled by the Copts, whom he described as “foxes” in a radio broadcast in
February 1938. Friendship between Copts and Muslims is contrary to divine law, he declared.16 In
pursuit of his anti-Copt campaign, the rector of Al-Azhar stated that Egyptian policy must draw its
inspiration only from Islamic principles, which, as far as the relations with Christians were
concerned, meant the reintroduction of the dhimma. Anti-Coptic and antimissionary feelings were
aroused, and the reputation of the Wafd was ruined.
At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood considerably increased the number of its members
as well as its hold on the economic and political sectors of the country. The Brotherhood attempted to
turn Egypt into an essentially religious state, governed according to the strictest interpretations of
Islamic law. It condemned democratic parliamentarianism, which, in its eyes, was a corrupt
institution imported from the West. Divided into cells, the Brotherhood owned printing presses,
clinics, schools, bookshops, and recreation centers, and it possessed its own secret terrorist
organization and paramilitary “army.”
The part played by the Brotherhood is still a determining factor in Egypt. Remarkably well
organized, it became the most powerful party in the country. Thanks to the support of the king and
the army, it had ramifications throughout the country—as well as in the Sudan, in Yemen, and
particularly in Palestine, where from 1948 to 1956 it provided the fedayeen with arms and money.
After World War II, the Brotherhood became the most powerful party in Egypt and was at the zenith
of its glory. Its fanaticism, the wave of murders and bloody riots instigated by its terrorist
organizations, maintained xenophobia at a fever pitch and created an atmosphere of terror and
discrimination against non-Muslims. Possessing arms and training grounds, it set up military
organizations and units of shock troops, which applied unbearable pressure on the Egyptian
government and plunged the country, with the king’s consent, into the 1948 war against Israel. After
the defeat of the Arab forces, it started a regime of terror in Egyptian cities. The government, not
having the means to control them, could only reestablish comparative stability by imposing martial
law.
Gamal Abdel Nasser needed the help of the Brotherhood to seize power, and Anwar el-Sadat
collaborated with Hassan el-Banna, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide.17 Yasir Arafat, born in Cairo
in 1929, learned from members of the Brotherhood how to make bombs and other explosives.18 When
the party was outlawed by Nasser, thousands of its members were imprisoned; others found refuge in
Syria and especially in Jordan, where they joined the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen organizations.
Though it never had a definite program for social reform, the activity of the Muslim
Brotherhood was varied and affected every sphere of life, whether social, economic, political,
educational, or cultural. In its pursuit to create an essentially Muslim society governed by the most
rigorous precepts of Quranic law, it established, within the framework of the state, its own banks,
industries, schools, and army. If it can be said that the Muslim Brotherhood introduced reforms for
the protection of wage earners, it is no less true to say that, by religious intransigence, it contributed
to the spread of a destructive hatred of the West, the foreigner, and the nonbeliever, using for this end
numerous publications and inflammatory sermons pronounced from mosques.
To understand Islamic pan-Arabism, which in Western disguise (“secular and democratic
Palestine,” “progressive Muslim Lebanon”) stirs the Arab world today, it is necessary to trace the
steps of its evolution.
After the 1860 Syrian massacres, the Christians tried to promote an Arab nationalism based on
cultural identity. But this Arab nationalism, inspired by European conceptions, irritated the Muslims,
who looked upon it as an attempt by the West to divide and weaken them. The majority therefore
rallied to the pan-Islamic movement, which advocated a return to traditional Islam. Thanks to the
theologians of Al-Azhar, the two movements, antagonistic at first, fused into Islamic pan-Arabism.
Today it is clear that Islam and Arabism are inseparable terms and that, in fact, pan-Arabism is
synonymous with the cultural, social, and political rebirth of Islam. To be more precise, it is possible
to be a Muslim and not an Arab, but the reverse is impossible: a true Arab must be a Muslim. As long
as modern Egypt proclaims itself to be “essentially an Arab and Muslim land,” uncertainty will
continue to weigh on the Copts, the only remaining native religious minority after the forced
departure of eighty thousand Jews.
When Nasser came to power, Egypt resolutely turned its face toward Arabism and became its
staunchest champion. Cairo proclaimed Islamic unity and pursued an active policy of pan-Arabism,
which identified Islam with Arabism.
The precarious situation of the minorities became even more acute. Was it possible to be a
Christian and an Arab? The problem was obsessively debated in literature and in the press, and the
solution was invariable: since Muhammad was an Arab and the sacred Qur’an was revealed in
Arabic, only a Muslim could identify fully with Arabism.
In addition, Islam gave the Arab civilization strength and grandeur. These beliefs were
formulated by the Christian founder of the Baath Party, Michel Aflak, who urged his coreligionists to
convert, for, as he maintained, “Islam is Arab nationalism.”19
It was quite clear that in the context of this essentially religious nationalism, no religious
minority could ever participate in the political life of the country. The Islamization of the country led
inevitably to discrimination against the Copts at all levels. Edward Wakin’s book on this subject is
particularly enlightening.20 An article published by the late Georges Henein, a Coptic writer, gave
valuable information on the economic discrimination imposed on the Copts during Nasser’s rule.21
In August 1957 the Copts protested against persecutions that revived, in modern Egypt, a
familiar, thirteen-century-old tradition: restrictions in building churches; new laws affecting the
personal status of Christians; discrimination against Christians in public office, in the distribution of
land, in housing, and for posts in the mass media.22 These events must be examined in the context of
the dhimma—churches destroyed by villagers, houses and shops burned down, bishops and Coptic
congregants stoned.23 The campaign of intimidation, inspired by The Protocols of the Elders ofZion
as described by Henein in the above-mentioned article, is not unlike that instigated against the Jews
in the fifties, which resulted in their total expulsion. Was the rebirth of religious fervor in Egypt a
consequence of the Islamization of governmental institutions, with President Sadat’s tacit approval,
or was it the work of the resurgent Muslim Brotherhood, organized into semiclandestine cells?
The remarks made [in 1957] by orientalist W. C. Smith on the Muslim Brotherhood of the
fifties could well apply to certain trends prevalent later on in the Arab world:

The reaffirmation of Islam endeavors to counter the failure of modern life but may not
succeed in transcending it. Unfortunately, for some of the members of the Ikhwan (Muslim
Brotherhood) and even more for many of their sympathizers and fellow-travellers the
reaffirmation is not a constructive program based on cogent plans and known objectives, or
even felt ideas; but is rather an outlet for emotion. It is the expression of the hatred, frustration,
vanity, and destructive frenzy of a people who for long have been the prey of poverty,
impotence, and fear. All the discontent of men who find the modem world too much for them
can in movements such as the Ikhwan find action and satisfaction. It is the Muslim Arab’s
aggressive reaction to the attack on his world which we have already found to be almost
overwhelming—the reaction of those who, tired of being overwhelmed, have leapt with frantic
sadistic joy to burn and kill. The burning of Cairo (26th January 1952), the assassination of
Prime Ministers, the intimidating of Christians, the vehemence and hatred in their literature—
all this is to be understood in terms of a people who have lost their way, whose heritage has
proven unequal to modernity, whose leaders have been dishonest, whose ideals have failed. In
this aspect, the new Islamic upsurge is a force not to solve problems but to intoxicate those
who cannot longer abide the failure to solve them.24

The lessons of the past and the present [1973] isolation of the Copts does not augur well for
the future. When Nasser seized power and forbade all political parties, no one dared question or
criticize the dictatorial government of the military oligarchy. This was particularly distressing in view
of the fact that, at the beginning of the century, Egyptian intellectuals were the first from the Arab
world to focus on the problems created by the clash with the modern Western world.
Although the more liberal regime of President Sadat loosened the totalitarian control in the
political and intellectual spheres of the state’s institutions, it hardly diminished anti-Christian
discrimination in the political, economic, and educational fields.25 The actual resurgence of Islam,26
the massacre and flight of Lebanese Christians as a result of the union of Islamo-Palestinian forces,
Syrian president Hafez al-Assad’s military intervention in Lebanon, allegedly to protect Christians,
can only favor a general traditional policy of Arab-Islamic domination.
As a confirmation of this tendency, at a manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo,
some Egyptian members of parliament demanded that Quranic law should henceforth be the only
source of the country’s leg-islation.27
The moment has come for Arab Muslim intellectuals to recognize, courageously, that if the
Arabs can condemn Western imperialism, so have the Eastern Christian communities the right to
demand equality of rights in the lands successfully colonized by Arab imperialism.

DOCUMENT

Telegram Addressed to President Anwar el-Sadat, Summer 1972, by the Assembly of Christian
Churches in Egypt

The National Assembly of the heads of the Copt-Orthodox, Copt-Catholic, and Copt-
Evangelical churches met at the Orthodox-Coptic Patriarchate in Alexandria. The delegates were
shocked by recent provocations and the planned persecutions publicly announced by the Ministry of
WAKFS (Muslim Ministry of Religion) and its various sections. These projects are intended to
inflame the populace to hatred and to discrimination, which can only lead to our annihilation. In spite
of all this, no responsible department of the administration has done anything to stop these perfidious
intrigues against national unity. Those intriguing knew very well that their action would lead to
clashes between the two groups of the nation—the Muslims and the Copts— and this at a time when
there is a great need to preserve our unity in order to create a united front against the enemy. All this
has happened, even though on several occasions we have complained to those in authority.
We, members of this Assembly, subjected to considerable pressure engendered by all these
injustices, which are occurring throughout the country, conscious also that the Constitution
guarantees liberty to all citizens, we request, Sir, that

1. Sectarian and mischievous projects of the Ministry of WAKFS and other departments of this
Ministry cease.
2. Restrictions imposed by the officials of the Administration concerning the construction of
new churches be abolished. The argument used, according to which this prohibition is
based on an old Ottoman decree, is invalid as this law was abrogated by the new
constitution.
3. Entrance to the universities must be based solely on the final examination results at
secondary school and not on a private interview. Furthermore, it should be forbidden for
University courses to be held in mosques and Islamic institutions.
4. Studies of our religion from a negative viewpoint, such as “Israel and Universal Zionism”
and “Conference on Christianity,” should not be published.
5. All discrimination regarding employment in certain departments of the universities and the
Institutes of Advanced Studies should be abolished, as well as the QUOTA system
applicable to Christian students in specialized schools and similar institutions.
 6. It should be forbidden to publish books or articles attacking our faith and our Holy
Scriptures, in particular the Old Testament.
7. It is essential to apply the CHARTER and protect the Christian family against the dangers
that menace it through the pretext of granting legal protection. Divorce must be made more
difficult in that part of the law relating to the personal status of non-Muslims.
8. The projects that are aimed at preventing Christians from acceding to high [government]
posts should be abolished.

Sir, we await your reply, as soon as possible, to our just requests. We do not accept being
humiliated in this country that is ours. The delegates have called a further assembly in Cairo for
Tuesday, 29 August 1972. There is thus sufficient time for our just requests to be accepted. If this
will not be the case, martyrdom is preferable to a life of servitude.
We are sure of your wisdom, as we are sure that you will overcome this dangerous situation.
May God protect you and through your efforts grant victory to our nation.

[signed]
For the Copt-Orthodox Patriarchate: The Reverend MENA, Patriarchal Vicar For the Copt-
Catholic Church:
The Reverend GIBRAEL GHATTAAS, Patriarchal Vicar
For the Copt-Evangelical Church: Pastor Labib QALDAS
 14.
EASTERN CHRISTIANS TORN ASUNDER
Challenges—New and Old
Bat Ye'or

The dhimmi mentality cannot be easily defined and described. An endless variety of reactions
has been provoked by the evolving historical situations in the civilization of dhimmitude, which
spans three continents and close to fourteen centuries. Generally speaking, dhimmi populations can
be described as oscillating between alienation and submission and, at the other extreme, a self-
perception of spiritual freedom.
The basic aspects of the dhimmi mentality are related to characteristics of its status and
environment, because dhimmitude operates exclusively within the sphere of jihad. Contrary to
common belief, jihad is not limited to holy war conducted militarily; it encompasses all strategies,
including peaceful means, aimed at the unification of all religions within Islamic dogma.
Furthermore, as a juridical-theological construction, jihad determines all aspects of relations between
the umma—the Islamic community— and non-Muslims. According to the classical interpretation,
these are classified in one of three categories: enemies, temporarily reconciled, or subjected. Because
neither jihad nor dhimmitude has been critically analyzed, we can say today that the Islamist
mentality—currently predominant in many Muslim countries—establishes relations with non-
Muslims in the traditional jihad categories of war, truce, and submission/dhimmitude.
In our times dhimmis are found among the residues of indigenous populations of countries that
were Islamized during a millenium of Muslim conquests: Christians, Hindus, and a scattering of Jews
and Zoroastrians. Christians would seem to be the most familiar group, closer to Westerners by
proximity, culture, and religion, and subject to the same status under Islam as the Jews, the other ahl
al-kitab,“People of the Book”—the Bible. But this impression is often deceiving, since the reassuring
appearance of similarity is misleading.

First published in French under the title “Les dechirures des Chretiens d’Orient,” in L’Observatoire du Monde Juif 6/7(June 2003): 24-26. It was translated in a modified
version by Nidra Poller in collaboration with the author and published by National Review Online.September 18. 2003. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate Incorporated.

The behavior of Christian dhimmis varies according to the country, the social category, and
their association with the ruling classes as, for example, their participation in the Iraqi or Syrian
Baath parties or the PLO, a militarist organization engaged in the Arab jihad against Israel. Christian
dhimmis appointed to important positions by Muslim rulers have often served as agents between the
Arab world and strategic centers in the West: churches, governments, industries, universities, media,
and so on.
Because Christian dhimmi populations are on the whole highly skilled and better educated
than the surrounding population, they often suffer from malicious jealousy coupled with the
traditional anti-Christian prejudices of the umma.The persistence of Christianity in Muslim
environments testifies to qualities of endurance and adaptability. Yet survival in dhimmitude had its
price: the dhimmi pathology.
Briefly summarized, Christian attitudes can be classified in three categories: active resistance,
passive resistance, and collaboration. These three attitudes are manifest within one and the same
population, but certain geographical or historical situations favor one or another.

ACTIVE RESISTANCE

Recent examples of active resistance are noteworthy. The repression of the Christian rebellion
against the establishment of Sharia in the Sudan in 1983 caused more than two million dead and over
four million displaced. Lebanese Christians fought against the Islamization of their country during
the civil war that began in 1975. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Armenian and Assyrian
Christians were punished by genocide for their attempts at independence. In the present day, active
Christian resistance against Islamization in Indonesia, Nigeria, and other African countries is
manifest in the massacre of Christian civilians, the burning of villages, and the flight of populations.
Westerners, and especially Europeans, turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of Christians who actively
resist Islamization, frequently blaming them for their own misfortunes.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE

Examples of passive resistance can be found in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. Egyptian Christians
denounce the violence of which they are victims and strive to protect their dignity, reduce legal and
professional discrimination, and secure basic rights such as permission to build or renovate churches.
Here again, the West prefers to ignore their dire situation or underplay it with episodic attention.
Christians engaged in active or passive resistance exhaust their meager resources in vain efforts to
alert their fellow Christians and enlist their help.

COLLABORATIONIST CHRISTIANS

Collaborators are recruited among Christians who identify themselves as Arabs. This type of
collaboration, which has caused endless fratricidal bat-tles over the centuries, has been denounced by
dhimmis struggling for centuries against an Islamic domination that progressed with the help of
Christians.
Christian collaborationism has taken different forms in the course of history, according to
circumstances and political opportunity. It is expressed today in a two-pronged political and
theological project. The political project is implemented in a trans-Mediterranean fusion, with the
construction of an economic, cultural, political, and geographical entity composed of the European
Union and Arab and African countries. This policy of association and integration, active in all
international forums, works to counterbalance American policy, under cover of a notion of
“international legitimacy,” albeit a legitimacy of sanguinary totalitarian Arab dictators.
Collaborationist Christian dhimmis function as the intellectual and economic mechanism of
this project because they belong to both worlds. Their role is to invent the idyllic Muslim-Christian
past that upholds the political construction of a future Eurabia and to dissimulate the anti-Christian
foundations of Islamic doctrine and history.
 Dhimmi collaboration on the theological level is oriented in two directions: toward
Christianity and toward Islam. It finds its most radical expression in “Palestinian Liberation
Theology,” meaning nothing less than the liberation of Christianity from its Jewish matrix. The
spiritual center of this theology is the al-Liqa Institute in Jerusalem, created in 1983 for the study of
the Muslim and Christian heritage in the Holy Land. This strongly politicized institute, sponsored by
international Christian organizations, specializes in disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda through its
international religious and media channels.
Uniting Marcionist and Gnostic theological currents, this Palestinian theology strips away
Jesus’ Jewishness and turns him into a sui generis Arab-Palestinian Jesus, a twin of the Muslim Jesus
(Isa). Christianity, thus liber-ated from its Jewish roots, can be transplanted in Arab-Islamism. This
would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making Israelis usurpers of the
Muslim-Christian Palestinian homeland. This theory denies the historical continuity between modern
Israel and its biblical ancestor, the locus of nascent Christianity.
The theology of Palestinianism, integrating all the anti-Jewish themes of replacement
theology, is reworked to fit the new Palestinian fashion and is addressed to Christians all over the
world, inviting them to gather together around an Arab-Palestinian Jesus, symbol of a Palestine
crucified by Israel. The theme goes back to the nineteenth century. However, in those days when the
idea of an Arab-Palestinian entity differentiated from the Arab world did not even exist, the unifying
role of Palestine was assigned to Arab nationalism.
Palestinist theology shores up the Euro-Arab policy of Christian-Muslim and European-Arab
fusion: the modern state of Israel—considered a temporary accident of history—is bypassed, and
Europe’s Christian origins are anchored in an Muslim-Christian Palestine. Having fulfilled its
historical role of uniting the two enemies—Christianity and Islam—opposed to its very existence,
Israel can now disappear, sealing the fusion between Europe and the Arabs. The unifying role
devolves on Muslim-Christian Palestine; the reconciliation of Islam and Christianity can finally be
consummated on the ashes of Israel and its negation. This is why the European Union—and
especially France—designates Israeli “injustice” and “occupation” as the unique sources of conflict
between Europe and the Arab/Muslim world, as well as the cause of international, anti-Western
Islamist terrorism.
The contribution of dhimmi Christian collaborationism to Islam is even more important. It
satisfies three objectives: (1) its propaganda shores up the mythology of past and present peaceful
Muslim-Christian coexistence and confirms the perfection of Islam, jihad, and Sharia; (2) it promotes
the demographic expansion and proselytism of Islamic propaganda in the West; (3) in the theological
sphere it eliminates the Jewish Jesus and implants Christianity in the Muslim Jesus; in other words, it
facilitates the theological Islamization of all of Christendom.
According to Islamic dogma, Islam encompasses Judaism and Christianity, both of which are
falsified posterior expressions of the first and fundamental religion, which is Islam. All the characters
of the Bible, from Adam to Abraham, Moses to David, the Hebrew prophets, Mary, Jesus, and the
apostles, were Muslim prophets who preached Islam, and it is only in their quality as Muslims that
they are recognized and respected. They belong to the Qur’an, not to the Bible. From this viewpoint
the bond between Judaism and Christianity is a falsification, because the filiation of Christianity is
Islamic, not Judaic. Christianity descends from Islam, the first religion of all humanity (din al-
fitra).Christianity is a falsified expression of Islam, and belongs to Islam. According to a hadith,
when Isa, the Muslim Jesus, returns, he will break the cross, kill the pig, abolish the jizya(poll tax for
infidels), and money will flow like water. Exegetes interpret the destruction of symbols attached to
Christianity—the cross and the pig—as the extinction of that religion; the suppression of the
jizyameans that Islam has become the only religion; and the abundance of wealth refers to the booty
taken from infidels. In other words the return of the Muslim Jesus could lead to the destruction of
Christianity.
 The global jihad has made the problems of dhimmitude a worldwide reality. Europe’s creeping
dhimmitude, expressed in a refusal even to mention in its proposed constitution the “Judeo-Christian”
values of its civilization, is one of the major elements of the current European-American divide.
 15.
CHRISTIANS IN THE
MUSLIM WORLD
Patrick Sookhdeo

We in the Western nations are free to follow our religious beliefs as we wish, and as
Christians it is all too easy to forget the suffering and fear that so many of our fellow believers are
living with in many Islamic countries today. They increasingly find themselves an embattled minority
with dwindling rights who are trapped in poverty and uncertainty.
There are around 40 million Christians living as minorities in Muslim-majority countries in the
world today. In some parts of the world these Christian minorities are of substantial size—at least 15
million in Indonesia, about 9 million in Egypt, and 3 million in Pakistan. In other places, there may
be no more than a few dozen national Christians in the whole country, for example, the Maldives. In
countries such as Saudi Arabia national Christian believers must keep their faith secret, or they would
be executed. It is impossible to know exactly how many Christian believers there are in these
countries.
Christians living in Muslim countries are generally treated as second-class citizens. They meet
frequent discrimination in education, employment, and even from the police and judiciary. They are
despised and distrusted, often suspected of giving their primary loyalty to the “Christian” West rather
than to their homeland. The basis of this lies in the traditional Islamic teaching that Christians and
Jews—the “People of the Book”—should be subjugated by force and made to pay a special tax called
jizya. sura 9, verse 29 of the Qur’an instructs Muslims as follows:

Reprinted with permission from http://www.c4israel.org/articles/english/e-I-02-2-sook-christiansinm.htm.

Fight those who believe not

In God nor the Last Day,
Nor hold that forbidden
Which hath been forbidden
By God and His Apostle,
Nor acknowledge the Religion
Of Truth, (even if they are)
Of the People of the Book,
Until they pay the Jizya
With willing submission,
And feel themselves subdued.
 These subjugated peoples were designated dhimmis. As well as the jizya, there were many other
conditions imposed on dhimmis, most of which were designed to underline their inferior status.
Though these rules are not followed strictly nowadays, the general attitude still prevails across the
Muslim world. Christians are very often discriminated against in employment, education, and other
social contexts, as well as by the police and the judiciary.
In some countries there is legalized discrimination against Christians. In other cases, it is
community and society that treat them unfairly, despite fair laws and constitutional rights. Often it is
a mixture of the two, as in Egypt, for example. One of the greatest difficulties facing Egyptian
Christians concerns church buildings. They have to get permission from the president himself to
build a new one, a process that can take many years and has no guarantee of success. Even
permission to repair existing church buildings is hard to obtain, and on top of this they often find
their buildings attacked. In lawless areas of rural upper Egypt they face much violence to themselves,
their homes, and their fields from Islamic extremists, some of whom demand payment of jizya.The
government seems unable to protect rural Christians from these militants.
Pakistan’s Christians have two particular handicaps. First, they are very vulnerable to false
accusation under the so-called blasphemy law, which lays down a death sentence for the crime of
“defiling” the name of the prophet Muhammad. Although none have yet been executed, several
Christians accused in malice under this law have been murdered by zealous Muslim individuals who
believe this is pleasing to God. Second, in the Islamic court system, the witness of Christians does
not carry as much weight as the witness of Muslims, putting the former at a severe disadvantage.
In Nigeria Christians slightly outnumber Muslims but are concentrated in the south of the
country, with Muslims forming a majority in the north. In the “middle belt,” Christians and Muslims
are roughly equal in number. Since 2000 twelve northern and middle-belt states have introduced full
Islamic law (Sharia). Despite promises that Christians in these states would not be affected, they face
a variety of restrictions and difficulties with such matters as church buildings, Christian schools,
women’s dress, and public-transportation. Furthermore, there have been many incidents of violent
rioting, in which thousands of Christians have been killed and thousands more made homeless. Many
churches have been destroyed.
Anti-Christian violence on an even greater scale has been occurring in parts of Indonesia, the
world’s most populous Muslim nation. Until a few years ago, this country was an example of
harmonious Christian-Muslim relations and real equality between the two communities. Now,
however, Christians in are being targeted by Islamic militants in a systematic genocidal campaign to
eliminate them. Initially the attacks were predominantly in the Malukus; then the main area of
violence moved to Sulawesi and are now spreading to West Papua. Many thousands of Christians
have been killed, as village after village has been burned to the ground, and almost half a million
have been made refugees. In addition, at least seven thousand Christians have been forcibly
converted to Islam. Many of these were forcibly circumcised as a sign of their new Islamic faith. This
includes men and women, young and old, and the circumcisions were usually performed without
antiseptic or anesthetic.
The Sudanese government has been ruthless in attacking African Christians and animists in
southern Sudan, who refuse to accept its policies of Islamization and Arabization—hence the brutal
civil war, which began in 1983 and resulted in the destruction of the entire infrastructure of the south.
Several peace agreements have been signed, but real peace has not yet come. Millions of southerners
have fled, either to the north or to neighboring countries. In the north they find themselves
discriminated against in many ways. The shantytowns where they live are often bulldozed, and
truckloads of Christians have been forcibly dumped in the desert with no food, water, or shelter.
Many Christians are also enslaved by Arab Muslims.

WORSE THAN EVER

 Following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the
subsequent US-led “war on terror” with attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the situation for Christians
in the Muslim world has become even more tense and dangerous. They are an easy local target on
which Muslims can vent the anger they feel against the United States.
In the weeks following September 11, 2001, numerous attacks on Christians occurred around
the world. For example, on September 20, a thirteen-year-old Christian stallholder in Pakistan was
beaten to death by a gang of Muslims who refused to pay for the food they had bought from him.
They told him to “take your payment from America.” Two churches in Isiolo, Kenya, were burnt
down on September 26, and the words “God is great” and “We condemn America” carved into the
charred remains. In Israel on October 8, a Christian convert from Islam was stabbed to death by a
supporter of Osama bin Laden, who shouted, “You are an apostate!” In Malaysia eight Christian
workers at the headquarters of the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship were hospitalized on
October 23 after coming into contact with an envelope containing white powder. The powder was
sent with an offensive letter, claiming the powder was anthrax and promising the death of the staff,
the destruction of their office, and a curse on Christians in general. In Iraq it is reported that some
Christians are now being left out of the distribution of government food rations and are being
mockingly told to ask America for their food instead. They have become too frightened to wear a
cross in public any more. On October 28, fifteen Christians at Sunday worship were shot dead by
Islamist gunmen who burst into their church in Bahawalpur. The gunmen shouted, “Pakistan and
Afghanistan, graveyard of Christians,” “God is great,” and “This is just the start.” The massacre
occurred several weeks after some Islamic religious leaders in Pakistan had announced a fatwathat
two Pakistani Christians would be killed for every Muslim who died in airstrikes on Afghanistan.
These attacks that took place in the immediate aftermath of September 11 have now increased
in intensity, and many Westerners and missionaries are being targeted as well as national Christians.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?

What does the future hold for Christian minorities in Islamic contexts? The trend in the last two
decades has been consistently toward the erosion of their rights and status, the increase of pressure,
discrimination, and violence. These developments have gone largely unremarked by the world in
general, including the Western Churches. Christians in Muslim countries feel themselves forgotten by
their Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere who are blessed with greater freedoms, and this only
adds to their pain and hopelessness.
But perhaps the new interest in Islam that has resulted from the events of September 11 could
result also in greater publicity for the plight of the suffering Church under Islam, which has
continued for fourteen centuries. Perhaps, too, it could result in a debate leading to a reformation of
Islam, to move it on from its present laws and values, which have remained unchanged since the
Middle Ages, toward modern standards of human rights and religious liberty.
 16.
PERSECUTION OF JEWS
AND CHRISTIANS
Testimony versus Silence
Bat Ye’or

I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked;

but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

—Ezekiel 33:11

Liadies and Gentlemen,

I wish to thank Elliott Abrams for giving me the privilege of sharing with you some reflections
on the meaning of “testimony versus silence.” But we must first ask ourselves—testimony about
what? And also, testifying for which purpose?
To answer the first question, we can say that the Bible—to mention but this aspect—testifies to
a suprahuman and an immanent order of values or, more simply, to a divine presence within the
universe and humanity. The divine spirit abolished chaos, fixed the limits in human behavior of what
is allowed and what cannot be transgressed on the basis of the universal sanctity of the human being,
as announced in Genesis 1:27: “in the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them.” The immanence of the divine in man creates an alliance, a partnership between God and man,
a dual responsibility freely accepted by man, for keeping or testifying to these supreme ethical norms
based on the sanctity of all humans, which cannot be transgressed. The Bible illustrates the constant
struggle between the testifier and the destroyer of life, or the hater of man.

Bat Ye’or originally delivered this address at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC, on April 2, 1998. The EPPC’s president, Elliott Abrams, chaired the
session and the respondents on the podium were George Weigel and Paul Marshall. This text was translated into English by David G. Littman, with the author.

In the context of my remarks today, the meaning of testimonyis to stand up against a tyrant, to
denounce injustice, and to proclaim the dignity of all humanity. Although the testifier gives testimony
because he has to do so and cannot escape from this duty, his act implies an inherently optimistic
hope and faith in man—the hope that the heart of the tyrant will change. With the words in the Psalm,
“I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed” (119:46).
In the long, sad, and painful history of the Judeo-Christian relationship, the people of Israel
have always assumed the role of the witness or testifier, not because it is any better than others but
because history made them victims of dehumanizing laws. This is the well-known status of Jewry in
Europe, which was abolished in the French Revolution of 1789, and later, in the nineteenth century,
throughout Western Europe. Because of the Jewish roots of Christianity, this tradition of dialogue and
of the contestation of power was integrated into the dynamic of history. The emancipation of
European Jewry was a Christian political decision, made on humanitarian princi-ples—the Jews later
joining in the fight for the equality of civil rights. Because Jews and Christians claim the same ethical
values of the Bible, Christians raised their voices against the deliberate dehumanizing policy of the
people who had first proclaimed their knowledge of God. Jewish testimony was joined, promoted,
and sustained by a Christian engagement. Before, during, and after the Holocaust, this partnership
held firm despite overwhelming hatred and cruelty. Since then, Christian engagement in a redemptive
work within the Church has become more forceful.
But testifying is no easy task, as it also brings persecution, loneliness, and despair.
Challenging “evil,” unveiling it from behind its ubiquitous masks, is dangerous, an unending life
struggle. For the lonely surviving rem-nant of Israel, constantly bearing testimony to the Holocaust in
an indifferent world was an agonizing process. In a world of ashes, Jews unceasingly proclaimed the
dignity and sanctity of man. And they were not alone in testifying. Many Christians joined them:
writers, theologians, and anonymous voices, too. Jews and Christians testified together. The result of
this common action, what I consider a common prayer—by acts and deeds—led to the revolutionary
theological transformation of Church dogma concerning the Jews. By testifying together, Jews and
Christians initiated profound spiritual changes. One might even say that through the very act of the
rehumanization of the Jewish victim, the Church rehumanized itself in an internal process of
humility, thereby deepening its own theological reflection.
Now, if we turn to the Islamic lands, we find a very different situation, where Jews and
Christians often declare their “gratitude” to the Islamic society, and yet few Jews exist today in Arab-
Muslim lands, and the Christians are on the same road of exile. By the early nineteenth century,
Judaism was nearly extinguished in Palestine, the very cradle of Jewish history and civilization. A
similar historic process was at work for Eastern Christianity, whose roots are in the Middle East,
nowadays usually referred to as Arab-Muslim lands. Except for the Copts of Egypt, who still form a
sizable minority, Christianity would hardly have survived in its Oriental homeland—especially in
Palestine—without the permanent support and protection of Europe.
Islamic law, the Sharia, provides “protection” and security for the People of the Book—the
Bible; it is, indeed, a basic theological principle. However, Muslim theologians and jurists attached
so many conditions and humiliations to this real protection that the status of the protected Jews and
Christians—the dhimmis—soon became a status of oppression, deprivation, and insecurity.
This status was regulated by several laws that bound them within a social pattern of
discriminations and insecurity. Instead of “Islamic tolerance,” or “toleration,” I have called this vast
political, religious, and cultural world— from Arabia to Spain and the Balkans, including, for some
time, part of Hungary and Poland—the realm of “dhimmitude,” from the Arabic word dhimma:a
treaty of submission for those peoples conquered by jihad. The laws that were applied to the dhimmis
I have called the laws of dhimmitude, and the special type of civilization that dhimmis developed I
have called the civilization of dhimmitude.
The civilization of dhimmitude is based on two main elements: jihad— that is, a compulsory
religious war of conquest that brings non-Muslim lands into the realm of Islam; and the subjugation
of its native populations. In other words, the choice is between perpetual war or submission. The
civilization of dhimmitude developed in the context of subjugation and insecurity. Its main features
were the payment of the jizya,a Quranic tribute that became a poll tax. For early Muslim jurists, the
jizyahad two purposes: to enrich the umma, the Islamic community, and—a symbolic meaning—it
suspended the jihad threat, which was death, slavery, or the expulsion of non-Muslims. The payment
of the jizyaprocured for the dhimmis the security for their lives, their families, and their personal
possessions. One important aspect of dhimmitude is the principle of the dhimmis’ inferiority to
Muslims in every walk of life. This civilization of dhimmitude expanded on three continents,
representing millions of people. Over the centuries, populations and entire civilizations disappeared,
or barely survived. The civilizationof dhimmitude is composed of numerous ethnic groups, mainly
Christian, and rival Eastern Churches. Documentation abounds, and a few sources may be found in
my books.
The civilization of dhimmitude is based on the principle of “protection,” which is the security
for life and property pledged by a Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, who are subjected to certain
conditions—tribute money, or as a temporary protection (aman).This concept implies that the right to
security of life and property are denied to non-Muslims and are only granted by the Muslim
community according to its own conditions. In other words, the principle of natural rights for all
human beings is denied. The civilization of dhimmitude is engendered by war and conquest.
Today, Eastern Christianity looks as if it will disappear from the very cradle of its birthplace,
the Middle East, and one may well ask, Is there an adequate Christian “testimony” of this drama? Let
us see how the various peoples of dhimmitude conceive their own history. The Greeks recounted
their trials under the Turkish yoke; Serbs did the same in the pre-Commu-nist era, as well as
Hungarians, Bulgarians, and other Balkan peoples. The Armenians have written abundantly on the
Armenian genocide. Yet the Chaldean Assyrians of Iraq have hardly protested against their
tribulations. Although the Copts testified from the beginning of the century, few in the West paid
much attention to their grievances. Recently, Coptic associations in America and Canada have
succeeded in having their courageous protests published in the national press about the sufferings of
their people and the abuses of their fundamental human rights. Lebanese Christianity fought,
suffered, and succumbed with little protest coming from Europe or America. The Sudanese
Christians still suffer from an Islamic regime: jihad and slavery, abduction, forced conversions, and
destruction have been their lot for decades, and only recently have their cries been heard. Last year, a
Christian Coalition for the defense of oppressed Eastern Churches began a human rights campaign
here in Washington. Only last week, Paul Marshall, my husband, and I were in Columbia, South
Carolina, participating with others at the First National Conference on the Persecuted Church, titled
“Shattering the Silence.” So we see that there are peoples who are still sub-jected nowadays to
dhimmitude. A whole Judeo-Christian, Aramaic civilization from pre-Islamic times is slowly
agonizing, while a profound silence prevails. Recently, a handful of books have been written on the
subject in French, but generally there is an unwritten consensus to praise the historico-religious
record of “Islamic tolerance” toward non-Muslims. Let me enumerate some of the reasons that have
led to this.

CAUSES RELATED TO THE MUSLIM SOCIETY

The idea that Jews and Christians have suffered under Islamic law is totally rejected by the
dominant group—the Muslims—and this for several reasons, based on theological grounds: (1)
Islamic law cannot be defective since it must be perfect, being considered a divine law. Therefore it
cannot be unjust, and the suffering of infidels under that rule is deserved since it represents the justice
of Allah. (2) The Sharia should not be criticized, and Christians and Jews cannot say it has any defect
whatsoever. (3) Whereas in the Bible the religious function is separated from the political one, in
Islam political and religious power must be united. The nonseparation of politics and religion confer
a fixed religious and sacred character to politics. (4) An absence of Muslim support on behalf of
dhimmis since the conception of their relations with non-Muslims is determined by the principles of
jihad and protection, which granted to the Muslims the feeling of being generous. Without this
“passport” of protection (aman),no harbi—the name for all non-Muslims from the dar al-Harb,the
region of war—could enter the dar al-Islam,the region of Islam, unless he agreed to become a
dhimmi.

CAUSES RELATED TO THE DHIMMIS

The cause most closely related to the dhimmis is the divisions and conflicts between the diverse
dhimmi Churches. Any protests against the oppression of the laws implies a minimum of consensus
between Armenians, Maronites, Assyrians, Copts, Melchites, Greeks, and the Slavonic Churches.
Since the laws of dhimmitude apply equally to Jews and Christians, this also requires a consensus
with the Jews, and this has been impossible for the Eastern Churches.
There are other reasons to explain this political impotence: the vulnerability of small, insecure
Christian communities; the religious leadership’s subservience to the Muslim power; their economic
interests; and the total and deliberate obfuscation of their dhimmi past.

CAUSES RELATED TO THE WESTERN POWERS

Here we can mention the pro-Islamic policy of the Western powers, their economic interests in
the Muslim world, the all too frequent concealment of the truth by the media and Western
governments, and their deliberate refusal to transmit this local reality to the public, for fear of (1)
Muslim terrorism (2) anti-Islamic reactions in the West, and (3) economical and political retaliations
from Muslim countries.
Denouncing the injustice of dhimmitude means a feeling of solidarity with all its victims—
Christians of all denominations, as well as Jews. It means having the profound conviction that all
humans are equal and that no one should be demonized. Laws that are unjust for Christians cannot be
considered just for Jews—unless Jews are first demonized. Testifying to the great tragedy of
dhimmitude implies a sense of togetherness that has never existed.

I am convinced that Christian involvement in the Arab-Islamic jihad, first against Zionism in the
late nineteenth century and then against Israel throughout the twentieth century, was the main cause
for the obfuscation of dhimmi history and the lack of testimony about the sufferings of Christian
dhimmis. The source of all evil had to be projected onto Zionism and Israel, whereas it is a historical
fact that the causes for Christian oppression in the East are rooted in the doctrine of jihad and in the
laws and civilization of dhimmitude. Because the trials and tribulations of Christians in Islamic
countries and their causes—the rules of dhimmitude—had to be hidden, dhimmi Christian history
became a well-guarded secret, a secret that had to be concealed and never revealed. The Muslim-
Christian alliance in an anti-Zionist crusade led the Christians to testify against Israel. And because
the significance of the restoration of Israel in this region of the world symbolizes the abolition of
jihad and of the laws of dhimmitude, the engagement of Christians in the anti-Israel jihad has
contributed to the decline of Chris-tianity itself.
Let me conclude these brief remarks on a complicated subject. It is this lack of testimony that
has brought back the evils and the prejudices of the past—the jihad mentality and the laws of
dhimmitude that were only abolished by the colonial European powers. And now, more and more,
because of this lack of testimony, we see moderate Muslims themselves being persecuted. Because
they were indifferent to the humiliation of Jews and Christians, because they remained silent and
aloof, they now find themselves—in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere—suffering from cruel injustices
and barbarism. Testifying together, giving testimony against dhimmitude, would have allowed
Muslim intellectuals to rethink their whole relationship with the People of the Bible—and with all
non-Muslims, and this without renouncing their faith. Such an attitude would have brought all of us
together in the fight against tyrannical oppression, against the process of dehuman-ization. This is
what could have been done but what was not done.
 17.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN
INDONESIA?
Mark Durie

In all the discussion of the Bali tragedy, many Australians have searched for a reason for so
many innocent people to have been killed. Surely such hatred must have some explanation. Could it
be something we have done? Was it East Timor? The “war on Iraq”? Our lifestyle? Our indifference
to world poverty?
This bomb attack, and others like it, must be understood in terms of the strategic goals and
worldview of the Islamic terrorist organizations that carry them out. All these groups aim to establish
the Islamic Sharia, or “Islamic way,” as the law of the land. They oppose existing regimes in Muslim
countries that are rejected as un-Islamic. A second belief they share is that jihad is the best method
for bringing this objective about.
Countless books, tracts, and training schools emphasize these two principles. At the time of
independence from the Dutch in 1945, calls for Indonesia to become an Islamic state were
successfully resisted. The authors of Indonesia’s constitution opted instead for pluralism, affirming a
diversity of religions, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Bhuddism. The national motto is
“Unity in Diversity.”
However, during the 1980s President Suharto, to prop up his ailing presidency, began to court
Islamic radicals, who grew rapidly in influence. One of the effects of this political shift has been an
escalation of attacks on Christian communities in Indonesia. The Barnabas Fund (UK) reported at the
end of 2000 that half a million Christians have become internally displaced, more than five thousand
people have been killed, and as many as seven thousand have been forcibly converted to Islam. Local
Muslim communities have also experienced great suffering in the violent confrontations.

This piece was written for use at a memorial service at St. Hilary’s, Kew, after the Bali terrorist attacks in 2002.

There are renewed calls today for Indonesia to become a Sharia state. However, an obstacle to
imposition of the Sharia, apart from the many moderate Muslims, is the handful of provinces with
significant Christian populations, or, in the case of Bali, a majority Hindu population.
In November 2000 the Laskar Jihad militia announced, “We intend during this Ramadan to …
carry out various activities paving the way for full Sharia at least in places that have now become
exclusively Islam, such as the islands of Ternate, Tidore and Bacan.” This is a kind of code for
religious cleansing of Christians from those regions. The town of Poso in Central Sulawesi used to
have a population of forty thousand, mostly Christian. By the end of 2002 it had been reduced to an
exclusively Muslim population of five thousand, with all of its churches destroyed. Reports of the
Laskar Jihad’s operations in Ambon and Sulawesi describe a systematic progression through villages
and towns, sometimes using equipment such as bulldozers, petrol tankers, rocket launchers, and other
military hardware. Villages are looted, burned out, and razed to the ground.
The Laskar Jihad is known to include fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and
the Philippines. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s top political and security minister, has said
of them, “They also play a role in defending truth and justice that is expected by Muslims in
Indonesia. For me, as far as what they are doing is legal and not violating the law, then this is OK.”
The Laskar Jihad has proven links to al Qaeda, which by its title is officially dedicated to
worldwide jihad against “Jews and Crusaders” (Crusaders means Christians in terrorist-speak). An al
Qaeda training center near Poso was used by the Laskar Jihad as a staging base for many attacks
against local Christians, constantly frustrating local attempts at reconciliation between Muslims and
Christians during 2001. More recently the Laskar Jihad has proclaimed West Papua as its next theater
of operations.
Thousands of militants have been gathering there to prepare the way for the next jihad
campaign. Although the Laskar Jihad claims to have disbanded just hours before the Bali atrocity, its
troops remain in Papua.
The label “sectarian violence,” used so irresponsibly by the media for all this terror, has served
to conceal and minimize the overall impact of the radical jihad groups’ activities within Indonesia.
The world has allowed desta-bilization, terror, and displacement to advance a very great way already.
The shift from jihad against Indonesian citizens to attacks on foreigners heralds a new phase in
the struggle. Yet the goal of this operation must still be measured in terms of the way it could forward
the pro-Sharia cause. It has certainly greatly weakened Hindu Bali, and, by dealing the tourist trade a
deadly blow, it will serve to isolate Indonesia from Western scrutiny and influence. Forcing
Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri to take action against militants could hasten her
political demise and leave the way open for a more acceptable replacement. It also helps the Sharia
cause that the operation was conducted in Bali, where Muslims would be much less likely to have
been hit as collateral damage.
As we mourn the lost and express sympathy and sorrow for the suffering of survivors from the
Bali attack, let us work and seek for peace in Indonesia, a return to religious harmony, and a stable
future for this great nation.
 18.
DOCUMENTATION OF
OPPRESSION OF
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN
ACEH, INDONESIA
Mark Durie

The following document was imposed on the Christian community in the District of Aceh
Singkil, in the Province of Aceh, Indonesia, on October 11, 2001. This “mutual agreement” was
imposed in order to ward off the threat of destruction of all church buildings and a real threat against
the lives of Christians in the area: this is what the document refers to as “unwanted consequences.”
This oppression of religious freedom was triggered by one church expanding the size of its building.
It was claimed by the Muslim leadership that this violated previous “agreements” in 1979 not to build
any more churches.
This “agreement” would appear to be in the spirit of the Quranic framework given for struggle
against the People of the Book. A doctrinally acceptable outcome of this struggle is submission of the
Christian community to Islam through means of a pact or treaty. Classically this would have involved
payment of a head tax to the Muslim community, as well as restrictions on places of worship. The
“agreement” below focuses on places of worship and also prohibits Christian religious meetings from
being held in private homes. It is a characteristic of Muslim perspectives on such pacts is that they
show “Islamic tolerance” (cf. 3b, below). The guarantee of peace implicit in point III. 1 is also
typical of Islamic understandings of such covenants: the Christians will not experience struggle
(jihad) if they adhere to the pact. Characteristic also is that the Christians are seen to be the cause of
potential conflict (I). No parallel constraints or appropriation are placed upon the Islamic community.
AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE ISLAMIC AND CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN THE
COUNTIES OF SIMPAN KANAN, GUNUNG MERIAH, AND DANAU PARIS IN THE
DISTRICT OF ACEH SINGKIL

I. In recent times the Islamic Communities in the Counties of Simpang Kanan, Gunung Meriah
and Danau Paris have been disturbed by the activities of the Christian Community in building and
renovating a Church in contravention to a Statement between the Islamic Community and the
Christian Community in the County of Simpang Kanan dated July 11, 1979, and an Agreement to
live in harmony together dated October 13, 1979.

II. To avoid the possibility of unwanted consequences which could instigate the destruction of
unity and oneness between the religious Communities (Islam and Christian) Tuesday, October 9, in
the Board room at the office of the District Mayor of Aceh Singkil, we the Leaders of the Islamic
religion and the Christians of the Counties of Simpang Kanan, Gunung Meriah and Danau Paris,
conducted a Consultative meeting in a family atmosphere, good ethics and the meeting was
continued on Thursday, October 11, 2001.

III. The Consultation was undertaken and witnessed to by the County Council of Government
Leaders [Mayor, Speaker of Parliament, Military, Police, Courts] of Simpang Kanan and the District
Council of Government Leaders of Aceh Singkil which resulted in the following agreement:

1. We the Islamic Community wish to live peacefully alongside and to mutually assist in the
completeness and unity as a clear implementation/form of compact unity between the
Islamic Community and the Christians which has been long developed.
2. We the Islamic Community and the Christian Community continue to respect and obey the
points of a combined statement between the Islamic Community and the Christians in the
County of Simpang Kanan dated July 11,1979, and the Agreement of unity together dated
October 13, 1979.
3. We the Islamic Community and the Christian Community have agreed upon the number of
Churches and small Houses of Worship [small church building or hut used for worship] in
the Counties of Simpang Kanan, Gunung Meriah and Danau Paris, that is 1 (one) Church
building and 4 (four) small Houses of Worship, each consisting of:
a. I (one) Church building in the Village of Kuta Kerangan which has a Government permit
measuring 12 x 24 meters and not multi-level.
b. 4 (four) small Houses of Worship as a sign of Islamic tolerance, each consisting of:
—1 (one) small House of Worship in the Village of Keras;
—1 (one) small House of Worship in the Village of Napugaluh;
—1 (one) small House of Worship in the Village of Suka Makmur;
—1 (one) small House of Worship in the Village of Lae Gecih.

4. Other than the Church building and small Houses of Worship mentioned in point 2 above
there are still other Church buildings in other places in the Counties of Simpang Kanan,
Gunung Meriah and Danau Paris which must be eliminated/destroyed by the Christian
Community themselves.
5. We the Christian Community will not engage in religious activities in the homes of
residents, nor conduct any missionary activity.

IV. This is the result of the consultation between the Islamic Community and the Christian
Community with all sincerity and a sense of brotherhood to create an atmosphere of living in
harmony between the religious communities in the Counties of Simpang Kanan, Gunung Meriah and
Danau Paris specifically and in the District of Aceh Singkil generally.

Singkil, October 11, 2001

We who conducted the Consultation
a. Islamic Community b. Christian Community
[List of 42 names] [List of 32 names]
[Signed by 23] [Signed by 20]

Witnessed by Members of the District Council of Government Leaders of the District of Aceh
Singil and County Councils of Govt Leaders of Simpang Kanan, Gunung Meriah and Danau Paris.
1. Mayor of Aceh Singkil
2. Speaker of District Parliament of Aceh Singkil
3. Assistant Mayor of Aceh Singkil
4. Chief Prosecutor of the District of Aceh Singkil
5. Chief Judge of the District Court of Aceh Singkil
6. District Secretary of Aceh Singkil
7. Head of Military for South Aceh in Singkil
8. Chairman of MPU District of Aceh Singkil
9. Member of Provincial Parliament of Aceh
10. Head of the Department of Religion of Aceh Singkil
11. Head of the Office of Social Politics
12. County Mayor of Simpang Kanan
13. County Mayor of Gunung Meriah
14. County Mayor of Simpang Kanan
15. Police Chief of Simpang Kanan
16. Police Chief of Singkil
17. Military Commander of Simpang Kanan
18. Military Commander of Singkil
19. Naval Commander of Singkil
20. Captain Zainul
 19.
JIHAD AND HUMAN
RIGHTS TODAY
An Active Ideology Incompatible
with Universal Standards of
Freedom and Equality
Bat Ye’or

Human rights and the concept of jihad are two incompatible ideas. In Judeo-Christian
societies, the concept of human rights is based on the biblical interdiction against killing and the
equality of all human beings. Though it has religious roots, this notion of human rights evolved
mainly from the nineteenth century in a secular European and American framework. It then acquired
a universal character, proclaiming the equality of all human beings and the inviolability of their
natural human rights. But it was only after World War II that this concept became the core of an
international legal system, as a tool to prevent political abuses and to protect civil populations from
genocidal policies.
Other major civilizations—including the Chinese, Hindu, and Islamic— have also conceived
legal systems that protect the rights of their citizens. However, in the Islamic case, specifically, the
fifty-four Muslim countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have conceived their own
human rights charter, contained in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
This document states in its preamble and in articles 24 and 25 that all its provisions are in
conformity with the Sharia, the religious Islamic law, which has primacy. Moreover, it proclaims that
God has made the Islamic community (umma) the best nation—and, hence, its role is to guide
humanity. We can see here the differences between the Cairo Declaration and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which does not refer to any religion or to the superiority of any group
over another but stresses the absolute equality of all human beings.

This text (“Human Rights and the Concept of Jihad”) was first used by Bat Ye’or at a US Congressional Human Rights Caucus Briefing (with Habib Malik and David G.
Littman) on February 8. 2002. It was reedited, with the assistance of Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, and published by the National Review Online on July 1, 2002. Distributed by United
Feature Syndicate Incorporated.

The institution of jihad belongs to a religious, Islamic domain, outside the realm of Western
universalism and secularism. These two domains do not meet. Secular laws can be changed,
abrogated, or ameliorated, but jihad regulations are believed to express divine commands. By
definition, human beings can neither discuss nor scrutinize the divine will, and so those jihad
obligations—attributed by the theologians to Allah—place jihad in the domain of faith. I would like
to emphasize strongly that jihad is a special domain of Islamic law. Not all Muslims know it, and
many reject its ideology. It would be a great mistake to believe that each and every Muslim identifies
with the jihad war ideology.
The ideology of jihad was formulated by leading Muslim theologians and scholars from the
eighth century onward. Their voluminous writings make clear the notion of jihad as a holy war of
conquest. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 966), for example, stated, “Jihad is a precept of Divine
institution. . . . We Malikis [adherents of one of four schools of Muslim jurisprudence] maintain it is
preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the
religion of Allah, except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting
to Islam or paying the poll tax [jizya], short of which war will be declared against them.”1
Jihad ideology separates humanity into two hostile blocs: the community of Muslims (dar al-
Islam), and the infidel non-Muslims (dar al-Harb). Allah commands the Muslims to conquer the
entire world in order to rule it according to Quranic law. Hence Muslims must wage a perpetual war
against those infidels who refuse to submit. This is the motivation for jihad. It is based on the
inequality between the community of Allah and the infidels, as was reemphasized in the Cairo
Declaration. The first is a superior group that must rule the world; the second must submit. The
current relevance of this ideology is apparent, and disturbing.
For example, Al-Muhajiroun, the Voice, the Eyes, the Ears of the Muslims, an Islamist
newspaper in London, published an article on January 27, 2001, which declared, “Upon the
establishment of the Islamic State, the whole world will potentially be Dar ul Harb since the foreign
policy of the Islamic state is aimed at conquering the world. . . . Once the Islamic State is established
anyone in Dar ul Harb will have no sanctity for his life or wealth; hence, a Muslim in such
circumstances can then go into Dar ul Harb and take the wealth from the people unless there is a
treaty with that state. If there is no treaty, individual Muslims can even go to Dar ul Harb and take
women to keep as slaves.”2 Such an attitude assumes that the infidels have no rights and are totally
dehumanized. It breeds hatred and contempt and has led to historical negationism and the destruction
of non-Muslim cultures. Moreover, such views are not confined to the most radical Islamists. They
were confirmed in the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research,
held in 1968 (Cairo: General Organization for Government Printing Offices, 1968), and regularly
since then by eminent Islamic scholars. These authoritative pronouncements have recapitulated the
theory of jihad in a manner completely consistent with the Al-Muhajiroun statements.
The theory of jihad against the infidels is composed of two parts: the ideology and the military
institutions aimed at implementing this ideology. According to these rules the infidels without a
treaty have no rights at all: they can be deported, reduced to slavery, abducted for ransom, or killed.
Women and children can be taken into slavery. Infidels can be spared by a temporary treaty, which
should not go beyond ten years. The treaty must conform to Islamic rule and serve Islamic interests;
hence a ransom should be paid. Infidels who submit to Islamic rulers are given a pledge of security
against the rules of jihad, as long as they accept a condition of humiliation and of total inferiority to
Muslims.
Jihad is therefore a genocidal war, according to the modern definition of genocide. It
encourages terrorism against civilians and does not differentiate between innocent civilians and
soldiers. All infidels without a treaty of protection can be killed. Jihad does not recognize universal
human rights, for there is no equality between Muslims and infidels and no reciprocity between
Muslims and infidels in legal matters. Jihad warriors do not accept that either the Geneva
Conventions or the conventional rules of war have any validity for them.
Jihadists have associated the notion of a reward in paradise with the practice of killing infidels.
Killing at war was, and still is, practiced by all societies. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, wars,
because they imply the acts of killing, are hateful, and peace is praised. In the jihadist ideology, it is
war that is praised, along with the killing of the infidels. Tragically, jihad ideology will not disappear
soon. It is shaping the minds of a generation of young Muslims in many countries. Jihad ideology is a
well-constructed system, created after the death of the prophet Muhammad. It has remained alive and
well since then—except under secularized Muslim governments like that of Turkey, after the
Kemalist revolution. It is delusional and dangerous to maintain that this ideology is rooted in social
deprivation, back wardness, injustice, or despair. Moreover, paying subsidies to suspend global jihad
terrorism is tantamount to paying a tribute to terrorist states, and buying one’s own peace and
security as temporarily ransomed privileges—instead of living by the principles of universal human
rights, which proclaim the inviolability of every human being. Societies that pay a tribute to survive
are destined to disappear.
 20
CULTURE OF HATE
A Racism That Denies the
History and Sufferings of
Its Victims
Bat Ye’or

At the dawn of the new millennium, the world is being confronted with an absolute culture of
hate, characterized by paroxysms of international terrorism against civilians and religious
intolerance. This culture of hate has multiple heads, from Algeria to Afghanistan to Indonesia, via
Gaza and the West Bank, Damascus, Cairo, Khartoum, Teheran, and Karachi. It scatters the seeds of
terrorism from one end of the earth to the other.
This hate, which suppresses freedom of thought and condemns difference, calls itself Islamic
jihad. It draws on religious texts whose interpretation other Muslims dispute. Moreover, because
these moderate Muslims challenge this interpretation of jihad, wishing to live in peace with the non-
Muslim peoples and nations of the world, their lives are threatened. There is constant bloodshed in
Algeria. Jihad is disseminating death and terror in Israel. In southern Sudan, jihad has caused the
death of some two million people, generated an even larger number of refugees, led to the
enslavement of tens of thousands, and produced deadly famines.
In Indonesia, some two hundred thousand deaths resulted from jihad vio-lence in East Timor.
Christians have been pursued and massacred, and their churches burned down by jihadists, in the
Moluccas and other Indonesian islands. The death toll in these violent attacks is over ten thousand,
whereas an additional eight thousand Christians have been forcibly converted to Islam, including
many who were subsequently circumcised. Atrocities are also being committed by jihadists in both
the Philippines and some northern Nigerian states. Hundreds of innocent people died when jihad
struck at the Jewish Community Center of Buenos Aires in Argentina and the US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania. In Egypt jihadists have massacred Copts in their churches and villages and murdered
European tourists. Christians in Pakistan and in Iran live in terror of accusations of blasphemy,
which, if “proven,” can yield a death sentence. And a cataclysmic act of jihad terror resulted in the
slaughter of nearly three thousand innocent civilians of multiple faiths and nationalities in New York
on September 11, 2001. None of these victims were guilty of any crime. They were murdered and
mutilated out of hate.

This text originated as a brief address on July 31, 2001, in French (“La Culture de la Haine”) at an NGO symposium organized at the United Nations (Geneva) by the
Association for World Education during the fifty-third session of the UN Subcommission on Human Rights. Translated by David G. Littman, with the author, an enlarged English
version (with editing help from Dr. Andrew G. Bostom) was published by the National Review Online, on August 2, 2002. Distributed by United Feature Syn-dicate Incorporated.
 It is this hate that Israel is fighting. The Durban World Conference against Racism—where the
culture of hate was rehabilitated, not condemned—ended only three days before the jihad terror
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When proposals were made condemning
Zionism, this confer-ence was encouraging jihad, the culture of the war against infidels, while
ignoring the principles of freedom and human rights. This was negationist racism. The word Zion,
which designates the land of Israel and its capital Jerusalem, exists in texts dating back almost three
millennia. It was the Emperor Hadrian who first called the country Palestine in 135 CE. In this
Palestine, Arabic was not the common language, the Bible and not the Qur’an was taught, and the
population was mainly Jewish. Palestine was colonized five centuries later by the Arab armies of the
Islamic jihad. Many Jews were massacred at that time, others deported to Arabia as slaves, the whole
popula-tion expropriated and reduced to the condition of dhimmis, as were all indige-nous Jews and
Christians in the southern Mediterranean countries conquered by jihad, and later those in many
European countries as well.
Should these countries conquered by Islam—Portugal, Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and the
southern regions of France and Italy, for example—still be considered Arab Muslim lands? Turkish
jihad conquests imposed the Sharia as far north as Hungary and southern Poland, as well as of central
Europe within the Ottoman Empire, including regions of Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Romania,
and Bulgaria until the end of the nineteenth century. Are these countries also to be identified as
Muslim lands, in which non-Muslim inhabitants must return to the condition of dhimmis, whose
testi-mony concerning Muslims is rejected by Islamic courts? Will they again be required to don
discriminatory garments, such as the Taliban demanded of the Hindus, or be subject to the continuing
prohibition on building and reno-vating their churches, like the Copts in Egypt?
If the liberation movement of the Jews in their ancestral homeland is interpreted as racism,
then all the movements of liberation from expropria-tion and servitude imposed by jihad are racist.
Such a stance reinstates the imperialism of the Islamic jihad, which has claimed millions of victims
over three continents during more than a millennium, deported an incalculable number of slaves, and
annihilated entire peoples, destroying their history, their monuments, and their culture. Have the
Copts of Egypt a right to their history and their language? Do the Kabili of North Africa have a right
to theirs? We must acknowledge all the victims of the racism that jihad creates, a racism that denies
the history, sufferings, and memories of those conquered.
Arab racism consists of calling the Land of Israel Arab land, whereas no Palestinian province,
village, or town, including Jerusalem, is mentioned either in the Qur’an or in any Arabic text before
the end of the ninth century. On the contrary, these locations are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible,
which represents the religious and historical heritage of the Jewish people. The Bible, which tells the
history of this country, tells it in Hebrew, the language of the country, and not in Arabic. Palestinian
racism consists of asserting that the whole history of Israel, biblical history, is Arab, Islamic, and
Palestinian history. The kings and prophets of Israel were Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim kings and
prophets, as were Jesus, his family, and the apostles. This Ara-bization and Islamization of the Bible
thus robs not only the Jews but also the whole of Christianity of their history. New theologies of
substitution are developed, transferring Israel’s heritage to Arab and Muslim Palestine.
The imperialism of jihad consists of appropriating the whole history and identity of the
peoples who were conquered and thrown into the nonexistence of dhimmitude. This is a total
negation of the other, a refusal to acknowledge it as equal. Israel’s battle is not a battle of colonists,
as some European polit-ical circles like to claim, because Europe itself had a colonial history on all
continents, which it projects onto Israel. Similarly, Europe projects its own history of Nazism on to
the Israelis, thereby revenging itself on the revela-tions of historians. Israel’s battle is not a battle
against the Muslim world; it is a battle against the unbridled hate of jihad. Israelis are struggling to
main-tain their liberation from the yoke of dhimmitude, which was imposed in order to eradicate the
Jews in their indigenous homeland. That is why Chris-tians who reject the new theologies of
substitution are joining Israel in its fight, as are Muslims who refuse to allow the values of Islam to
be perverted by the ideology of jihad. It is through this common effort that reconciliation between
peoples can be achieved, replacing the culture of hate with a culture of friendship.
 21.
THE DHIMMITUDE OF THE WEST
Mark Durie

Dhimmitude is an Islamic phenomenon. It defines the condition of sub-missive surrender to

Islamic rule without conversion to the Islamic faith. Under classical theological formulations
developed in the first centuries of Islam, the region where Islam rules is known as dar al-lslam. the
“House of Islam.”
From the very beginning the dar al-lslam included many non-Mus-lims; indeed, they were
normally in the majority after initial conquest. Based on the example of Muhammad’s dealings with
the conquered Jewish farmers of Khaybar, Fadak, Tayma, and Wadi-1 Qura, the institution of the
dhimma, or “pact of protection,” was developed to provide for those who refused to convert to Islam.
The dhimma was granted by the conquerors as one possible outcome of military jihad. It assured the
vanquished an insti-tutional legal framework that guaranteed their religious freedom, and deter-
mined their social and economic place in the Islamic state. In return the people of the pact, or
dhimmis, were required to pay tribute in perpetuity to the Muslim community {umma), and to adopt a
position of humble servi-tude to the umma.
The Quranic verse that dictates this fundamental character for dhimmi-tude is sura 9:29:
“Fight against those who do not believe in Allah nor in the Last Day, and do not make forbidden
what Allah and His Messenger have made forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, of
those who have been given the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [head tax]
readily and are humbled.”

Reprinted with permission from the Newsletter for the Centre for Islamic Studies. London Bible College.

Within the Islamic state, all non-Muslims who are not objects of war are considered to be
dhimmis—communities who are allowed to exist within the dar al-lslam by virtue of surrender under
the conditions of a dhimmi pact. These are the permanently conquered peoples of Islam.
Historian Bat Ye’or has documented the social, political, economic, and religious conditions of
dhimmi communities—Jews and Christians—in the Middle East. It is a sad history of dispossession
and decline. Legal provisions applying to dhimmis ensured their humiliation and inferiority, and to
this was added the often crippling taxes that were allocated to support the Muslim community. Under
conditions of dhimmitude there was also a constant risk of jihad conditions being reinvoked—of
massacre and dispossession—if the dhimmi community was considered to have failed to live up to
the conditions of their pact. History records many examples where dhimmis were attacked by their
fellow Muslim citizens on such grounds—for example, the massacres of the Jews of Granada in 1066
and of the Christians of Damascus in 1860.
Like sexism and racism, dhimmitude is manifested not only in legal and social structures but
also in a psychology of inferiority, a will to serve, which the dominated community adopts in self-
preservation.

The law required from dhimmis a humble demeanor, eyes lowered, a hurried pace. They
had to give way to Muslims in the street, remain standing in their presence and keep silent,
only speaking to them when given permission. They were forbidden to defend themselves if
attacked, or to raise a hand against a Muslim on pain of having it amputated. Any criticism of
the Koran or Islamic law annuled the protection pact. In addition the dhimmi was duty-bound
to be grateful, since it was Islamic law that spared his life.
The whole corpus of these practices . . . formed an unchanging behavior pattern which
was perpetuated from generation to generation for centuries. It was so deeply internalized that
it escaped critical evaluation and invaded the realm of self-image, which was henceforth
dominated by a conditioning in self-devaluation… . This situation, determined by a corpus of
precise legislation and social behaviour patterns based on prejudice and religious traditions,
induced the same type of mentality in all dhimmi groups. It has four major characteristics:
vulnerability, humiliation, grati-tude and alienation.1

As one Iranian convert to Christianity put it, “Christianity is still viewed as the religion of an
inferior class of people. Islam is the religion of masters and rulers, Christianity is the religion of
slaves.” Often dhimmi Christians can be seen to collude to conceal their own condition, finding
themselves psycho-logically unable to critique or oppose it.
Although many of the laws of dhimmitude were dismantled during European colonization,
today they are making a comeback. Islam is exerting an increasingly important influence in the
destiny of Western cultures. Through immigration, oil economics, cultural exchange, and even
terrorism, the remnants of what was once Christendom now find themselves having to attend to Islam
and its distinctive “take” on the world. We increasingly hear that we have an “Abrahamic”
civilization—an Islamic perspective, not a Judeo-Christian one.
Within the Islamic self-consciousness, there are limited options for the roles that non-Muslim
communities can play. The only real alternative to “enemies of Allah” for such communities is
dhimmitude.
The requirement that dhimmis affirm and serve Islam greatly limits the repertoire of responses
that dhimmified Christians can have toward it. Where there are grounds for confrontation, the only
way of struggling per-mitted to the dhimmi is by saying soft things. Such political correctness is
itself an injustice that needs to be exposed and challenged. This dynamic, when combined with the
meanings of “struggle” (jihad) that Islam claims as its divine right without apology of any kind, can
intimidate and debilitate Christians who are free and do not live under Islam. The cumulative effect
can be that the gross injustices come to seem as somehow excusable or unexceptional. An infamous
example is the weak international response today to the persecution of non-Muslims (not just
Christians) under Islam. This is epitomized in the slavish attitude adopted by Mary Robinson, UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement she read to an Orga-nization of the Islamic
Conference Symposium on Human Rights in Islam, held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva in 2002.
After offering praise Robinson adopts the strategy of affirming the inherent righteousness of Islam:

It is important to recognize the greatness of Islam, its civilizations and its immense
contribution to the richness of the human experience, not only through profound belief and
theology but also through the sciences, literature and art.
No one can deny that at its core Islam is entirely consonant with the principle of
fundamental human rights, including human dignity, tolerance, solidarity and equality.
Numerous passages from the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad will testify to
this. No one can deny, from a his-torical perspective, the revolutionary force that is Islam,
which bestowed rights upon women and children long before similar recognition was afforded
 in other civilizations. . . . And no one can deny the acceptance of the universality of human
rights by Islamic States.2

Observe here the dhimmi themes of gratitude, affirmation of moral superi-ority of Islam (with
the implication of inferiority of the infidel), and the denial of any possible voice of protest against
human rights abuses in Islamic states. It is a classical dhimmi strategy to avoid confrontation by
affirming what is best in Islam. Change for the better is only allowed to arise from values that
Muslims can see as springing from their faith itself. This strategy conceals and disempowers the
moral worth of non-Muslim value systems. It is the strategy of those whose existence is marginal and
threatened.
For those living in liberal democracies, this is not in the end a healthy way to engage with the
“other” that is Islam. It establishes a framework in which Islam takes on the role of a dominator that
expects to be praised, admired, and stroked. The reaction to deserved criticism, when it manages to
find a voice, can be shock, denial, and outrage.
For Christians there is a special challenge here. In adapting to this requirement of grateful
service, Christians can interpret their own submis-siveness in gospel categories of forgiveness and
service. But from the Islamic side this just looks like “submission”; that is, the program of Islam
itself is working. Islam interprets such submissiveness as its rightful due. not an expression of grace,
and affords itself the privilege of feeling gen-erous. Likewise, international aid is interpreted as
tribute, a rightful due. This perception is reinforced when the most peaceful Islamic nations receive
the least aid.
Another cost of this dynamic is a widespread Islamic pattern of claiming the role of victim
while inculpating others for problems not of their making. Since Islam is not confronted about its
own difficulties, while having its virtues affirmed, Muslim communities have permission to feel
themselves aggrieved. This is enormously costly for the ongoing social and economic development
of Islamic nations, and it is costly for Western societies.
In Victoria, Australia, our Equal Opportunity Commission has a “Stand Up to Racism”
campaign, which announces to the community that Islam is a religion to be admired—this is called
“dispelling myths.” Yet the majority of attacks on Australian religious buildings since September 11
have been against churches and synagogues. Our EOC’s tactic distorts the whole meaning of
“tolerance” and undermines social harmony. This issue is espe-cially urgent now that significant
numbers of Westerners are embracing Islam.
Appeasement and the “softly, softly” approach only buys time. Sooner or later the will to
dominance inherent in the jihad stream of the Qur’an and Sunna will rear its head when a faithful
believer reads the Qur’an and finds that it says to struggle against unbelievers and subjugate them.
Frank expo-sure and critique offers the best way to contain this outcome.
 22.
BEYOND MUNICH
The Spirit of Eurabia
Bat Ye’or

Allow me first to make a preliminary observation about the title of this session: the “return of
the spirit of Munich”—a title that I find some-what optimistic.1At Munich in 1938, France and
England, exhausted by the death toll of the Great War, abandoned Czechoslovakia to the Nazi beast
in the hope that by doing so they would avoid another conflict. The “spirit of Munich” thus refers to a
policy of states and of peoples who refuse to confront a threat and attempt to obtain peace and
security through conciliation and appeasement, or even, for some, an active collaboration with the
criminals. For my own part, I would say that we have gone beyond the spirit of Munich, and the
present situation should be seen not in the con-text of the World War II but in the present jihadist
context.
In fact, for the past thirty years France and the rest of Europe have been living in a situation of
passive self-defense against terrorism. This began with Palestinian terrorism and then became Islamic
terrorism, not to speak of the local European terrorism, including the IRA in Great Britain, ETA in
Spain, the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Red Brigades in Italy.
One need only look at our cities, airports, and streets, at the schools with their security guards,
even the systems of public transportation, not to men-tion the embassies and the synagogues, to see
the whole astonishing array of police and security services. The fact that authorities everywhere
refuse to name the evil does not negate that evil. Yet we know perfectly well that we have been under
threat for a long time; one has only to open one’s eyes, and our authorities know it better than any of
us, because it is they who have ordered these very security measures.

This text, a lecture delivered on June 6. 2(K)4, in Paris, was translated from French by Hugh Fitzgerald with assistance from David G. Littman.

In his book La vie quotidienne dans I’Europe medievale sous domination arabe (Daily life in
medieval Europe under the Arab domination), published in 1978, Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, a
French specialist on Andalusia (Islamic Spain) and the Maghreb, described under the subheading
“Une grande peur” (A great fear) the conditions of life for the indigenous non-Muslim peoples in the
Andalusian countryside.2 Today, Europe itself is living with this great fear.
At Munich, war had not yet been declared. Today the war is everywhere. And yet the
European Union and the states that it comprises have denied that war’s reality, right up to the terrorist
attack in Madrid of March 11, 2004. If there is a danger as Europe proclaims urbi et orbi (“from the
city to the world”), that danger can only come from America and Israel. What should one
understand? For can anyone seriously maintain that it is the American and Israeli forces that threaten
us in Europe? No, what must be understood is that American and Israeli policies of resistance to
jihadist terror provoke reprisals against a Europe that long ago ceased to defend itself. So that peace
can prevail throughout the world, those two countries, America and Israel, need only adopt the
European strategy of constant surrender, based on the denial of aggression. How simple it all is . . .
This strategy is less worthy than even Munich’s connivance and cow-ardice. At Munich there
was some sort of future contemplated, even if war, or peace, were to determine the future. There was
a choice. In the present sit-uation there is no choice, for we deny the reality of the jihad danger. The
only danger comes, allegedly, from the United States and Israel. We conduct a propaganda campaign
in the media against these two countries before entering into a yet more aggressive phase; it’s so
much easier, so much less dangerous . . . and we conduct this campaign with the weapons of
cowardice: defamation, misinformation, the corruption of venal politicians.
In the time of Munich, one could envisage that there would be battles that might be won.
There was at least the Maginot Line for defense. In Europe today, dominated by the spirit of
dhimmitude—the condition of sub-mission of Jews and Christians under Muslim domination—there
is no con-ceivable battle. Submission, without a tight, has already taken place. A machinery that has
made Europe the new continent of dhimmitude was put into motion more than thirty years ago at the
instigation of France.
A wide-ranging policy was then first sketched out, a symbiosis of Europe with the Muslim
Arab countries that would endow Europe—and especially France, the project’s prime mover—with a
weight and a prestige to rival that of the United States.3 This policy was undertaken quite discreetly,
outside of official treaties, under the innocent-sounding name of the Euro-Arab Dia-logue. An
association of European parliamentarians from the European Eco-nomic Community (EEC) was
created in 1974 in Paris: the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation. It was entrusted
with managing all of the aspects of Euro-Arab relations—financial, political, economic, cul-tural, and
those pertaining to immigration. This organization functioned under the auspices of the European
heads of government and their foreign ministers, working in close association with their Arab
counterparts and with the representatives of the European Commission and the Arab League.
This strategy, the goal of which was the creation of a pan-Mediterranean Euro-Arab entity,
permitting the free circulation both of men and of goods, also determined the immigration policy
with regard to Arabs in the European Community (EC). And, for the past thirty years, it also
established the rele-vant cultural policies in the schools and universities of the EC. Since the first
Cairo meeting of the Euro-Arab Dialogue in 1975, attended by the ministers and heads of state from
both European and Arab countries and by represen-tatives of the EC and the Arab League,
agreements have been concluded con-cerning the diffusion and the promotion in Europe of Islam, of
the Arabic lan-guage and culture, through the creation of Arab cultural centers in European cities.
Other accords soon followed, all intended to ensure a cultural, eco-nomic, political Euro-Arab
symbiosis. These far-ranging efforts involved the universities and the media (both written and
audiovisual) and even included the transfer of technologies, including nuclear technology. Finally, a
Euro-Arab associative diplomacy was promoted in international forums, especially at the United
Nations.
The Arabs set the conditions for this association: (1) a European policy that would be
independent from, and opposed to, that of the United States; (2) the recognition by Europe of a
“Palestinian people” and the creation of a “Palestinian” state; (3) European support for the PLO; (4)
the designation of Arafat as the sole and exclusive representative of that “Palestinian people”; (5) the
delegitimizing of the State of Israel, both historically and politically, its shrinking into nonviable
borders, and the Arabization of Jerusalem. From this sprang the hidden European war against Israel,
through economic boy-cotts and in some cases academic boycotts as well, through deliberate vilifi-
cation, and through the spreading of both anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
During the past three decades a considerable number of nonofficial agreements between the
countries of the EC (subsequently the EU) on the one hand, and the countries of the Arab League on
the other, determined the evolution of Europe in its current political and cultural aspects. I will cite
here only four of them: (1) it was understood that Europeans who would be dealing with Arab
immigrants would undergo special sensitivity training, in order to better appreciate their customs,
their moeurs; (2) Arab immigrants would remain under the control and the laws of their countries of
origin; (3) history textbooks in Europe would be rewritten by joint teams of European and Arab
historians—naturally the battles of Poitiers and Lepanto, or the Spanish reconquista, did not possess
the same significance on both Mediter-ranean littorals; (4) the teaching of the Arabic language and of
Arab and Islamic culture were to be taught, in the schools and universities of Europe, by Arab
teachers experienced in teaching Europeans.

THE SITUATION TODAY

On the political front, Europe has tied its destiny to the Arab countries and thus become
involved in the logic of jihad against Israel and the United States. How could Europe denounce the
culture of jihadic venom that exudes from its allies, while for so many years it did everything to
activate the jihad by hiding and justifying it by claiming that the real danger comes not from jihadists
themselves but from those who resist the Arab jihadists, the very allies that Europe serves at every
international gathering and in the European media.
On the cultural front, there has been a complete rewriting of history, which was first
undertaken during the 1970s in European universities. This process was ratified by the parliamentary
assembly of the Council of Europe in September 1991, at its meeting devoted to “The Contribution
of the Islamic Civilization to European Culture.” It was reaffirmed by President Jacques Chirac in his
address of April 8, 1996, in Cairo, and reinforced by Romano Prodi, president of the European
Commission, through the recent creation of a “Foundation on the Dialogue of Cultures and
Civilizations” (May 2004) that was to control everything that was said, written, and taught on the
new continent of Eurabia, which encompasses Europe and the Arab countries.
The dhimmitude of Europe began with the subversion of its culture and its values, with the
destruction of its history, and its replacement by an Islamic vision of that history, supported by the
romantic myth of Andalusia. Eurabia adopted the Islamic conception of history, in which Islam is
defined as a liberating force, a force for peace, and the jihad is regarded a “just war.” Those who
resist the jihad, like the Israelis and the Americans, are the guilty ones, rather than those who wage it.
It is this policy that has inculcated in us, the Europeans, the spirit of dhimmitude that blinds us, that
instills in us a hatred for our own values and the wish to destroy our own origins and our own history.
“The greatest intellectual swindle would be to allow Europe to continue to believe that it derives
from a Judeo-Christian tradition. That is a complete lie,” Tariq Ramadan has stated.4 And thus we
despise George W. Bush because he still believes in that tradition. What simpletons, those Amer-
icans . . .
The spirit of dhimmitude is not merely that of submission without fighting, not even a
surrender. It is also the denial of one’s own humiliation through this process of integrating values that
lead to our own destruction; it is the ideological mercenaries offering themselves up for service in the
jihad; it is the traditional tribute paid by their own hand, and with humiliation, by the European
dhimmis, in order to obtain a false security; it is the betrayal of one’s own people. The non-Muslim
protected dhimmi under Islamic rule could obtain an ephemeral and delusive security through
services rendered to the Muslim oppressor and through servility and flattery. And that is precisely the
situation in Europe today.
Dhimmitude is not only a set of abstract laws inscribed in the Sharia; it is also a complex set of
behaviors developed over time by the dhimmis them-selves, as a way both to adapt to and to survive
oppression, humiliation, and insecurity. This has produced a particular mentality as well as social and
political behaviors essential to the survival of peoples who, in a certain sense, would always remain
hostages to the Islamic system.
Dhimmis are inferior beings who endure humiliation and aggression in silence. Their
aggressors, meanwhile, enjoy an impunity that only increases their hatred and their feeling of
superiority, guaranteed by the protection of the law. The culture of dhimmitude expanding throughout
Europe is that of hate, of crimes against non-Muslims that go unpunished, a culture that is imported
from the Arab countries along with “Palestinianism,” the new Euro-pean subculture that has been
raised to the level of a European Union cult, and its exalted war banner against Israel.
At Munich in 1938, France had not renounced its own culture or its own history, thereby
becoming German; it did not proclaim that the source of its own culture was the German civilization.
The spirit of dhimmitude that today blinds Europe springs not from a situation imposed from without
but from a choice made freely and systematically carried out, in its political dimensions, over the
course of the last thirty years.
Well-known scholar of Islam William Montgomery Watt, himself an Islamophile, described
the disappearance of the Christian world from the countries that had been Islamized, and often
Arabized as well, in his book The Majesty That Was Islam (1974): “There was nothing dramatic
about what happened; it was a gentle death, a phasing out.”-’5 But Watt was wrong; in fact, the long
death throes of Christianity under Islam were extremely painful and tragic, as can be seen even in the
twentieth century, with the genocide of the Armenians, the Lebanese Christians’ resistance in the
1970s and 1980s, for the last decades the genocide in the Sudan, and finally the relentless Arab jihad
against Israel, which is only one of the examples of the age-old struggle by people devoted to
fighting for freedom against dhimmi-tude, for the dignity of man against the slavery of oppression
and hate. But the observation by Watt—about the “gentle death, the phasing out”—applies perfectly
to Europe today.
 23
EURABIA
The Road to Munich
Bat Ye’or

September 11, 2001, was for millions worldwide a day of sorrow, pain, and profound sadness;
a day of solemn solidarity, self-sacrifice, and prayer. For others it was a day of rejoicing, a revengeful
exultation, a long-awaited triumphalism born from the death and suffering of thousands of innocent
vic-tims. They were saying: That’ll teach them! America deserves it and must repent! And many
were asking maliciously: Don’t you have remorse for your wrongs? Why don’t you ask yourself why
you are hated? If we hate you, it can only be your own fault. Emerging from the ruin and distress that
they had endured, Americans asked themselves: What have we done? We have been vilely attacked,
yet we are accused. Why do they hate us?
And that’s the snare. For iniquity engulfs those who hate, who kill—and not the hated victim.
It is those who hate who are sick: sick from envy; sick from the frustration of having failed to
achieve an absolute, pathological domination; sick from a schizophrenic lust for power. To heal these
societies one must first diagnose the evil and not mask it under the excuse of “poverty” and
“underdevelopment.” Terrorism is not a consequence of poverty. Many societies are poor, yet they do
not produce an organized criminality of terror. To subsidize societies that nourish ideologies of hate
will not suppress ter-rorism; rather, such pusillanimity will reinforce it.
America should not choose European ways: the road back to Munich (see chap. 22 for
explanation) via appeasement, collaboration, and dhimmi-tude. For decades, at the instigation of
France, Europe backed Arafat—the godfather of modem terrorism—as the champion of liberty, and
their hero.

This essay was translated from French by David G. Littman, with the author, and was first published in the National Review Online. October 9. 2002. Distributed by United
Feature Syndicate Incorporated.

After the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil blackmail in 1973, the Euro-pean Community
(EC) created a structure of cooperation and dialogue with the Arab League. The Euro-Arab Dialogue
(EAD) began as a French initia-tive composed of representatives from the EC and Arab League
countries. From the outset the EAD was considered a vast transaction: The EC agreed to support the
Arab anti-Israeli policy in exchange for wide commercial agreements. The EAD had a supplementary
function: the shifting of Europe into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the
traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity. The EAD operated at the highest political level, with foreign
ministers on both sides, and the presidents of the EC—later the European Union (EU)—with the
secretary general of the Arab League. The central body of the Dialogue, the General Commission,
was responsible for planning its objectives in the political, cultural, social, economic, and tech-
nological domains; it met in private, without summary records, a common practice for European
meetings.
Over the years, Euro-Arab collaboration developed at all levels: polit-ical, economic,
religious, and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press,
publishers, and writers’ unions. This structure became the channel for Arab immigration into Europe,
of anti-Americanism, and of Judeophobia, which—linked with a general hatred of the West and its
denigration—constituted a pseudoculture imported from Arab countries. The interpenetration of
European and Arab policies deter-mined Europe’s relentless anti-Israel policy and its anti-
Americanism. This politico-economic edifice, with minute details, is rooted in a multiform European
symbiosis with the Arab world.
West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher expressed the aims clearly in his
opening speech to the Hamburg Symposium’s Euro-Arab Dialogue of April 11-13, 1983 (at a time
when West Germany held the pres-idency of the European Community):

The Euro-Arab Dialogue would indeed remain incomplete if the political side were to be
ignored or not taken seriously. Both parties to the Dialogue, both partners, should always
remind themselves of the joint Memorandum issued in Cairo in 1975, the Charter of the
Dialogue. The Memorandum contains the following quote: “The Euro-Arab Dialogue is the
outcome of the common political will which strives for the creation of a special rela-tionship
between the two groups.” We Europeans spoke out in a clear and convinced manner for a
revival of the Euro-Arab Dialogue in the Vienna Declaration of June 13, 1980. Since then, the
various working groups within the Dialogue have become more active and the prospects for
the future are more promising.
Our Arab partners in the Dialogue have also indicated that they are in favour of
continuing and intensifying this Dialogue. Both in the course of this joint venture, our
Symposium, and through its outcome, it will become clear that we are determined to give the
Euro-Arab Dialogue a new and long lease of life.

Europe’s economic greed was instrumentalized by Arab League policy in a long-term political
strategy targeting Israel, Europe, and America. Arab eco-nomic ascendancy over the EC influenced
the latter’s policy toward Israel. The EAD was the vehicle for legitimizing the propaganda of the
PLO, procuring it international diplomatic recognition and conferring on Arafat’s terrorist movement
honor and international stature by supporting Arafat’s address to the General Assembly of the United
Nations on November 13, 1974. Through the labyrinth of the EAD system, a policy of Israel’s
delegit-imization was planned at both the EC’s national and international levels. Approved
instructions from the highest political, religious, and academic authorities functioned within the
EAD’s multiple commissions, implicating the media, universities, and diverse cultural activities. The
EAD was the mouthpiece that diffused and popularized throughout Europe the defamation of Israel.
France, Belgium, and Luxembourg were then the most active agents of the EAD.
Strategically, the Euro-Arab cooperatin was a political instrument for anti-Americanism in
Europe, whose aim was to separate and weaken the two continents by an incitement to hostility and
the permanent denigration ofAmerican policy in the Middle East. The Cultural infrastructe of the
EAD allowed the traditional cultural baggage of Arab Societies,with its anti-Chris-tian and anti-
Jewish prejudices and its hostility against Isreal and the West,to be imported into Europe. The
discredit heaped on the infidel Judeo-Christian culture was expressed by the claim of the superiority
of hte ISlamic civ-ilization,at which source European scholars, over the centuries--it was said--had
humbly slaked their thirst for knowledge. Drowned in this wave of Arab cultural and religious
expansionism that was integrated into the cul-tural activities of the EAD, Europeans adopted the
Arab-Islamic conception of history. The obsequiousness of certain academics,subjected to a policital
power dominated by economic materialism, is reminiscent of the worst periods of the decline of
civilizations. The suppression of intellectual freedom imported from undemocratic Muslim countries
and boycott of Israeli academics by some of their European colleagues.
The cogs created by the EAD led the EC to tolerate Palestinian terrorism on its own territory,
to justify it, and finally to finance Palestinian infrastruc-ture—later to become the Palestinian
Authority—and hate-mongering edu-cational system. The ministers and intellectuals who have
created Eurabia deny the current wave of criminal attacks against European Jews, which they,
themselves, have inspired. They deny the antisemitism, as they have neglected the attacks against the
fundamental rights of their own citizens by delinquency and the terrorist threats, which they have
allowed to develop with impunity in their countries, in exchange for financial profits. The silence and
the negligence of the public authorities faced with this wave of antise-mitic aggression is but the tip
of the iceberg of a global policy. The EAD, which had tied Arab strategic policies for the destruction
of Israel to the European economy, was the Trojan horse for Europe’s inclusion in the orbit of Arab-
Muslim influence.
With the support of parliaments and ministries, the EAD concealed behind the Arab-Israel
conflict the global jihad being perpetrated on all con-tinents. Europe’s subservience to Arab policy
led the EU to give an artificial and absolute priority to the Arab-Israel conflict in international affairs.
It could have been solved from the start by the integration of about five hun-dred thousand Arab-
Palestinian refugees into the Arab League countries, foremost into the Emirate of Transjordan—
created by Great Britain in 1922 from 78 percent of the total League of Nation-mandated area of
Palestine, the historical Holy Land on both sides of the Jordan river. After the 1947-49 Arab League
war against Israel, this territory was increased to 83 percent of Palestine, with the occupation of what
became the “West Bank” of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Europe’s pathological obsession with the Arab-Palestinian conflict has obscured the criminal
ongoing persecution of Christians and other minorities in Muslim lands worldwide, as well as the
sufferings and slavery of millions from jihad wars in Africa and Asia.
The sudden collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers, the recent threat of an American
boycott of what was perceived as an antisemitic Europe, President Bush’s ironic criticism of Europe’s
moral haughtiness, and especially the rise of extreme-right parties brought responsible politicians to
their senses. They had been blinded by a Palestinian fantasy (“Jenin-grad”); racist, genocidal
accusations; and massive media disinformation arousing hatred on their radios and televisions against
small, vulnerable Jewish com-munities, tracked, aggressed, criminalized, and terrorized—while the
leaders of their countries looked the other way and pretended that Israel was respon-sible for the
violent aggressions against Jews in Europe by Arab-Muslim immigrants. Then they saw criminal
bands terrorizing their city suburbs, as well as the terrorist networks and rampant fanaticism, that
they had over-looked for decades. Today the likely war against Iraq has caused shivers throughout
Europe, which is trembling at the possible collapse of its Arab alliances, built on foundations that
implied a rupture with America and the demise of Israel. Europe had tied its Arab-Muslim friendly
alliances and prosperity to a cooperation with Middle East tyrants, and by supporting Yasir Arafat’s
criminal policies.
Hence the desperate move to save Arafat recently, backed by a wide-spread and slanderous
antisemitic media campaign, together with criminal acts in Europe against Jews that were neither
checked nor condemned. Over fifty years ago the Holocaust was the response to Zionism. Today,
diaspora Jews and Israel would do well to foresee a possible vengeful reckoning after Saddam
Hussein falls and Arafat is marginalized—an Arafat who was courted by the EU, which greatly
increased its funding to the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords of 1993, without adequate
controls. The recent anti-Jewish hysteria in Europe was an advertisement to neutralize diaspora Jews
and the Israeli self-defense mechanism against Palestinian terror, which is why it was so superbly
overlooked by the highest authorities. This complacent attitude has scandalized many European
friends of Israel, who are much more numerous than the EAD censorship organs and the Euro-Arab
terrorist networks would have us believe. Yet the majority of Euro-peans, who are not antisemitic, are
totally unaware of most of the EAD’s policy, since its key deliberations are unrecorded. More
research and publi-cations are needed in this field.
The cracks between Europe and America reveal the divergences between the choice of liberty
and the road back to Munich on which the European Union continues to caper to new Arab-Islamic
tunes, now called “occupa-tion,” “peace and justice,” and “immigrants’ rights”—themes that were
com-posed for Israel’s burial—and for Europe’s demise.
 24
THE ISLAMIC CONQUEST
OF BRITAIN
Srdja Trifkovic

The latest disclosures (December 19) that trained al Qaeda terrorists are present in the United
Kingdom and operate in classic small-cell structures came only a day after the arrest of seven
suspected Muslim terrorists in London and Edinburgh.1 According to British government sources, the
most likely threat from such groups may take the form of a “truckful of explosives left in a public
place” and attacks on “transport, particularly using aviation … clearly a favourite technique.” A
Whitehall official acknowledged on December 18 that even if counterterrorist operations succeeded
in disrupting al Qaeda, its ideology would live on in others: “My prediction is that we are in for the
long haul.”
The official did not say, but we know, that the “long haul” is open-ended. It is certain to go on
for as long as Great Britain continues to have one of the largest Muslim diasporas anywhere outside
the Islamic world. This “long haul” may well end up in Britain becoming an Islamic country by the
end of this century, with Sharia law replacing common law and the Qur’an replacing the magnificent
edifice of its unwritten constitution. If current demographic trends continue—with native Britons
aborting and birth-controlling them-selves to death, with Muslims already settled in Britain having
third world birth rates, and with rampant immigration continuing unabated—the writing is clearly on
the wall. London and a host of industrial cities in the Midlands already have a nonnative majority.
An early sign of what was about to hit England came exactly twenty years ago in a declaration
issued by the Islamic Foundation in the industrial city of Leicester, one hundred miles north of
London. It stated that the Islamic movement is “an organized struggle to change the existing society
into an Islamic society based on the Qur’an and the Sunna and make Islam, which is a code for entire
life, supreme and dominant, especially in the socio-political spheres.” This demands clear acceptance
“that the ultimate objective of the Islamic movement shall not be realized unless the struggle is made
by locals. For it is only they who have the power to change the society into an Islamic society.”

Reprinted with permission from Chronicles.http://www.ChroniclesMagazine.org.

A generation later mosques have multiplied all over Britain and provided the backbone to
terrorist support networks. This was partly due to the British Home Office routinely approving
priority entry into the country to Muslim clerics from countries such as Pakistan, who speak no
English and do not want to control extremists who control the mosques.2 On the first anniversary of
the September 11 attacks, to take but one notable example, Muslim leaders gathered at the Finsbury
Park mosque in north London “to hail Osama bin Laden as a hero and to evoke the ‘positive
outcomes’ of the attacks in New York and Washington.”-3 This mosque has long been known as a
recruiting ground for radical Muslims, and it has been visited by Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard C.
Reid. Abu Hamza al-Masri, the Egyptian-born imam of the Finsbury Park mosque, is wanted in
Yemen on terrorism charges.
Nevertheless, the conference organized at the Finsbury Park mosque under the title
“September 11: A Towering Day in History” and advertised by posters depicting hijacked planes
smashing into the World Trade Center, was an act of supreme contempt for the host society that also
indicated an impressive level of self-confidence. No outsiders were allowed to attend, but the spirit of
the proceedings could be gleaned when one of the 150 par-ticipants, Muhammad al-Massari from
Saudi Arabia, said at a news confer-ence that the September 11 onslaught “wasn’t the wisest thing,
but legiti-mate, yes. An eye for an eye as an old book says. But it was only one eye for 100 eyes.
There is still much more to do.” Bin Laden, he said, was “fighting according to his beliefs. Anyone
who fights according to his beliefs is a hero.” The convention was organized by a group called al-
Muha-jiroun, led by Syrian-born Omar Bakri Mohamed. Before the meeting, the al-Muhajiroun Web
site said the “positive outcomes” of September 11 included “the clear crystallization of the two
camps of Islam and Kufr (non-Islam), of believers and hypocrites.”
Such remarks, and the fact that the conference went ahead at all, indicate the extent to which
the British authorities are reluctant to move against rad-ical Muslim elements, which have been
routinely linked to the recruitment of young British Muslims to fight in conflicts abroad. The British
security ser-vices, like the government, have long been in a state of denial regarding the Islamist
threat. Time and again the British courts have interpreted criminal, asylum, and terrorism laws in a
manner damaging to the security of the realm and favorable to the Islamic underground. British
police have repeatedly ignored warnings that the recruiting agents for extremist groups prey on
mosques, universities, and community centers. There are now over three hundred after-hours schools
run by militant groups all over Britain, in which the children are indoctrinated, Taliban-style.
Maintaining the loyalty of the Muslim diaspora in Britain has been the mullahs’ top priority, and
Islamic religious instruction has been carried out by immigrant imams, who have a clear agenda
aimed at inculcating their British-born wards with disdain and even hatred for their surroundings.
“We will remodel this country in an Islamic image,” Sheikh Omar bin Bakri, the organizer of
September 11 conference, declared three years ago. He still belongs to the International Islamic Front
for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, founded by bin Laden, and boasts, “We collect funds to be able
to carry on the struggle; we recruit militiamen; and sometimes we take care of these groups’
propaganda requirements in Europe.”4 Bakri also heads the London branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Arabic
for “Islamic Revolutionary Party”), which has some fifty branches all over Western Europe. When
the Afghan war started in October 2001, Bakri declared, “We will replace the Bible with the Kuran. .
. . Christians have to learn that they cannot do this to Islam. We will not allow our brothers to be
colonialised. If they try it, Britain will turn into Bosnia.”5
Remarkably, this same Mr. Bakri (who does not seem to realize that the Bible has long been
replaced in Great Britain by Mr. Blair’s therapeutic state) was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1985 as
a dangerous agitator for creating al-Muhajiroun, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Party. He has
lived in London since 1986, drawing five hundred dollars a week a week in welfare and calling on
young Muslims to take up arms against the “opponents of Islam”—ultimately meaning everyone who
is not Muslim or who does not subscribe to his vision of Islam. While living in Britain at its
taxpayers’ expense he denounces the host country as “the spearhead of blasphemy that seeks to
overthrow Muslims and the Islamic caliphate.” As early as 1991, during the Gulf War, Bakri said that
then prime minister John Major “is a legitimate target. If anyone gets the opportunity to assassinate
him, they should take it. It is our Islamic duty and we will celebrate his death.”
We can only guess how many thousands of Bakris operate freely in Boston, Michigan, New
Jersey, or, for that matter, in Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Amsterdam, or Milan. They take full advantage
of the host countries’ laws and often operate under the guise of charities. A notable example was the
International Development Foundation (IDF), with offices in London’s Curzon Street, which was
named in a French parliamentary report in 2001 as a financial front for al Qaeda. Its trustees were
four brothers belonging to the wealthy bin Mahfouz family, one of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful,
with a fortune estimated at over four billion dollars. The British Charity Commis-sion says that the
IDF was connected to Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi busi-nessman and Irish citizen who had hosted
bin Laden at his mansion in Buck-inghamshire and who is under investigation for his links to al
Qaeda. The Mahfouz brothers and IDF trustees denied any knowledge of Khalid when first
approached by British investigators, but it was then discovered that he is also their brother!6 In
addition Khalid had had connections to BCCI with the former Soviet Union.
“Our own legal framework stops us from dealing with extremist reli-gion,” concludes a
Pakistani-born British Anglican who grew up as a Muslim. Historically, Islam has never learned to
live as a minority and cannot reconstruct itself in Western societies: “My own feeling is that what
will happen in the British society—I am waiting to see whether it will happen in the US—is Muslim
societies will emerge within Western countries where they will develop their own patterns of social
sharia [Islamic law]. In Britain today, where Islam controls the inner cities, we have major social
exclusion and the development of sharia. We have had churches burned. Christians attacked and a
mission center destroyed. The media has deliberately kept everything off the air.”7
Indeed, jihad has never had it so good as over the past two decades. The Muslim population of
the world has been exploding, not only in Asia and Africa but also in Europe and the United States.
Most Muslim countries regard demography as a political weapon. They gladly export their surplus
population to Europe and America, aware that the bigger the diaspora, the greater the political
influence it will exert, and the more concessions the Islamic world will be able to extort from the
West. Open-ended population explosion in every predominantly Muslim country in the world is the
under-lying reality behind immigration trends, fortifying the impression that tomorrow belongs to
Islam. A Muslim woman has between five and six chil-dren on average, compared to fewer than two
children for women in the developed world. Even when they move to Britain, Muslims from the Sub-
continent procreate at three times the host country average. As we enter the century that will see fresh
confrontation between Islam and the rest, the out- come is sadly preordained if poet T. S. Eliot is to
be proven right in his warning that the West would end “not with a bang but a whimper.”
The example of Britain indicates what happens when a vast and so far utterly unsupervised
subculture of intrinsically hostile non-Western immi-grants is allowed to emerge within a Western
society. British politicians have permitted the emergence of an alternative social and political
structure in their midst in which terrorists can operate. Seeking to appease that structure by granting
it special privileges will only prompt demands for more. There is no sign that any mainstream
Muslim group in Great Britain today under-stands that some soul-searching and critical examination
of their faith’s assumptions, however tentative—-as opposed to mere lip service to “peace and
tolerance”—may be a necessary prerequisite for the community’s claim to the permanent enjoyment
of the rights and privileges enjoyed by other cit-izens of the country to which they freely chose to
migrate.
It is wrong to conclude that Muslims have simply “replaced” commu-nists as the main threat
to the West; they are but two faces of the same menace of the closed society and the closed mind, and
they have been the one real threat all along. Ideological divisions have not given way to communi-
tarian ones. The totalitarian nature of Islam, akin to communism and Nazism in aspects, makes the
threat different in degree to that faced during the cold war, but not in kind. It demands a similar
response. Like communism, Islam relies on a domestic fifth column—the Allah-worshiping
Rosenbergs, Philbys, Blunts, and Hisses—to subvert the civilized world.
Islam also relies on an army of fellow travelers, the Qur’an-reading Blairs in the world of
politics and on “Islamic studies specialists” in the ivory towers, on “liberal academics and opinion-
makers [who] sympathize with Islam partly because it is a leading historical rival of the Western
civilization they hate” and partly because they long for a romanticized and sanitized Muslim past that
substitutes for the authentic Western and Christian roots they have rejected.8
 Those roots must be defended, in the full knowledge that “those who subscribe to Islam and its
civilization are aliens, regardless of their clothes, their professions or their places of residence.”9
They sense Western weakness and expect that if Islam supplies the only old religious tradition left
standing fifty years hence, it may attract mass conversion. That would indeed be the end of the West,
its final surrender to the spirit masterfully depicted by Jean Raspail in the preface to the 1985 French
edition of his Camp of Saints: “[T]he West is empty, even if it has not yet become really aware of it.
An extraordinarily inventive civilization, surely the only one capable of meeting the challenges of the
third millennium, the West has no soul left. At every level—nations, race, cultures as well as
individuals—it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles.”
The story that Raspail tells is rooted in a “monstrous cancer implanted in the Western
conscience.” Its roots are in the loss of faith and in the arrogant doctrine—rampant in “the West” for
three centuries now—that man can solve the dilemma of his existence by his unaided intellect alone.
If that loss is not reversed the game is over anyway, proving yet again that where God retreats, Allah
advances.
 25
SOMETHING ROTTEN IN DENMARK?
Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard

A Muslim group in Denmark announced a few days ago that a thirty-thou-sand-dollar bounty
would be paid for the murder of several prominent Danish Jews, a threat that garnered wide
international notice. Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark’s
approxi-mately two hundred thousand Muslim immigrants. The key issue is that many of them show
little desire to fit into their adopted country.
For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim
customs—until one day they found that they did. Some major issues:

• Living on the dole. Third world immigrants—most of them Muslims from such countries as
Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iraq—constitute 5 percent of the population but
consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.
• Engaging in crime. Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark’s 5.4 million people but make
up a majority of the country’s convicted rapists, an espe-cially combustible issue given that
practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are
found in other crimes.
• Self-imposed isolation. Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish
less to mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of
young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane.
•Importing unacceptable customs. Forced marriage—promising a new-born daughter in
Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain
of death—is one problem. Another is threats to kill Muslims who convert out of Islam. One Kurdish
convert to Christianity, who went public to explain why she had changed religion, felt the need to
hide her face and conceal her identity, fearing for her life.

Reprinted with permission from the New York Post, August 27, 2002.

• Fomenting antisemitism. Muslim violence threatens Denmark’s approximately six thousand

Jews, who increasingly depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one
school principal that she could not guarantee their children’s safety and were advised to
attend another institution. Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One
organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to “kill all Jews . . . wherever you
find them.”
• Seeking Islamic law. Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of intro-ducing Islamic law
once Denmark’s Muslim population grows large enough—a not-that-remote prospect. If
 present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in forty
years will be Muslim.

Other Europeans (such as the late Pirn Fortuyn in Holland) have also grown alarmed about these
issues, but Danes were the first to make them the basis for a change in government. In a momentous
election last November, a center-right coalition came to power that—for the first time since 1929—
excluded the socialists. The right broke its seventy-two-year losing streak and won a solid
parliamentary majority by promising to handle immigration issues, the electorate’s first concern,
differently from the socialists.
The next nine months did witness some fine-tuning of procedures: Immi-grants now must live
seven years in Denmark (rather than three) to become permanent residents. Most nonrefugees no
longer can collect welfare checks immediately on entering the country. No one can bring into the
country an intended spouse under the age of twenty-four. And the state prosecutor is considering a
ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir for its death threats against Jews.
These minor adjustments prompted howls internationally—with Euro-pean and UN reports
condemning Denmark for racism and “Islamophobia,” the Washington Post reporting that Muslim
immigrants “face habitual dis-crimination,” and a London Guardian headline announcing that
“Copen-hagen Flirts with Fascism.”
In reality, however, the new government barely addressed the existing problems. Nor did it
prevent new ones, such as the death threats against Jews or a recent Islamic edict calling on Muslims
to drive Danes out of the Nor-rebro quarter of Copenhagen.
The authorities remain indulgent. The military mulls permitting Muslim soldiers in Denmark’s
volunteer International Brigade to opt out of actions they don’t agree with—a privilege granted to
members of no other faith. Sheikh Omar Bakri, the London-based self-proclaimed “eyes, ears and
mouth” of Osama bin Laden, won permission to set up a branch of his orga-nization, al-Muhajiroun.
Contrary to media reports, the real news from Denmark is not flirting with fascism but getting
mired in inertia. A government elected specifically to deal with a set of problems has made minimal
headway. Its reluctance has potentially profound implications for the West as a whole.

FOLLOW-UP LETTERS

Multiculturalism and Denmark

National Post
September 6, 2002
Letters
From: Elisabeth Arnold and Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, Members of the Danish Parliament

As Danish politicians, we are offended by the way integration problems in Denmark were
portrayed by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard and we wish to set the record straight (“Muslim
Extremism: Denmark’s Had Enough,” Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, Aug. 27).
The authors claim that 40 percent of Danish welfare expenses are con-sumed by Muslim
immigrants. Denmark has a much broader spectrum of welfare costs than countries in North
America. We include not only unem-ployment benefits and social security but also substantial
allocations to housing, transport, homecare, early retirement, protected workplaces, day-care and
other smaller schemes. Muslim immigrants do not receive 40 per-cent of those allocations even
though they represent a substantial part of the clients. The main reason being: It is hard to compete
on a job market not interested in employing immigrants.
 The further assumption that more than half of all rapists in Denmark are Muslims is without
any basis in fact, as criminal registers do not record religion.
Mr. Pipes and Mr. Hedegaard mention that only 5 percent of young Mus-lims in Denmark
wish to marry a Dane. A sign of self-inflicted isolation, indeed. We welcome the brave 5 percent who
accept intermarriage—they are true pioneers for peaceful coexistence and human contact across
cultures. However, the new Danish government has made it extremely difficult for Danish citizens to
bring a foreign spouse to Denmark. The ruling opinion obviously is that intermarriage should be
avoided.
Mr. Pipes and Mr. Hedegaard also claim that Muslim violence threatens the six thousand
Jewish citizens in Denmark. Rumours—also hitting the front pages of major newspapers—tell that
identified Jewish Danes figure on a death list. Danish authorities consider death threats very serious,
but police investigators have so far found no evidence of real threats.
During the coming decade, Denmark will need one hundred thousand new pairs of hands in
the workforce. The Danes produce fewer children and live longer. Integration must work better and
immigrants admitted to Den-mark should be welcomed. On this point, we take inspiration from
Canadian society, which is open to other cultures and religions.

Re: Multiculturalism and Denmark

National Post
September 10. 2002
Letters
From: Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard. Philadelphia, PA

Elisabeth Arnold and Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, two members of the Danish parliament, are
“offended” by our article “Muslim Extremism: Denmark’s Had Enough” (Aug. 27).
Most Canadian readers may not realize that both writers are politicians belonging to the
Socialist-Radical Liberal government that was defeated last November—indeed, Ms. Nielsen was its
minister of culture. They have an axe to grind.
Both protest our conclusion that Muslims “make up a majority of the country’s convicted
rapists,” saying that because Danish statistics do not cor-relate religion with crime, this assertion “is
without any basis in fact.” Sta-tistics Denmark does, however, produce numbers on immigrants from
third world countries and their descendants, which it reports makes up 5 percent of the population;
and it is known that Muslims make up four-fifths of this element. The latest police figures show that
76.5 percent of convicted rapists in Copenhagen belong to that 5 percent of the population, and from
that we drew our understated conclusion.
Our critics then sow confusion about the word welfare. We wrote in Eng-lish for an English-
speaking readership, and used welfare in the conventional English sense of meaning public assistance
in the form of cash or food stamps—not in the Danish sense of including “housing, transport,
homecare, early retirement, protected workplaces, daycare and other smaller schemes” as mentioned
by the two politicians.
As for the numbers involved, former Socialist spokeswoman for immi-gration and integration
Ritt Bjerregaard has leaked figures from an unpub-lished study showing that in 1999, the 5 percent of
the Danish population made up of third world immigrants received 35 percent of all welfare pay-
ments (Danish: kontanthjaelp). This percentage is higher today and therefore we wrote that that 5
percent consumes “upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.”
Both MPs may not believe Danish Jews are threatened but the Jewish population itself
believes it is under siege. This obliviousness of Ms. Arnold and Ms. Nielsen is part of a larger
problem, whereby they have long been among the most vocal cheerleaders of massive immigration
and completely blind to the problems this creates. Unfortunately for them, Danish voters do see the
problems and threw their coalition out of office last November.
Finally, we are at a loss to explain the notion our critics forward that the current government
believes “intermarriage should be avoided” between Danes and foreigners, an outrageous accusation
which no one of any polit-ical stature has advocated. To the contrary, the policy of the government is
integration, not segregation.
PART 5.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN WRONGS AT THE

UNITED NATIONS

Introduction

David G. Littman and Robert Spencer

The material in this section—comprising thirty-four articles, papers, A appeals, and numerous
oral and written statements, all directly related to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR)
—has been selected by Robert Spencer with my collaboration. Since 1986, I have been accredited to
the UNCHR in Geneva by several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at different periods and
am currently a representative of the Association for World Education (AWE) and of the World Union
for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ).1
This part begins with two descriptive articles, followed by a full analysis (chapter 29) of the
1997 UN “Blasphemy Affair,” written in collaboration with my colleague Rene Wadlow, the main
representative of the AWE. These studies provide a detailed overview of the blatant contradictions
between the International Bill of Human Rights (and the other ratified international covenants),
which should be binding, and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which has primacy
for many of the Muslim countries. Some aspects of cultural relativism described here illustrate a
growing “soft-power” Islamism, initiated first by Iran over twenty years ago and diligently pursued at
the UNCHR and other UN bodies by the fifty-six-member-state Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC). Here, and in some of the other texts, overlapping could not be avoided without
making major cuts. The editor decided to retain most of this material for the sake of coherence and
clarity.

The oral statements that follow (beginning with chapter 27) are reproduced as pronounced and
made available at the UNCHR and the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights. Passages not spoken
due to time constraints remain in their original square brackets. Where there is duplication in an oral
and a related written statement, some passages have been omitted. The expressions “Mr. Chairman,”
“Sir,” “Madam,” and “Thank you” were deleted. Written statements submitted by NGOs are
reprinted with paragraph numbering—without the cover page—as posted on the official UN Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights section of the UN Web site.
The four papers (chapters 44^7) of the seminar on “Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and
Belief”—sponsored on April 7, 2004, by the Association for World Education, the Association of
World Citizens, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union, in the context of the sixtieth
session of the UNCHR—are reproduced as used and circulated.
My lecture delivered in November 1994 at the University of Lund regarding an imagined
future Middle East Confederation is the final document (chapter 48). Inspired by Churchill’s historic
address at the University of Zurich (September 19, 1946) on a future “United States of Europe,” I had
proposed a “United States of Abraham” in my March 6, 1990, statement to the UNCHR. Using
Churchill’s formulae—and backed by my colleague, historian Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official
biographer—I spoke in my then capacity as WUPJ’s main representative. The major obstacles that
continue to wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all such Utopian ideas for the Middle East
region—including the failed Oslo Agreement of 1993 and the unworkable “Road Map”—were
referred to in 1990, and later too. (AWE’s written statement E/CN.4/2004/NGO/7, available on the
UN Web site, is mentioned in a note but has not been reproduced to avoid duplication.)

POSTSCRIPT BY ROBERT SPENCER

This section of documents related to the UN Commission on Human Rights illustrates just how
far modern Islamic states are from embodying the mythical Islamic tolerance. After an initial concern
with antisemitism and Judeo-phobia, the focus broadens to show that the concerted attacks on Israel
by Islamic states are not singular but are part of an overall pattern of behavior that is guided by
principles of Islamic theology and law that are anything but tolerant.
Of particular interest is the attempt to make “blasphemy” in an Islamic context forbidden at
the United Nations, which would effectively silence all critics—including an apostate such as Ibn
Warraq, who speaks so eloquently here about the freedom of conscience—and make any reform
impossible.
 26.
ISLAMISM GROWS
STRONGER AT THE
UNITED NATIONS
David G. Littman

In recent years, representatives of some Muslim states have demanded, and often received,
special treatment at the United Nations, mostly via the Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). As
a result, nondiplomatic terms such as “blasphemy” and “defamation of Islam” have seeped into the
United Nations system, leading to a situation in which non-Muslim governments accept certain rules
of conduct in conformity with Islamic law (the Sharia) and acquiesce to a self-imposed silence
regarding topics touching on Islam. This pattern of behavior has emerged with regard to a host of
issues—Salman Rushdie, Muslim antisemitism, Islamic alternatives to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR), a “defamation of Islam” resolution, and the actions of the Sudanese
government.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

The United Nations took little interest when Ayatollah Khomeini issued an edict in February
1989 that condemned British writer Salman Rushdie to death for his novel The Satanic Verses, which
is “in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an,” as the edict affirms; if anything, most
member states tried to ignore the whole episode. It took four full years before the greatest freedom-
of-expression case of our time found an even implicit mention in a UNCHR resolution (the one that
annually criticizes Iran for human rights violations): “[The UNCHR] also expresses its grave concern
that there are continuing threats to the life of a citizen of another State which appears to have the
support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and whose case is mentioned in the report
of the Special Representative.”1

Reprinted from the Middle East Quarterly 6, no. 3 (September 1999): 59-64. This article is also available on the Middle East Forum Web site at
http://www.meforum.org/article/477/.

By 1999, the UNCHR chose to accept at face value “the assurances given by the Government
of Iran in New York in September 1998,”2 when foreign minister Kamal Kharazi said his government
would no longer seek to end Rushdie’s life. In the process, the commission preferred to ignore
Kharazi’s acknowledgment that he was saying nothing new (“We did not adopt a new position with
regard to the apostate Salman Rushdie, and our position remains the same”);3 it also disregarded
statements by leading regime officials threatening Rushdie’s life. For example, it made no difference
that Ayatollah Hasan Sanai, head of a leading foundation, stated on February 14, 1999, that “Iran is
serious and determined in the execution of God’s order. The idea of Rushdie’s annihilation is a living
idea looking for an appropriate opportunity.”4
This attitude of indifference emboldened member states of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) sympathetic to the enhancement of the Sharia, and they proceeded to try to
introduce Khomeini-style restrictions on freedom of speech about certain political aspects of Islam to
the United Nations itself. Thus did the “Rushdie rules” begin affecting UN bodies, and especially the
Commission on Human Rights, eating away at international norms.

“HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM”

The Cairo Declaration

On August 5, 1990, the nineteen Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers adopted the Cairo
Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI). The CDHRI is very precise: according to the
official English version, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the
Islamic Shari ‘a” (article 24), and “The Islamic Shari’a is the only source of reference for the
explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration” (article 25). In other words, by
establishing Sharia law as “the only source of reference” for the protection of human rights in Islamic
countries, the Cairo Declaration gives it supremacy over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In spite of this self-evident contradiction between the CDHRI and the UDHR, the Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights published the former document in December 1997,5 thereby
seeming to give it a certain authority within the United Nations. And, sure enough, the CDHRI then
became a quotable source at the United Nations. For example, the twenty-six members of the Sub-
Commission on Human Rights referred to it in the preamble to a resolution adopted on August 21,
1998, on the situation of women in Afghanistan: “Deeply concerned at the situation of the female
population of Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban; dismayed by the
Taliban’s claim that Islam supports their policies concerning women; fully aware that the Cairo
Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in
1990, guarantees the rights of women in all fields.”6

An “Islamic Perspectives” Seminar

On the initiative of Iran’s foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, who called for a “revision of the
Declaration [UDHR]” in his address to the UNCHR on March 17, 1998, the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights hosted a seminar in Geneva entitled “Enriching the Universality of
Human Rights: Islamic Perspectives on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” on November
9-10, 1998. At the event, which was financed by the OIC countries at a cost of nearly five hundred
thousand dollars, twenty Muslim experts on Islam presented papers with the aim of “expounding the
Islamic perspectives as to human rights and recall the contribution of Islam to the laying of the
foundations of these rights through which Islam aimed at leading people out of the obscurities and
into enlightenment, at ensuring dignity in their life and non-submission to anyone but God, and at
asserting their freedom and their right to justice and equality on the basis of the two sources of
Islamic Shari’a: Qur’an and Sunna and on Fiqh jurisprudence.”7
 Although the seminar’s stated purpose was “to promote understanding and respect among
peoples,” the audience of over 250 representatives from more than eighty states, intergovernmental
and UN bodies, and forty-one nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had no chance to speak, for
the discussion was restricted to participants. The invitation noted that to promote “understanding and
respect among peoples, we have designed the seminar to have a scholarly focus and to be a venue for
exchanges of scholarship, views, and opinions. It will not be called upon to reach conclusions, adopt
positions, or review country practices.”8 Understanding and respect may have been the stated goal,
but in fact the seminar rendered impossible the open discussion of issues. Observers agreed that this
format was unprecedented within the United Nations system; certainly, it was much deplored, even
by some diplomats from OIC member states.

No MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM

The governments of the Organization of the Islamic Conference reached a decision in 1996 at
their summit held in Tehran that Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan would later explain to the
Commission on Human Rights as calling for “pragmatic and constructive steps to counter the
negative propaganda against Islam; to remove and rectify misunderstandings; and to present the true
image of Islam: the religion of peace and tolerance.”9
Four months later, the OIC began to apply this decision at the United Nations. On the very last
day of the UNCHR’s 1997 session, the representative of Indonesia, Agus Tarmidzi, speaking on
behalf of the OIC countries, took the floor to protest a passage in a report by Benin’s Maurice Glele-
Ahanhanzo, the UN special rapporteur on racism. Focusing on information under the subheading
“Islamist and Arab Anti-Semitism,” the Indonesian ambassador referred to a quotation from a book
on antisemitism that reads, “The use of Christian and secular European antisemitic motifs in Muslim
publications is on the rise, yet at the same time, Muslim extremists are turning increasingly to their
own religious sources, first and foremost the Qur’an, as a primary anti-Jewish source.”10
Tarmidzi called this a “defamation of our religion Islam and blasphemy against its Holy Book
Qur’an.” That same evening, the UNCHR’s fifty-three member states—including the United States
and several Western countries— adopted a decision by consensus that “[e]xpress[ed] its indignation
and protest at the content of such an offensive reference to Islam and the Holy Qur’an; affirmed that
this offensive reference should have been excluded from the report; requested the chairman to ask the
special rapporteur to take corrective action in response to the present decision.”11
That request was promptly carried out, and the “offensive reference” was duly excised.12 But
this was not enough. On July 22, 1997, at the Geneva session of the UN Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC), Indonesia, speaking for the OIC, again referred to the “outrageous reference to
Islam and to the Qur’an” contained in the report on racism, which had been excised in a corrigendum
two weeks earlier. Some of the OIC speakers even demanded that the very subheading, “Islamist and
Arab Anti-Semitism,” be excised—a demand subsequently reiterated by Iran and Sudan.13

Interestingly, not one of these representatives attempted to refute the “outrageous reference”;
instead, heaping scorn on it and making sure it was not repeated sufficed for them. Perhaps their
reluctance to deal with the facts of the matter has to do with the irrefutable evidence that Islamists
constantly use religious sources for what is spoken and written critically on the subject of Jews in
Arabic and Persian. Thus the accusation of “blasphemy” amounts to an attempt to make special
rapporteurs exercise self-censorship.
And, indeed, such self-censorship has occurred, as can be seen in the 1999 report of the special
rapporteur on racism, where the subheading that caused the furor in 1997, “Islamist and Arab Anti-
Semitism,” is now conspicuously absent.14 Although Glele-Ahanhanzo again refers to the same
Israeli publication as he did in 1997, he omits any reference to its twenty-five pages on antisemitism
in Arab countries and Iran.15 In fact, he does not even mention any evidence of antisemitism in the
Muslim world. [This remained the same throughout his mandate until 2002.]

“DEFAMATION OF ISLAM”

In contrast to the last-minute efforts in 1997, the OIC countries began their efforts to pass a
resolution (under the agenda item “racism”) condemning what they called the “defamation of Islam”
right at the start of the UNCHR’s 1999 session. They claimed—in negotiations with the European
Union (EU), the United States, and other delegations—that “Islam, one of the principal religions of
the world, is being slandered in different quarters, including in human rights fora.”16 On behalf of the
OIC countries, Pakistani ambassador Akram introduced draft resolution L.40, titled “Defamation of
Islam,” on April 29, 1999. To justify this text, he compared “the emergence of a new manifestation of
intolerance and misunderstanding and misconception of Islam and Muslim peoples in various parts of
the world” to “antisemitism in the years of the past.”
Akram built his argument in part on the 1997 “blasphemy” decision: “It has already been
claimed that Islamic scriptures incite Muslims to violence. This assertion was even included in a
human rights report and excised only after the commission acted on this blasphemy.”17 More
assertively, Akram made large claims for his religion: “It was Islam which gave the world the first
Charter of Human Rights in the Holy Qur’an; the Declaration of Human Rights in prophet
Muhammad’s last address; and the first Refugee Convention in the mithdq-i-Medina [Constitution of
Medina].”18

The Western countries refused, however, to accept a resolution that had the provocative title of
“Defamation of Islam.” As German ambassador Wil-helm Hoynck put it, on behalf of the European
Union, the OIC’s draft resolution was selective in nature, focusing “exclusively on what its authors
perceive as a negative stereotyping of Islam.” Attempts to find a compromise between the two sides
were getting nowhere, leading to a threat from Pakistan’s ubiquitous ambassador that if the EU and
others maintained their position “this will have a lasting impact in the Muslim world.”19 Both sides
preferred to avoid a vote—with its unpredictable repercussions—so Hoynck, noting that “the
European Union is attached to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as well as to tolerance
for all religions,” proposed as a title, “Stereotyping of Religions.” This the OIC refused.
Finally, the two sides reached a compromise: the title of what became Commission Resolution
1999/82 would be “Defamation of Religions,” and the text would not refer exclusively to Islam.20
Despite this apparent compromise, no one will be misled as to the intent of this resolution. Islam is
the only religion mentioned in the text (a preambular paragraph refers to the seminar on “Islamic
Perspectives on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in November 1998), and the operative
paragraph also expresses “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human
rights violations and with terrorism.” Thus a Reuters dispatch dated April 30, 1999, reported that “the
U.N. Speaks against Anti-Islam in the Media,” and went on to explain that the UNCHR “expressed
concern . . . that Islam was often wrongly blamed for being behind crimes and terrorist acts.” The
Reuters news item also (correctly) noted that this “was the first time that the panel had adopted a text
on defamation of religion.”

SUDAN
 The case of Sudan’s behavior illustrates how concepts such as the “defamation of Islam” have
progressed at the UNCHR and affected decision making there. Back in 1994, the Sudanese
ambassador circulated a letter to all representatives at the UNCHR, accusing the UN special
rapporteur on Sudan, Gaspar Biro, of making a “vicious attack on the religion of Islam,” because
portions of his first report indicated inconsistencies between the international human-rights
conventions (to which Sudan has been a signatory party since 1986) and some provisions of Sudan’s
Criminal Act of 1991 that follow the Sharia.21 However, with no backing from the OIC, the Sudanese
government got precisely nowhere; the commission called on it “to comply with applicable
international human rights instruments.”22
Five years later, the situation had changed completely. Appearing at the UNCHR on March 23,
1999, John Garang, chairman of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) and head of the
Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA), the southern, mostly Christian rebel force fighting the
government of Sudan and its Sharia law since 1983, was prevented from speaking by the Sudanese
representatives. Although Garang had been properly accredited by a nongovernmental organization,
Christian Solidarity International (CSI), before he could reach the second sentence of his speech, on
“the genocidal character of the war waged by the present regime in Khartoum,” the Sudanese
representative stopped him on a “point of order.” The chair ruled Garang in order. Then Sudan
requested a vote and, after a few exchanges and a recess, the chair gave Garang the floor, only to rule
him out of order on a point of procedure (namely, that “the statement being made by the
representative of CSI was not germane to the agenda item”).
Technically speaking, the Sudanese government had a point: CSI had made two minor errors
(Garang’s statement was not as integrated into the agenda item as the rules of procedure required, and
his statement was distributed on SPLM letterhead, not CSI’s). With this, the most important leader of
the southern Sudanese people was silenced, unable to ask the UNCHR plenum what just one day
earlier he had asked an audience of representatives from governments and nongovernmental
organizations and at a press conference: “In 1992 the regime in Khartoum declared jihad against the
people of southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. Since then jihad has been declared again and
again. I ask this very important question: is the jihad a religious right of those who declare and wage
it, or is it a violation of the human rights of the people against whom it is declared and waged?”23
Nor was this all. The government of Sudan, angered by CSI’s constant denunciation of its
many human rights violations, particularly slavery, seized on this technical pretext to oust CSI from
all UN bodies. On June 17 in New York, twelve of the nineteen members of the UN Committee on
NGOs (Sudan, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Senegal, Ethiopia, Turkey, India, China, Russia,
and Cuba) voted to recommend that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) withdraw CSI’s
accreditation; four abstained, and the United States cast the only no vote. Seth Winnick, the US
representative, later commented, “The committee acted grossly in violation of the norms of due
process. This committee is not competent to act.”24 Then, at a final ECOSOC meeting of July 30,
1999, a decision by consensus sent the flawed recommendation back to the Committee on NGOs,
allowing CSI until August 31 to submit a report and a response. [CSI’s accreditation was then
withdrawn.] The ECOSOC verdict on CSI is potentially a precedent of considerable importance, for
it is often by votes on relatively minor issues such as this that one sees which way the wind is
blowing at the United Nations.

CONCLUSION

The new rules of conduct being imposed by the OIC and acceded to by other states, give those
who claim to represent Islam an exceptional status at the United Nations that has no legal basis and
no precedent; it therefore gives ample reason for apprehension. Will a prohibition of discussion about
certain political aspects of Islam become generally accepted at the United Nations and beyond,
contradicting “the right to freedom of opinion and expression” promised by article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Unless farsighted states, both Muslim and non-Muslim,
make it their business to assert and reassert the need for freedom of speech, this precious liberty is at
risk of being eroded throughout the system of international organizations.
 27.
UNIVERSAL HUMAN
RIGHTS AND “HUMAN
RIGHTS IN ISLAM”
David G. Littman

ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES ON THE 1948 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN

RIGHTS

F or years now, a systematic effort has been made at the United Nations by X certain member
states to replace some of the dominant paradigms of international relations. For example,
representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue—in all fora—to press their objections to the
universal character and indivisibility of human rights, as interpreted in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR), which according to them is a Western secular concept of Judeo-Christian
origin, incompatible with the sacred Islamic Sharia.
We shall examine here a few major developments of concern that have occurred in the past
decade at some of the top UN watchdog bodies on human rights: the Geneva-based Commission on
Human Rights, its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities,
the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and the Human Rights Committee, a major
treaty body.
In November 1998 a seminar was held at the United Nations in Geneva under the auspices of
the Office of the High Commissioner but was totally financed by the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) at a cost of almost half a million dollars. That event—called “Enriching the
Universality of Human Rights: Islamic Perspectives on the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights”—could not, and did not, break the deadlock created by regular calls for “revision” of the
1948 UDHR. But one could ask—what led to the decision to organize it, and how was it justified?

Reprinted from Midstream 45. no. 2 (February/March 1999): 2-7.

On March 17, 1998, the first speaker at the Jubilee Commemoration of the UDHR—at the
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, after the cere-monial speeches by secretary-general Kofi
Annan, Vaclav Havel, and Elie Wiesel—was Iranian foreign minister Dr. Kamal Kharazi (Iran then
held the presidency of the OIC). His statement contained an appeal for a “revision of the
Declaration,” followed by a request that “the High Commissioner invite commentaries on the UDHR
as a prelude to dialogue and encourage all states and organizations to join the exercise.”1
 As a result of Kharazi’s appeal—coming soon after Mary Robinson’s visit to Tehran in
February, when the matter was first raised—the Office of the High Commissioner began
preparations, jointly with the OIC, for a two-day seminar; it finally took place on November 9-10.
1998. For this unique UN event, twenty Islamic experts from the fifty-six OIC countries—one each
from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan—presented their papers on “Islamic Perspectives on the UDHR.”
Discussions were restricted to the experts, while the more than 250 participating representatives from
more than eighty states, intergovernmental and UN bodies, as well as forty-one nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), listened without any opportunity to ask questions.
The aims of the seminar were clarified in Robinson’s October 29. 1998, letter of invitation to
all members of UN treaty bodies, working groups of the subcommission and special rapporteurs:
“The seminar is being organized during this 50th Anniversary year of the UDHR as part of the
process of providing Islamic perspectives on the UDHR. I accept responsibility for the process in
response to the invitation made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
during his address lo the 54th session of the Commission on Human Rights (1998). I believe this
process will help promote understanding and respect among peoples.”

UNITED NATIONS SEMINAR WHERE “ISLAM IS UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS OF

‘SHARI’A’ (QUR’AN AND HADITH)”

An earlier explanation from Mary Robinson’s office (October 16) stated, “In order to achieve
this objective [‘to promote understanding and respect among peoples’), we have designed the
seminar to have a scholarly focus and to be the venue for exchanges of scholarship, views and
opinions. It will not be called upon to reach conclusions, adopt positions or review country practices.
Further, we have agreed that for the purpose of this seminar, Islam is understood in terms of ‘Shari’a’
(Qur’an and Hadith) and not in terms of tra ditions or practices that may vary and mix with historical
heritages. This will allow the seminar to focus on the Islamic perspective with a minimum of
potential controversy which could overshadow the central purpose.”2
Two weeks after the event, a Muslim researcher from the European Institute at the University
of Geneva, Hasni Abidi, wrote an article in the Tribune de Geneve, “Human Rights a la carte,”
asking: “Are we going toward a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights? … to accept this type
of manifestation risks opening a breach in the universality of human rights. Worse, this seminar could
constitute support for political attitudes totally in contradiction with the fundamental principles of
human rights.”3
Aside from two revealing papers,4 the fact that this seminar led nowhere is not surprising, as
UN-sponsored seminars and costly megaconferences usually end with no effect on the real world.
The problem is that these efforts to undercut international paradigms, which have been at the core of
the world order since 1945, are henceforth guaranteed an institutionalized forum and legitimacy
within the UN system.
The relationship between the sacred, as announced in the Qur’an, and the political is one of the
ongoing, controversial debates within Islamic countries. There is today a wide range of views as to
what is covered by the Sharia, the nature of the state’s legal system, the nature of the authority for its
legal codes, the nature of these codes themselves, and the modalities for modifying them. In the light
of the more and more frequent appeals to the authority of the Sharia by Islamist groups— in order to
sanctify violence or highly restrictive social measures imposed by them upon defenseless people
under their ideological and totalitarian control—more and more voices are being raised for the
separation of the political from the traditional legal and religious doctrine in Islam.
One such voice is that of imam Soheib Bencheikh, the mufti of Marseilles. Speaking at the
Commission on Human Rights on March 23, 1998— under the auspices of the Association for World
Education—in relation to the savagery being perpetrated in Algeria, he called on Muslim theologians
and thinkers to strive for a “desacralization of Islamic law” and a reform of Islamic theology. By
repeating that call at the UN seminar on November 10, 1998, he again contributed a clear message.5

THE INTERNATIONAL BILL OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE 1993 VIENNA

DECLARATION AND PROGRAM OF ACTION

Among the efforts to codify universal human values in the last half century, the UDHR is among
the best known and most widely cited, both by governments and civil society. In today’s planetary
society, where people from so many different nations and cultures intermingle with increasing
frequency, there should be common standards and a general acceptance of the International Bill of
Human Rights—that is, the UDHR (1948)—as well as the International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
both adopted in 1966.
These three basic texts have been developed in a subsequent series of international human
rights instruments, which were published by the United Nations in A Compilation of International
Instruments.6Thus an allegation that certain states were absent from the drafting process of the
UDHR prior to its adoption on December 10, 1948, is specious, as third world countries and other
states have had ample opportunities since then to contribute—as was done!—to the later elaboration
and codification of the principles and rights contained in the UDHR. Therefore, no calls for a
“revision of the Declaration”—along the lines requested by Khazari on March 17, 1998—are
justified.
In this context, one should not forget the clear provisions contained in article 29 of the UDHR:
1.Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his
personality is possible.
2.In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations
as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for
the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public
order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
3.These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and
principles of the United Nations.

The corpus of international instruments on human rights adopted after 1948 constitutes a
sufficiently flexible framework for their full implementation in all regions and countries in the world,
provided the political will exists. The preamble of the UDHR begins with the words, “Whereas recog
nition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human
family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This idea is reiterated in article
1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
In June 1993, in order to reaffirm the UDHR and the other international human rights
instruments, the United Nations organized in Vienna a World Conference on Human Rights. The 171
participating states adopted the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, thereby reasserting the
universality of all human rights as the birthright of all human beings and recognizing that their
protection and promotion were the prime concerns of governments that guaranteed to uphold them.
The preamble affirms “that all human rights derive from the dignity and worth inherent in the
human person.” The UN General Assembly endorsed, by consensus, the Vienna Program of Action
and thereby the crucial importance of the recognition of the principle of human dignity inherent in
the UDHR. The 1993 Vienna Declaration reaffirmed that “the universal nature of these rights and
freedoms is beyond question.”
Two CRITICISMS OF THE 1948 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The year 1998 marked the five-year review of the implementation of the Vienna Declaration and
Program of Action. In the past, the universality and indivisibility of the rights set out in the UDHR
came under criticism from two sources. The first was a Western, largely American-led criticism on
economic, social, and cultural rights. This was a reflection in the 1980s of an extreme neoliberalism,
which maintained that the state should play a minimal role in the economic and social sphere.
But as a whole the international community did not yield to these pressures. Today, there is a
realization of a need for a strong civil society and a widespread consensus in Western countries,
demanding governmental leadership in fields of health, education, employment, housing, and social
security—all areas considered as “rights” in the UDHR. As a result, the earlier Western criticisms
were much toned down, and vigorous poverty reduction programs are now functioning within the UN
system.
The second source of attacks came from third world countries that have earlier, ancient legal
systems and are constantly calling for human rights to be viewed in the historical and cultural context
of each country or civiliza tion. China, India, and several countries of the Islamic world—notably
Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia—have been stressing this position off and on.
Although many third world countries are reluctant to follow this reasoning, few oppose it openly.
Already in September 1992, six months before the Vienna Conference, the Final Declaration
of the Conference of the 108 Non-Aligned Countries, held in Jakarta, Indonesia, stressed “differences
in cultures” and implied that differences in the interpretation of human rights should be recognized.
Since then, the new Indonesian government, led by B. J. Habibie, appears to be less vocal on the
issue of “Asian values.” Clearly all religions and traditional societies deserve respect, without
however losing sight of the goals laid down in the International Bill of Human Rights. But any
reinterpretation of human rights beyond the existing framework of international norms—that is, the
various forms of “cultural relativism”—quickly leads to grave human rights abuses by some rulers
whose states are signatories to the International Bill of Rights and to the other international human
rights instruments.
Thus any future “compromises” on the UDHR—based upon the proclaimed differences in
culture, traditions, religion, or socioeconomic customs—rather than leading to peaceful reconciliation
could, however worthy the intentions, insert uneven cobblestones, thus paving new paths of
uncertainty in the coming century for the international community and all peoples of the world.

IRAN’S STEADFAST UN POSITION ON THE UDHR SINCE 1981

In 1981—two years after the Iranian revolution—the new government’s position was clearly
stated at the thirty-sixth UN General Assembly session, when its representative affirmed that the
UDHR represented a secular interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which could not be
implemented by Muslims; if a choice had to be made between its stipulations and “the divine law of
the country,” Iran would always choose Islamic law.7 This was the same year, 1981, in which the
Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (UIDHR) was presented with much fanfare to the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, attended by
Ahmad ben Bella of Algeria, Mukhtar Ould Daddah of Maure-tania, Saudi Arabia’s Prince
Muhammad al-Faisal, and Pakistani president Zia al-Haq’s advisor. It was prepared under the
auspices of the Islamic Council, a London-based organization affiliated with the Muslim World
League, an international nongovernmental organization (NGO). As Prof. Ann Elizabeth Mayer
explains in her meticulously documented study Islam and Human Rights, “In a casual reading, the
English version of the UIDHR seems to be closely modeled after the UDHR, but upon closer
examination many of the similarities turn out to be misleading. In addition, the English version
diverges from the Arabic version at many points.”8
In his December 7, 1984, statement to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, the
Iranian representative, Rajaie-Khorassani, again put on record his country’s position on the UDHR:
In his delegation’s view, the concept of human rights was not limited to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Man was of divine origin and human dignity could not be
reduced to a series of secular norms. . . . Certain concepts contained in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights needed to be revised. [Iran] recognized no authority or power
but that of Almighty God and no legal tradition apart from Islamic law. As his delegation had
already stated at the thirty-sixth session of the General Assembly, conventions, declarations
and resolutions or decisions of international organizations, which were contrary to Islam had
no validity in the Islamic Republic of Iran. . .. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which represented a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not be
implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized by the
Islamic Republic of Iran; his country would therefore not hesitate to violate its provisions,
since it had to choose between violating the divine law of the country and violating secular
conventions.9
Since then, this basic Iranian position has been reiterated. It was clearly expressed on October
30, 1992, in a reply by Ambassador Sirous Nasseri to the Human Rights Committee (the UN treaty
body that supervises the 1966 ICCPR), regarding comments and questions by the Committee’s
independent members to Iran’s second periodic report:
It could, of course, be argued that each State party to the Covenant should simply apply
its provisions to the letter. Yet many peoples were not satisfied with the rigid application of
human rights instruments and wanted account taken of their traditions, culture and religious
context in order to evaluate the human rights situation in a country.

A revival of Islam, which some call fanaticism or extremism and others renaissance, was
obviously taking place…. It should be borne in mind that certain Islamic countries—and by no
means the least important—had not subscribed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
An even larger number had not yet acceded to the Covenant. There were reasons for that. It
was easy to reject the argument that the representatives of Islamic countries had participated in
the discussions that had led to the elaboration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the Covenant, for it was clear that at that time the Islamic countries had not carried the
political weight they deserved—which was still true at the present time. The Islamic countries
had therefore elaborated an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights |CDHRI|. Members of the
Committee had asked whether the Islamic Republic of Iran had specific reservations to make
concerning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant; an examination of
the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights revealed what, in the view of the Islamic countries,
was lacking in those two instruments.

|Iran] had reached the conclusion that those two instruments were compatible with
Islamic law. . . . Discrepancies . . . between domestic legislation and the Covenant should not
be exaggerated. . . . Those differences could be overcome and a better understanding of Islam,
of Islamic law and of international law achieved only by means of dialogue approached with
an open mind.10

THE 1990 “CAIRO DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM” AND THE 1981
UNIVERSAL ISLAMIC DECLARATION
 The controversial Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) was adopted in Cairo
on August 5, 1990, by the Nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (session of “Peace,
Interdependence, and Development”) of the forty-five member states of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC), subsequent to the Report of the Meeting of the Committee of Legal
Experts held in Tehran, December 26-28, 1989. The CDHRI establishes the Sharia law as “the only
source of reference” for the protection of human rights in Islamic countries, thus giving it supremacy
over the UDHR. The CDHRI was presented for approval at the OIC Summit Meeting of Heads of
State and Government, held in Dakar, Senegal, on December 9, 1991. This was averted following a
press release from the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). The dangers of the
CDHRI were enumerated in the press release and again spelled out in a joint statement to the UN
Commission on Human Rights by Adama Dieng, its Muslim secretary general and a prominent
Senegalese jurist, who alerted the international community to the grave negative implications that
would result. Speaking for the ICJ and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights at
the Commission on Human Rights in February 1992,’11 he declared, among other things, that
1.It gravely threatens the intercultural consensus on which the international human rights
instruments are based;
2.It introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination
against both non-Muslims and women;
3.It reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and
freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standards in
effect in a number of Muslim countries;
4.It confirms, under cover of the Islamic Sharia, the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal
punishment, which attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.

The ICJ’s fears—and those of the NGO community—concerned the intercultural consensus
that forms the heart of the UDHR and the international covenants ratified by most states, thus making
them binding under international law.
Although traditions, cultures, and religious background may be different, human nature is
universally the same. The aim of those who drafted and approved the UDHR was precisely to affirm
this universal human identity, separating it from particular and religious contexts, which introduce
and sanctify differences and discriminations. Any attempt to bring in cultural and religious
particularisms would simply remove the specifically universal character of the UDHR.
Neither the UIDHR nor the CDHRI is universal, because both are conditional on Islamic law,
which non-Muslims do not accept. The UDHR places social and political norms in a secular
framework, separating the political from the religious.
In contrast, both the UIDHR and the CDHRI introduce into the political sphere an Islamic
religious criterion, which imposes an absolute decisive and divine primacy over the political and
legal spheres. Therefore the latter texts cannot be considered universal, since they endorse all the
differentiations between individuals as spelled out in the Islamic Sharia law.

APPLICATION OF THE SHARIA LAW IN PAKISTAN AND OTHER MUSLIM

COUNTRIES

The case of Pakistan is exemplary because in August 1998 the government of Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif introduced a controversial constitutional amendment to scrap any remaining British
laws in Pakistan and replace them with laws based on the Qur’an, giving the government sweeping
powers to “prescribe what is right and forbid what is wrong.” The National Assembly passed the
amendment in September, but it still awaits a vote in the Senate where the prime minister’s Pakistan
Muslim League does not have an absolute majority. This notwithstanding, on January 16, 1999, an
ordinance signed by the governor of the Northwest Frontier, representing the federal government,
imposed Islamic Sharia in tribal areas of the northwest part of the country, between the provincial
capital, Peshawar, and the border with Afghanistan, where similar punishments were imposed by the
Taliban religious army. These include public flogging, amputations of hands and feet, stoning for
adultery, and executions. All civil and criminal cases will now be decided according to the Qur’an, in
courts headed by Muslim clerics. “Opposition parties, human rights groups and non-Muslim
minorities bitterly oppose the prime minister’s efforts to introduce Islamic laws saying they violate
the Constitution.”12
The 1985 constitution distinguishes between human rights that can be derogated and those that
cannot—freedom of religion being in the first category. During the presidency of Gen. Zia al-Haq
(1977-1988), the Federal Shariat (legal) Court (FSC) was instituted, with full “jurisdiction over
convictions or acquittals from district courts in cases involving . . . Islamic criminal laws; exclusive
jurisdiction to hear [petitions] . . . challenging ‘any law or provision of law’ as repugnant to the Holy
Qur’an; exclusive jurisdiction to examine ‘any law or provision of law’ for repugnancy to the Holy
Qur’an.”13
Although non-Muslims may not appear before the FSC to give testimony, they are subject to
its rulings. Ordinance 20 (1984), which was incorporated into the 1985 constitution, established the
Islamic Hudood (punishment) to “define crimes against Islam” and “enforce punishment for those
who commit such crimes.” In such cases, testimony from a non-Muslim male is considered to be
worth half that of a Muslim male. In 1986, section 295-C was inserted into Pakistan’s penal code,
making the death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of blaspheming the prophet Muhammad.
From 1986 to 1993, over two hundred Ahmadi Muslims were charged with “blasphemy,” but none
were convicted. More than a dozen Christians were charged, four of whom were reportedly killed in
detention, but none executed. On May 6, 1998, John Joseph, bishop of Faisalabad, chairman of the
Human Rights Commission established by the Catholics Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, killed
himself in protest against these blasphemy laws.14
In the Sharia legal system—practiced in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and
in other Muslim countries—the testimony of a Muslim man is equal to the testimony of two Muslim
women. Other examples from the Sharia, strictly applied or in abeyance, abound. The demands of
Islamist groups in Algeria. Egypt, and elsewhere usually relate to traditional extremist interpretations
of the Sharia.

ENGLISH AND ARABIC VERSIONS MAY DIFFER, BUT THE SHARIA LAW PREVAILS

As with the 1981 UIDHR, there exists both an English version for general purposes as well as
an Arabic version of the 1990 CDHRI, each conveying a somewhat different message. Nonetheless,
articles 24 and 25 in the English version of the CDHRI are very precise and leave no doubt as to the
overall meaning:
All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic
Shari’a. (article 24)
The Islamic Shari’a is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of
any of the articles of this Declaration, (article 25)

In spite of the self-evident contradiction with the UDHR, the CDHRI was published in
December 1997 by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in volume 2 of
International Instruments, which would seem to give it a certain authority, even if the volume title
refers to Regional Instruments, whereas the title of volume 1 (in two parts) is Universal Instruments.
 It is difficult to understand why the CDHRI is the concluding document in volume 2, under the
section “E. Organization of the Islamic Conference”—as the OIC is not a specific regional body, nor
is the CDHRI a “regional instrument.”15

“CAIRO DECLARATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM” AT THE UN

The CDHRI was supposed to “serve as a general guidance for Member States in the field of
human rights,” and its preamble states,
The Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Reaf-firming the
civilizing and historic role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has
given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization in which harmony is established
between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith; |and] . . . believing
that fundamental rights and universal freedoms in Islam are an integral part of the Islamic
religion … as they are binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed
Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets to complete the preceding divine
messages thereby making their observance an act of worship and their neglect or violation an
abominable sin, and accordingly every person is individually responsible—and the Ummah
collectively responsible—for their safeguard.

The CDHRI thus claims supremacy over the UDHR, based on divine revela-tion.
Volume 2 was circulated to all eighteen “independent experts” of the subcommission, who
referred to the CDHRI in the preamble to a resolution adopted on August 21, 1998. It reads, among
other things,
1998/17: Situation of Women in Afghanistan:
Deeply concerned at the situation of the female population of Kabul and other parts of
Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban,
Dismayed by the Taliban’s claim that Islam supports their policies concerning women.
Fully aware that the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted by the
Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990, guarantees the rights of women in all fields.

The reference is to article 6(a) of the CDHRI. which states, “Woman is equal to man in human
dignity, and has rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform.” These “rights to enjoy” are “subject to
the Islamic Shari’a” (article 24), and the “duties” are also prescribed by the Islamic Sharia.

Two PREVIOUS UN EXAMPLES RELATED TO “BLASPHEMY”

In a letter dated February 18, 1994, addressed to all delegates at the Com-mission on Human
Rights,16 the Sudanese ambassador requested an immediate withdrawal of any reference—from the
report of the UN special rapporteur on Sudan—in which certain inconsistences were indicated
between the international human rights conventions and the provisions of Sudan’s Criminal Act of
1991. The ambassador alleged that the report “contained abusive, inconsiderate, blasphemous and
offensive remarks about the Islamic faith.” A further Sudanese circular titled Attack on Islam claimed
that portions of the report “represent a vicious attack on the religion of Islam and contain a call for
the abolition of its Islamic Penal Legislation.”
In reply, the commission adopted resolution 1994/79, calling on the gov-ernment of Sudan “to
comply with applicable international human rights instruments and to bring its national legislation
into accordance with the instruments to which Sudan was a party.” In spite of death threats published
in the government’s newspaper, Horizon,17 Dr. Gaspar Biro continued investigations into the many
human rights violations in Sudan, fully described in his later reports submitted to the General
Assembly and to the Human Rights Commission.18 He was supported by resolutions condemning the
government of Sudan.
On April 18, 1997, another “blasphemy” charge was leveled.19 This time the alleged offending
words were from a quoted passage contained in the report of the special rapporteur on racism, Mr.
Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo from Benin (under “Islamist and Arab Anti-Semitism”).20 This new
“blasphemy” charge succeeded after the representative of Indonesia intervened on the last day of the
ccommission—in the name of the OIC’s fifty-six Islamic states, on the initiative of Iran—claiming
that Islam had been defamed and “blasphemy” committed against the Holy Qur’an. This led to the
fifty-three-member-state commission’s consensus decision 1997/125, obliging the special rapporteur
to take a “corrective action.”21
Hence a very dangerous precedent: the censorship of a UN special rapporteur, in his capacity
as an independent expert, and of his report, on grounds of “blasphemy”—although the facts he
quoted are exact—provides a concrete example of how the consequences of a cultural-relativist
approach were imposed, by consensus, on the UN Commission on Human Rights, thereby avoiding a
“religious-cultural” conflict. As a result, the only choice for the special rapporteur became censorship
or resignation.22
A year later, on March 23, 1998, the representatives of Iran and Sudan were still calling for the
Commission on Human Rights to act even more harshly in regard to its “blasphemy” censorship
decision 1997/125.23 One should not be surprised if such pressures persist in this case and others, as a
result of the seminar jointly organized by the Office of the High Commissioner and the OIC—to
quote Robinson’s letter of “invitation”—as part of the process of providing Islamic perspectives on
the UDHR.
Regarding Islamic perspectives on human rights, in general, Ann Elizabeth Mayer made a
pertinent point in her authoritative study: “Since most current theorists of Islamic human rights
persist in talking exclusively in terms of an idealized vision of Islamic social harmony, even though
the historical record and the acts of current governments have manifestly demonstrated the
inadequacy of the very scheme that they propose, one may doubt that their Islamic human rights
schemes were actually devised to deal with contemporary political problems or to improve
protections for human rights in contemporary Middle Eastern societies.”24

THK UNIVERSAL CHARACTER OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS OF STRATEGIC

IMPORTANCE

Debates on the nature of the Sharia in Islamic countries and elsewhere can be of intellectual
interest, but they are not relevant to the UDHC, nor to the intergovernmental decisions based on it.
The principal aim of the UDHR was to create a framework for a world society that needs some
universal codes based on mutual consent in order to function. It is the universal character of the
UDHR that makes it a common base for relations between peoples across national and cultural
frontiers.
Today, people understand the importance of the respect for the dignity and uniqueness of every
human being. At the same time, there is a common awareness of dignity disregarded. There are many
reasons, however, to consider the issue of human rights as of strategic importance, beyond any past
experience in the cold war. The human dignity of every single human being can be properly affirmed
and given effective protection only within the framework of an interrelated system of norms,
principles, and institutions. Human rights issues in international relations are frequently interpreted as
belonging to the moral sphere, despite existing legally binding international instruments that
developed the principles of the UDHR. One of the lessons of the cold war in this regard is that only a
firm and noncompromising stand regarding the most fundamental questions can lead to the effective
imple mentation of the ideals and objectives of the International Bill of Human Rights and other
relevant instruments.25
 28.
“BLASPHEMY” AT THE UNITED
NATIONS AND JUDEOPHOBIA IN THE
ARAB-MUSLIM WORLD
David G. Littman

We are again reminding the Commission on Human Rights of a regrettable landmark event
that took place seven years ago, well-known as the “Blasphemy Affair,” which resulted in a the
censorship cecision 1997/125 of April 18, 1997. Our subcommission written statement in 1997 gave
details,1 and three academic articles followed to sound the warning bells of what might follow if
Judeophobia in the Arab/Muslim world is not properly analyzed and condemned as a violation of
basic human rights norms.2
[As a result of self-censorship, the then special rapporteur on racism, Maurice Glele-
Ahanhanzo (of Benin), avoided any reference to Judeophobic antisemitism in the Arab-Muslim
world in all his subsequent reports (1998-2002). Last year, the new special rapporteur, Mr. Doudou
Diene (of Senegal), devoted nine lines on this subject in his forty-three-page report, where he
referred to “allegations of large-scale distribution in the Middle East and in Europe of The Protocols
of the Elders ofZion.”3]
[Judeophobia—under the guise of “anti-Zionism”—is now generally recognized as endemic in
the Arab/Muslim world, being nourished by a general “culture of hate” that is creeping into Europe
and beyond. The annual adoption since 1999 of a commission resolution—sponsored by the OIC’s
fifty-six Muslim states, with the Palestinian Authority—against any “defamation of religions” has
had no effect whatsoever on these dangerous attitudes. Resolution 2003/4,Combating Defamation of
Religions,under its paragraph 6, “[expresses deep concern at programmes and agendas pursued by
extremist organisations and groups aimed at the defamation of religions, in particular when supported
by Governments.”]

NGO oral statement prepared and delivered by David G. Littman—a representative of the Association for World Education (AWE)—on March 23, 2004, at the sixtieth
session of the UNCHR, Geneva. The passages in square brackets were not spoken within the three-minute time limit, but the entire text was circulated with AWE written statement
E/CN.4/2004/NGO/5, as reproduced in chapter 30 of this volume.

A meaningful analysis of Judeophobia in the Arab/Muslim world requires a close look at the
recent past. Therefore, our written statement titled Judeophobia Today=Anti-Judaism/Anti-
2ionism/Antisemitism: A Growing “Culture of Hate”4 includes a 1971/1976 preface by D. F. Green to
a compilation, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, in which he warned of the genocidal dangers of
such racist manifestations of hate as were expressed at the 1968 Fourth Conference of the Academy
of Islamic Research, Al-Azhar University, published by the Egyptian government press in 1970.
 [Green also reproduced in that publication some comments on Jews by the renowned Egyptian
writer Anis Mansour, who has written prolifically for over thirty years in newspapers on cultural,
historical, and religious subjects—and who represented Egypt in November 1975 at the Fortieth
International Pen. One startling opinion from Mansour was reported in Le Monde on August 21,
1973: “The world is now aware of the fact that Hitler was right and that the cremation ovens were the
appropriate means of punishing such contempt of human values, principles, religions and law.”]
[At this same period, an “official” Saudi text of Sayyid Qutb’s essay from the early 1950s,
“Our Struggle with the Jews” (Ma’rakatuna Ma’a al-Yahud), was reprinted with similar articles in
1970 and widely distributed by the Saudi government—at the same time as the Proceedings of the
Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research was published by the Egyptian government.]5
However, three decades later we are faced with the gravest dangers. As eminent French
sociologist Pierre-Andre Taguieff recently wrote in his book. La nouvelle judeophobia (The new
Judeophobia), in the chapter titled “Silences Regarding the New Judeophobia: Blindness, Indulgence,
or Connivance?”6: “The culture of hate and death has imperceptibly become, at the start of the third
millennium, a social, transnational movement armed with an unscrupulous jihadist vanguard.”7 [This
excellent analysis by a leading expert on racism, the director of research at the Centre Nationale de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, is now translated into English under the title Rising from the
Muck: The New Anti-Semitism in Europe.*8]
His new study on this burning issue says it all in the title: Precheurs de haine: Traversee de la
judeophobie planetaire (Preachers of hate: Crossing into global Judeophobia).9 [A quotation from his
conclusion is reproduced here, with the author’s permission: “The vast revolutionary program for the
destruction of the ‘old world’ in order to rebuild it ‘on new foundations’ is giving way to an
exterminatory dream of the arsonist and vandal: eliminate the Jewish state and transform America
into a field of ruins. However that may be, the ideological corruption of great causes has never been
more radical nor more glaring. Nor more repugnant. It is in this last aspect of the great confusion of
the epoch that one can find reasons to hope: if the ideological confusion and the corruption of ideas
are from now on more and more visible and audible, to the point of being blinding and deafening, it
becomes less and less possible to refuse to open one’s eyes and to decide at last to hear.”10]
We solemnly appeal to the commission, to the various UN special rapporteurs concerned, and
all the competent UN bodies to speak out now and condemn this specific “culture of hate and
violence”—so reminiscent of the 1930s, when the Palais des Nations was in construction—and also
to act urgently in promoting education for interfaith understanding and reconciliation.
 29
DANGEROUS
CENSORSHIP OF A UN
SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR
Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman

Two incidents, that seriously limited rational discussion and debate marred JL the fifty-third
session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, held in Geneva, March 10-April 18,
1997.

AIDS LIBEL ACCUSATION AGAINST ISRAEL BY PALESTINIAN

REPRESENTATIVE

We shall not discuss in detail here the first incident, a statement made on March 11 by the
observer of the Palestine Authority in which he alleged that “the Israeli authorities have infected by
injection 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the years of the Intifadah.” As the
representatives of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the Association for World Education, we
reacted immediately in correspondence and direct discussions with the chairman. This calumny
became known to the public following two articles in the Jerusalem Post and an Anti-Defamation
League advertisement in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.1 It was again
raised on July 22, by Israeli ambassador Yosef Lamdan and US deputy permanent representative Seth
Winnick, at a meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),2 and in his previous letter of
July 18 (including two annexes) to the president of the council.3
There, Winnick strongly expressed his “abhorrence at, and rejection of, the malicious, patently
false and uncorrected statement by the observer from the Palestinian Liberation Organization,” yet
Ambassador Nabil Ramlawi refused either to apologize or to correct his AIDS libel. As of September
[ 1997], this malicious calumny still remains in the record of the Commission on Human Rights.4

Reprinted from Justice (Journal of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Tel Aviv) 14 (September 1997): 10-17. It is reproduced here with permission.

“BLASPHEMY” CHARGE AT THE UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION

ON HUMAN RIGHTS
 The second incident, the main subject of our article, was a last-minute accusa-tion on the
grounds of “blasphemy”—leveled against the special rapporteur on racism, Maurice Glele-
Ahanhanzo—and a demand for censorship. It concerned the section of his report subheaded,
“Islamist and Arab Anti-Semitism.” This dangerous precedent can be used in future sessions if it is
allowed to pass unchallenged. The censuring of reports of UN special rapporteurs, after they have
been printed and discussed, weakens an essential structure of the protection and promotion of human
rights. Thus this report merits our attention. The possibility of the wider use of the accusation of
“blasphemy” to limit analysis at any UN debate was raised on August 27 at the forty-ninth session of
the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, when the
Indonesian representative, speaking for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), expressed
satisfaction at “the excision of a blasphemous reference to the Holy Qur’an in the report of the
Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance. We are glad that this offensive reference was excised by the Special Rapporteur
in consultation with the parties concerned”5

AN ABORTED 1994 “BLASPHEMY” CHARGE BY THE

GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN

Already at the 1994 commission meeting, the Sudanese ambassador, in a letter of February 18,
addressed to all representatives and observers,6 requested “an immediate withdrawal of those
references” from the report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan,7 in
which certain inconsistencies were indicated between the international human rights conventions to
which the Sudan is a signatory party since 1986 and some provisions of its Criminal Act of 1991.
This letter stated that the paragraphs underlining these inconsistencies “contained abusive,
inconsiderate, blasphemous and offensive remarks about the Islamic faith.” In resolution 1994/79 of
March 9, however, the Commission on Human Rights accepted the analysis and the
recommendations made by Dr. Gaspar Biro, the special rapporteur, on this subject and, inter alia,
called upon the government of Sudan “to comply with applicable international human rights
instruments and to bring its national legislation into accordance with the instruments to which the
Sudan was a party.” This call upon the government of Sudan was reiterated in all subsequent
resolutions by the Commission, including its latest resolution, 1997/59, on the situation of human
rights in the Sudan. In his 1994 introductory statement, the special rapporteur had an opportunity to
develop his arguments, as he was supported by the majority of the fifty-three member states. The
Sudanese request to introduce modifications that included deletions of paragraphs in the report was
unanimously rejected, both procedurally and in substance.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRECEDENT AT UN HUMAN RIGHTS BODIES

The Commission on Human Rights, as well as the Sub-Commission on Pre-vention of

Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, have rules of procedure, but in practice much of the
work is done on precedent; once something has been accepted, it serves as an example. One can be
fairly sure that this example will be cited again when a similar situation turns up; hence the
importance of an analysis of precedents in the Commission on Human Rights and in the
subcommission, which is one of the important strengths of Bertrand G. Ramcharan’s book The
Concept and Present Status of the International Protection of Human Rights.8
 Strong remedial measures should be initiated to facilitate the constructive work of the UN
human rights bodies, especially as the Commission on Human Rights is presently preparing a new
World Conference on Racism and Discrimination, in whose preparation both the commission and its
sub-commission are to play major roles.

THE FACTS ABOUT THE 1997 “BLASPHEMY” CHARGE

AT THE UNITED NATIONS

Let us now examine how the second accusation of “blasphemy” at the United Nations
succeeded, thereby becoming a dangerous precedent.
By its resolution 1993/20, the Commission on Human Rights nominated Maurice Glele-
Ahanhanzo as special rapporteur, later mandating him “to examine incidents of contemporary forms
of racism, racial discrimination, any form of discrimination, inter alia, against Blacks, Arabs and
Muslims, xenophobia, negrophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance, as well as governmental
measures to overcome them, and to report on these matters on a yearly basis to the Commission.” His
latest report was submitted to the commission’s fifty-third session.9 In this report, there is a section
on antisemitism that contains a subheading titled “Islamist and Arab Anti-Semitism,”10 which
concludes with a quotation taken from an annual survey, Anti-Semitism Worldwide,11 and forwarded
to the special rapporteur on racism by Israel’s ambassador and permanent representative in Geneva:

The use of Christian and secular European anti-Semitism motifs in Muslim publications
is on the rise, yet at the same time Muslim extremists are turning increasingly to their own
religious sources, first and foremost the Qur’an, as a primary anti-Jewish source.

The original Arabic sources to which the quoted extracts refer are not included in the UN report.
No question was raised on this wording when the special rapporteur introduced his report at the start
of the ccommission. But on the last morning of the session—in the absence of Glele-Ahanhanzo,
who had returned home—and at the time of the explanation of votes on the resolution accepting his
report and supporting his mandate, the Indonesian representative, speaking on behalf of the OIC,
referred to this passage and stated, “This amounts to the defamation of our religion, Islam, and
blasphemy against its Holy book, Qur’an. We are infuriated that such a statement has been included
in the report of the Special Rapporteur. The Commission on Human Rights cannot become a silent
spectator to this defamation against one of the great religions of the world. We, therefore, call on the
Commission to express censure for this defamatory statement against Islam and the Holy Qur’an and
ask you, Mr. Chairman, to express this censure on behalf of the Commission.”12
Prior to this, the Turkish representative (whose government was then led by an Islamist prime
minister), a cosponsor of the Draft Resolution on Racism, also objected to the alleged “blasphemy,”
as did the representatives of Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, and Bangladesh. Soon afterward, negotiations
began in private, over lunch and in hallways where NGOs could have no input. At a late, final
evening meeting, the chairman read out an agreed draft decision, adopted by consensus, that became
decision 1997/125.13 In it, the commission
1. Decided, without a vote, to express its indignation and protest at the content of such an
offensive reference to Islam and the Holy Qur’an;
2. Affirmed that this offensive reference should have been excluded from the report;
3. Requested the Chairman to ask the Special Rapporteur to take corrective action in response
to the present decision.
 For an initial account of this event and the dangers of such a precedent, see Rene Wadlow,
“Shooting the Messenger,” in Human Rights Tribune.14

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN UN REPORTS: AN EMPIRICAL

APPROACH

The reports of all UN human rights special rapporteurs must be open to ques-tioning, comment,
and debate. It is in this spirit of dialogue that the special rapporteurs have an essential role to play in
the defense of human rights. To force modification of a report is to denature their role and to weaken
possibilities for effective action. Moreover, to consider the analysis by the special rapporteur on
racism of discriminatory attitudes contained in current religious preaching and literature as
“blasphemy” is to mask from examination a large segment of public discourse. Religious teachings
constitute an important avenue for the transmission of ideas and attitudes. As with all bodies of ideas,
religious doctrines should be examined carefully in their historical context.
Such analysis of religious attitudes in UN documents is rare, for religion deals with highly
sensitive issues and deeply set emotional attitudes. However, as the quotation under question deals in
large part with religious teachings, we believe that the offensive reference merits close attention as
well as some bibliographical indications, so that further research can be carried out in this field. We
believe that statements in thematic reports require some bibliographical references in order to meet
high standards of evidence, so that the exactitude of the facts put forward by the special rapporteur
may be examined. The inclusion of such references to support a sound analysis will ensure a
constructive discussion aimed at remedial action. In the spirit of this empirical approach, it is
necessary to provide examples of the accuracy of the above-mentioned controversial quotation that
was used as an excuse to justify the introduction of a “blasphemy” accusation and a peremptory
request to censure a report at the Commission on Human Rights. The crux of the matter concerns the
validity or not of the sentence that provoked the “blasphemy” charge. Thus on July 15 we submitted
a written statement to the sub-commission, in which we indicated some of the factual background
needed to analyze the above-mentioned three currents of antisemitism.15
While such information is no doubt familiar to readers of Justice, we shall here highlight a few
passages, as the analysis of religious and ideological currents is rare at UN meetings, and this fifteen-
hundred-word written statement by the Association for World Education may serve as a “positive
precedent.”

CHRISTIAN, SECULAR EUROPEAN, AND ISLAMIST AND

ARAB ANTISEMITISM

We shall now briefly examine the three trends of antisemitism that appear in the controversial
phrase on Christian, secular European, and Islamist and Arab antisemitism.

Christian Antisemitism

On the origins of Christian antisemitism, we have chosen a quotation from emeritus professor
William Nichols’s major work, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate: “(Bjecause the Jews
rejected and killed Christ, they in turn have been rejected as God’s chosen people. The Jews have
broken their ancient covenant with God, and he has made a new covenant, sealed in the blood of
Christ, gathering to himself a new people, drawn from the Gentiles. This new people has now
superseded the old Israel. . . . The Jews have lost their status as the covenant people, and the new
Israel is now the true Israel. As a punishment for their cosmic crime, the Jews have lost their Temple
and been exiled from their land. Until the return of Christ, they will remain homeless wanderers upon
the earth. What theologians are beginning to call the theology of supersession joins hands with the
myth of the deicide, Christ-killing people to make the Jews a permanent target for Christian hostility
and con-tempt.”16
Since the early twentieth century, there has been a strong and active school of Christian
scholarship whose aim has been to analyze the historical, social, and political context in which
Christianity developed. There have been patient efforts to understand all the positions in these first-
century debates, where theology, politics, sociology, and the quest for identity are all mixed together.
Such scholarship is essential for the study of all religious traditions, so that religious texts, attitudes,
laws, and institutions are seen against their historical background. In the last two decades, this
scholarship has become irrefutable, but “it will take time to be more widely absorbed.”17 In this
context, one should recall the 1965 historic Nostra aetate declaration of the Second Vatican Council.
There are two major themes in Christian anti-Jewish thought that are used in Islamist
publications. The first theme is the current irrelevance of the Jews in God’s plan of salvation for
humanity—the early alliance of God with the Jews has been superseded. The second theme is of a
collective Last Judgment—on a whole people, as well as upon each individual. These themes were
reiterated in a subsequent article by an Islamist Egyptian writer, Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud, who uses
both of these Christian themes as well as a dozen quotations from the Qur’an as a primary anti-
Jewish source, predicting the millennial destruction of Israel in his conclusion: “Israel is continuing
in the haughtiness that the Qur’an talks about. The small haughtiness is leading to the great
haughtiness.”18

Blood-Libel Accusation and World Conspiracy Theories

There are many secular European strands of anti-Jewish thought being widely spread in Arab
and Islamist publications; more and more, the denial of the Holocaust, but especially “conspiracy
theories” of history and the 1840 “Damascus Affair” blood-libel, which surfaced during the Gulf War
at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. On February 8, 1991, the representative of
Syria, holding aloft a copy of The Matzah of Zion, declared, “We should like to launch an appeal to
all members of this Commission to read this very important work that demonstrates unequivocally
the historical reality of Zionist racism.” In its preface by Syrian minister of defense Maj. Gen.
Mustafa Tlass, one reads, “The Jew can . . . kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist
bread. … I hope that I have done my duty in presenting the practices of the enemy of our historic
nation. Allah aid this project.”19
This dangerous “conspiracy theory” myth consists in the belief that a Jewish-led conspiracy
seeks to control the v/orld, a plot seen at work in every revolution, in every war since time
immemorial, and in all international organizations, including the United Nations. The most
widespread of these conspiracy theories of history is contained in a forged document called The Pro-
tocols of the Elders of Zion. This forgery was fabricated in Paris at the turn of this century for the use
of the Russian czar’s secret police, the Okhrana. It inspired Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism. The long
history of The Protocols has been documented in full by French sociologist Pierre-Andre Taguieff in
his work, Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion (Faux et Usages d’un faux).20
The Protocols are still widely disseminated, having been reprinted in the last decades in at
least ten European countries. However, it is in the Arab/Islamic world that it remains a best-seller of
hate and can be found in the main centers of the Middle East and the Maghreb. An Arabic edition of
The Protocols, available in the West, includes a preface with a rare example of religious and racial
hatred against the Jews that concludes with the prophesy of Israel’s destruction: “This destruction is
what we believe and teach to our children, striving toward its realization and asking for success from
Allah, the Exalted One.”21 (On “conspiracy theories,” see our written statement of March 25, 1997,
submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, titled Constitution of the Islamic Resistance
Movement Hamas: 18 August I988.)22

Islamist and Arab Antisemitism as a Growing World Phenomenon

On the question of whether Islamists regularly use “religious sources, first and foremost the
Qur’an, as a primary anti-Jewish source?” a full documen-tation on such recurring themes may be
found in The Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research (September 1968).23 This book
contains research papers given by twenty-two theologians and scholars. Extracts were reproduced in
Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, edited by D. F. Green [the joint pseudonym of coeditors David
G. Littman and Yehoshafat Harkabi]. Green writes in the introduction, “The ideas expounded in this
volume could lead to the urge to liquidate Israel (politicide) and the Jews (genocide).”24 The 1988
charter of Hamas—a blueprint for genocide—is full of idiosyncratic interpretations of the Qur’an
that we shall not quote here. But a controversial Hadith, or saying attributed to the Prophet—now a
commonplace with Islamists worldwide—concludes its article 7: “the Hamas aspires to implement
Allah’s promise, whatever time that may take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation,
has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill
them), until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding
behind me, come on and kill him.’“ This article precedes the Hamas slogan contained in article 8:
“Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for
Allah’s cause its most sublime belief.”
Numerous examples of this trend have been documented in various pub-lications over the last
thirty years, beginning with Yehoshafat Harkabi’s Arab Attitudes to Israel.25 Here are the words used
by Moshe Ma’oz then: “Arab Judeophobia draws essentially upon Islamic religious literature and
religious teaching, because of the centrality of Islam in modern Arab ideologies and cultural
tradition.”26
These facts cannot be denied or dismissed as “blasphemous” when Islamists are quoted in such
works, as well as those reproduced on cassettes and on the Internet.27

ANTISEMITISM WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF A FORTHCOMING

CONFERENCE ON RACISM

Even after the publication of Glele-Ahanhanzo’s “corrective action” that removed the “offensive
reference,”28 the campaign continued at the substantive session of ECOSOC, when, on July 22, the
representative of Indonesia— on behalf of the OIC—referred to the “outrageous reference to Islam
and to the Qur’an” and requested that his statement—which also cited the Hebron case of
“blasphemy”—be distributed as an official UN document at the Security Council and at the
forthcoming session of the General Assembly. The representatives of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudia
Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, and Iran intervened on this issue to support Indonesia’s request and to
make further negative comments about the “offensive reference to Islam and the Holy Qur’an”—
some of them demanding that the subheading “Islamist Arab Anti-Semitism” also be removed from
that report.29
 We maintain—having demonstrated this in our detailed written text30— that the so-called
“offensive reference” is accurate. If anything, it is a euphemism in regard to what is actually being
said publicly on this subject and published regularly in Arabic and otherwise. Remedial action on all
forms of racial discrimination—including antisemitism and anti-Christian attitudes—should not be
blocked by invoking respect for religious belief and practice. We must examine closely and without
fear the ways in which discriminatory attitudes are formed and transmitted. In this way, the
preparation for a new World Conference to Combat Racism will not be a bureaucratic exercise but
part of an important process to modify in a positive direction many negative attitudes and practices.
The conclusion of our written statement to the subcommission was borrowed from the conclusion of
Prof. Inge Lenning’s report on a notorious Swedish case of antisemitism—”Radio Islam” or the
“Rami-Bergman Affair.” A former rector of the University of Oslo, he sent us an abridged English
version for use at the United Nations and to be forwarded to the then assistant secretary general for
human rights, Ibrahim Fall, for transmission to the special rapporteur on racism: “The general lesson
to be learnt from the ‘Rami-Bergman Affair’ should be that the challenge of manifest antisemitism
should be faced by all citizens, but first and foremost by those in charge of central institutions in
society, like church and universities. Representatives of the academic and the religious community
should, in their double capacity of citizens and professionals, have a special awareness and a special
obligation to meet the challenge in an adequate manner.”
Our above-mentioned written statement to the subcommission (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/NGO/3)
was circulated to all eighteen independent members of the Human Rights Committee (HRC) and the
Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at their respective sessions held in Geneva in
late July and early August. Christine Chanet, the HRC’s chairperson, raised this grave matter on
September 16 at a meeting of persons chairing the human rights bodies. She was followed the next
day by Paulo Pinheiro, chairperson of the special rapporteurs, representatives, experts, and
chairpersons of working groups of the Commission on Human Rights and the Advisory Services
Programme, which on May 23 resolved unanimously “that the Special Rapporteurs should not be
requested to amend their Reports merely because certain passages are deemed to be offensive by a
particular Member State or group of Member States.”
On September 18, at the new high commissioner’s first meeting with NGOs, we asked Mary
Robinson if she would add her “voice of support for the total independence of all the Special
Rapporteurs.” This she agreed to do in her meeting with the chairpersons of the human rights bodies
the following day. It is of crucial importance that all strongly defend the independence of the special
rapporteurs before this dangerous precedent of “censorship” becomes a UN norm.

THE AMBIGUOUS QUIBBLE OVER THE TERM

ANTI-SEMITISM/ANTISEMITISM

As the word antisemitism is frequently misused at UN sessions—most recently in the statements

mentioned above, made at the meeting of ECOSOC on July 22—it is necessary to clarify a certain
ambiguity about the term itself, which was first coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, a German
journalist. To quote Emeritus Professor Nicholls: “Antisemites were and are not opposed to all so-
called Semites but only to Jews, and not always to all of them as individuals but primarily to Jews as
a group in society.”31 As proposed in James Parkes’s classic work The Conflict of the Church and the
Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism?32 the term antisemitism should be spelled as one
word, without a hyphen—as in French and German—and not as two words, with a capital S (anti-
Semitism), as is customary in America and at the United Nations. This way of spelling leads to a
semantic legerdemain, a curious quibble that is often heard: “How can Arabs be antisemites? They
are Semites themselves.” If Arabs truly felt that the term “antisemite” also encompassed them as
“Semites,” they would not have insisted on adding the words “Arabs” and “Muslims” to the list of
those specifically concerned by “any form of discrimination” in the 1993 resolution on racism.
Perhaps a better word would have been anti-Jewish.” Indeed, it would be interesting to know why
“Christians” were not mentioned in this resolution, in the same way as “Muslims,” especially as in
the last decades Christians are increasingly suffering from all forms of discrimination and
persecution worldwide, both ethnic and religious.

THE DANGERS OF CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP AT THE

UNITED NATIONS

We have described this censorship in some detail, for there is a danger that unless there is a
strong defense of the independence of the special rapporteurs from within the UN system and from
NGOs, such censorship will become an irreversible trend. We see three aspects to this very real
danger:

1. After the recent censorship—”in consultation with the parties concerned”—there is a real
danger of self-censorship by the special rapporteurs or by the editors of the report in the
Centre for Human Rights, such that “Islamist and Arab anti-Semitism” would in the future
be largely passed over, with little or no analysis of what is being preached in mosques, by
radio, video, and television, or on tapes and on the Internet. Only the persistence of
traditional antisemitism in the West and “Christian and secular European anti-Semitism
motifs in Muslim publications” would be mentioned for fear of the “blasphemy” charge.
2. Were such self-censorship to occur in the yearly reports of the special rapporteur, it is likely
that antisemitism—especially in the Muslim world—would be downplayed or only
condemned ritually in the preparations for the forthcoming World Conference on Racism.
The intellectual and policy preparations for this conference are likely to be difficult, and
consensus is reached by neglecting awkward questions.
3. The third danger, which merits serious attention, is the use of the the-ological accusation of
“blasphemy”—Moliere had the same problem three hundred years ago with Catholic
clerics when Tartuffe was first performed—an ill-defined term, which can be expanded to
mean anything an accuser dislikes. There is a proper sensitivity to the belief systems of
government representatives that is part of diplomatic culture, but sensitivity should not
induce blindness. Some accusations of “blasphemy” can be ill-disguised death threats,
which should have no place in civilized relations between governments. It is more
dangerous when they are used against representatives NGOs or special rapporteurs—the
threat to Dr. Gaspar Biro was explicit—who do not have the backing of a government.

CONCLUSION

The last years of this second millennium of the common era is not a time to allow this form of
“cultural relativism” to restrict freedom of opinion and expression at the United Nations—in Geneva,
not far from the homes of both Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is a dangerous precedent for
charges of “blasphemy” to be given credence and even consecration at the UN Commission on
Human Rights and other UN bodies. Rather, it is a real analysis that is needed if we are to come to
grips with all forms of racism and discriminatory attitudes, including those that are transmitted by
religious thought and teaching—from whatever the source. The struggle to combat racism in all its
forms—including antisemitism—through serious scholarship and freedom of thought, opinion, and
expression should not be curtailed at the United Nations by self-censorship, as a result of doctrinal
accusations of “blasphemy,” whose demands are legion.

NOTES

For two recent special issues related to this topic, see “Anti-Semitism: Then and Now,” Justice
(Tel Aviv), no. 34 (Winter 2002); and also Antisemitism International (Journal of the Vidal Sassoon
International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) (2003).
 30
JUDEOPHOBIA TODAY=
ANTI-JUDAISM/
ANTI-ZIONISM/
ANTISEMITISM
A Growing “Culture of Hate”

1. Judeophobia—under the guise of “anti-Zionism”—is now generally recognized as

endemic in the Arab/Muslim world, being nourished • by a general “culture of hate” that
is creeping into Europe, and beyond. The annual adoption since 1999 of a commission
resolu-tion—sponsored by the OIC’s fifty-six Muslim States—against any “defamation of
religions” has had no effect whatsoever on these dangerous attitudes. Resolution 2003/4,
“Combatting Defamation of Religions,” states under its paragraph 6: “Expresses deep
concern at programmes and agendas pursued by extremist organisations and groups aimed
at the defamation of religions, in particular when supported by Governments.”1
2. Yet the farewell address—with its controversial Judeophobie diatribe by [Malaysian
president Muhammad bin Mahathir], president of the tenth Summit of the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference on October 16, 2003—received a standing ovation. Although
Malaysia is one of fifty-three Member States of the Commission on Human Rights, there
was no official reaction from any UN personality.
3. In a written statement last year,2 we pointed out that antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim
world has been totally ignored in all reports of the special rapporteur on racism since 1998,
after the “blasphemy affair” that occurred on the last day of the fifty-third session.
Following a very brief mention in the special rapporteur’s 2003 report, we are promised a
fuller analysis for 2004.

NGO written statement E/CN.4/2004/NGO/5—submitted by the AWE to the sixtieth session of the UNCHC. and posted on the UN Web site—was prepared by David G.
Littman, with advice from Rene Wadlow.

4. In that statement,3 we reproduced the “Urgent Appeal” of December 10, 2002, which we
sent to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the late Sergio Vieira de Mello. This
was directly related to the event that occurred in Egypt during the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan (October-November 2002), when the Egyptian Dream Satellite TV channel
serialized—with government authorization— forty-one episodes of Knight without a
Horse, a melodrama based on the one-hundred-year-old-forgery, The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.
5. Below is our “Urgent Appeal” of December 10, 2003, to Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan, the
Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, regarding the reuse in Egypt during the
 recent Ramadan (2003) of The Protocols; and of the “blood-libel” on Arab TV—again with
a Syrian contribution:
6. URGENT APPEAL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS DAY (DECEMBER 10, 2003) TO ACTING
HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS DR. BERTRAND RAMCHARAN
A Growing Phenomenon of a Revived Culture of Hate:
The Continuing Use of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and the Medieval “Blood-Libel”
On the fifty-fifth anniversary of the General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, we wish to express to you and all your colleagues in UN bodies our deep dismay
and grave concern over the continuous use of a genocidal century-old forgery, The Protocol of the
Elders of Zion, as well as the medieval “blood-libel” accusing Jews of killing Christian children each
year to mix their blood in the Passover Matzah. Two very recent examples highlight this revived
culture of hate, which is regularly propagated in Arab/Muslim lands—and not condemned.
The new Alexandria Library was recently renovated with the help of the governments of Egypt
and Italy and the collaboration of UNESCO— and in memory of the great Hellenistic Library of
antiquity that had been a unique foundation of world knowledge and understanding. Thus, it was with
consternation and sadness that we learned of the first exhibition in its manuscript museum that
purported to display the sacred texts of the three monotheistic religions, while including an Arabic
translation of The Protocol of the Elders of Zion, exhibited alongside the Hebrew Bible or Torah [sic]
in the display case concerning Judaism. As director Dr. Yusef Ziedan has explained: “[I]t is only
natural to place the book [The Protocols] in the framework of an exhibit of Torah [scrolls],” as “it
has become one of the sacred [tenets] of the Jews, next to their first constitution.”4
This Arabic translation by Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunsi of the English version of The
Protocols was first published in 1951 in Egypt, and often reprinted.5
In Syria and elsewhere, there has been a continued rehash of the 1840 Damascus “Blood-
Libel” accusation, particularly by Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass in his The Matzah of Zion (1983),
constantly reprinted since as a Tlass-editions best-seller in several languages, and confirmed by him
again in 2003. This, even after the sinister scandal at the 1991 Commission on Human Rights, when
Syria’s delegate brandished an illustrated and gory Arabic edition of The Matzah of Zion—to prove
“the historical reality of Zionist racism.” General Tlass actually wrote in the preface: “The Jew can
kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread.”6
During last month’s [November 2003] Ramadan, Hizbollah’s satellite TV channel Al-Manar—
viewed worldwide—broadcast Al-Shatat (“Diaspora”), a thirty-part Judeophobie / antisemitic “Syrian
TV series recording the criminal history of Zionism.”7 Episode 20 depicts a rabbi teaching Jews of
the perennial, spiritual need to cut a Christian child’s throat and mix in his blood and then, ritually,
“taste the holy Passover matzo.”
Fortunately, a protest from UNESCO’s director-general Koichiro Matsuura early last week led
to the withdrawal on December 6 of The Protocols from the Alexandria Library,8 a welcome example
of the power of enlightened protest. We await a protest against this latest Syrian-inspired “blood-
libel.”
On June 17, 2003, at a symposium in Vienna on “antisemitism,”9 you stated: “Denial is not an
option. Many people of course would like to deny the reality of anti-Semitism.” Your message then
was clear: “So when you reflect on anti-Semitism as a continuing concern, I would invite you to
consider programmes of educational activities that can help deal with this phenomenon.” In your
posted “Human Rights Day Message,”10 you “plead for stronger messages of protection, nationally,
regionally, and internationally,” asking: “what more can be done to strengthen human rights
protection.. . . Today I plead for stronger human rights protection.”
 Therefore, we solemnly call upon you as Acting High Commissioner for human rights—and to
the whole human rights community—to speak out and redouble UN efforts for the elimination of all
hate-generating, especially genocidal, forgeries on Web sites and in the media, and to engage in wide
educational programs which will develop understanding and mutual respect among peoples and
between religious communities.

Rene Wadlow David G. Littman

(Representatives, Association for World Education to the UN Office, Geneva)

7. The genocidal dangers of such racist manifestations of hate were expressed by historian D.
F. Green over thirty years ago in an introduction to Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel,11
being extracts from the proceedings of the 1968 Fourth Conference of the Academy of
Islamic Research, linked to Cairo’s Al-Azhar University.
8. This introduction—three-quarters of which is reproduced with the author’s permission—is
as relevant today as when it was first published over thirty years ago. It may help the
commission to combat an ongoing politicidal and genocidal phenomenon.

From D. F. Greens Introduction to Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel12

9. On June 23, 1961, the Academy of Islamic Research was founded and linked to Cairo’s
prestigious Al-Azhar University by a resolution passed by the National Assembly of the
United Arab Republic. At the same time, the faculties and administration of Al-Azhar were
reorganized and the university itself was attached to the office of the president of the
Republic, through the appointment of a special ministry. This resolution of the National
Assembly specified that the academy should comprise fifty Egyptian members and up to
twenty foreigners, all appointed by the president of the Republic. Its first three conferences
took place in March 1964, May-June 1965, and October 1966.
10. The Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research was convened in Cairo during
September 1968 to discuss the fundamentals of the Middle East conflict, particularly its
spiritual-theological significance, and its historical antecedents. Mr. Hussain al-Shafe’i
(vice president of the United Arab Republic under presidents Nasser and Sadat) greeted the
participants, seventy-seven Muslim ulema and invited guests, on behalf of President
Nasser.
11. Some of the proceedings were reproduced immediately after the conference in Majallat Al-
Azhar, the university’s monthly. The complete transactions were published in 1970 in
Arabic (3 vols.) and in English (1 vol., 935 pp.). In the latter, it is stated on the title page
that the book was printed in Cairo by the General Organisation for Government Printing
Offices, which signifies governmental support. The efforts involved to have these
transactions translated into English indicate that the authorities did not hesitate to publicize
the proceedings, thereby propagating to the world the views contained in this volume.
12. The Arab-Israeli conflict is often considered as of a political nature stemming from a
territorial litigation. Such conflicts however tend to spill over into other domains. The need
to substantiate one’s position can lead to an attempt to buttress it by giving it the form of an
ideology, or even—as in the present case—the conflict may be theologized as an extreme
measure to justify one’s position and condemn that of the adversary.
13. It is disheartening to witness some of the principal leaders of the Arab-Muslim world
convening for the sake of vilifying another religion and people, shunning neither
expressions of abuse, nor the worst invectives. [E.g., vice-principal of Tanta Institute,
Egyptian Sheikh Kamal Ahmad Own, “The Jews Are the Enemies of Human Life as Is
Evident from Their Holy Book.”]
14. Islam, from its origins, includes extreme anti-Jewish and anti-Christian components. These
traditional attitudes relating to Jews are now being invested with new life and vigor by the
spiritual leaders who took part in this Fourth Conference, in the subsequent Fifth Confer-
ence, and in similar learned gatherings held from time to time in other Arab centers.

Recurring Themes in the Proceedings:

Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research

15. The superiority of Islam over all other religions is brandished as a guarantee that the Arabs
will ultimately triumph. The grandeur of Islam must be reflected in future secular
successes. Arab defeats and reverses are explained away as having been ordained by a
providential design, in order to teach the Arabs a lesson because of their spiritual
negligence—and as a purgatorial ordeal.
16. Jews are frequently denoted as the “enemies of Allah” or the “enemies of humanity.” This
latter expression is even to be found in the opening speech of Vice President al-Shafe’i.
The expression “dogs of humanity” is used by Mr. Hassan Khaled, the mufti of the
Lebanon.
17. The State of Israel is the culmination of the historical and cultural depravity of the Jews. It
has to be destroyed, having been established through aggression, which is its congenital
and immutable nature. This task should be achieved by a jihad, a Holy War.
18. Many participants reiterate that it is outrageous for the Jews—tradi-tionally kept by Arab-
Islam in a humiliated, inferior status, and characterized as cowardly—to defeat the Arabs,
have their own state, and cause the contraction of the “abode of Islam” (dar al-Islam). All
these events contradict the march of history and Allah’s design.13
19. Furthermore, if the picture of the Jews and Judaism as portrayed by the venerable
participants of this conference is, in fact, as they contend the traditional image of the Jews
in the eyes of Islam, it is inconceivable that it would not have affected the feelings and
behavior of Arabs toward Jews over the centuries. For it to have been otherwise would
have amounted to a schizophrenia which is very implausible.
20. The ideas expounded in this volume could lead to the urge to liquidate the State of Israel
(politicide) and the Jews (genocide). If the evil of the Jews is immutable and permanent,
transcending time and circumstances, and impervious to all hopes of reform, there is only
one way to cleanse the world of them—by their complete annihilation. Did the participants
of this conference intend this, and were they conscious of the dangers concealed in such
reasoning? Yet its inner logic could easily lead to such a conclusion.
21. The fact that these sages have witnessed the moral havoc that similar ideas of hatred had
wrought in Nazi Germany and were not inhibited from resorting to them only testifies to
the vehemence of their attitudes. [ In his Mein Kampf, and elsewhere. Hitler cited The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion—using this crude forgery, proven since 1921—to justify his
“Final Solution.”]
22. The seriousness of this compilation is increased because it is a post- Nazi opus. These
learned religions dignitaries and academics knew exactly what they were saying, and meant
it. The view sometimes aired that the Arabs are unfortunate victims of their language is
merely a slander. Language is an instrument. Choosing abusive terms does not stem from
exuberance but is a deliberate choice. Furthermore, the lectures reprinted in this book were
made in the serenity of an academic environment and were not frenzied harangues to a
euphoric public.
23. Arab spokesmen contend that they differentiate meticulously between Zionism and
Judaism and that they are against Zionism and not against Judaism. There cannot be a more
trenchant disproof of this explanation than the arguments used at the Fourth Conference of
 the Academy of Islamic Research, at least as regards its participants. The odium of Zionism
is described as emanating from the perversity of Judaism. Zionists and Jews are treated
synonymously.
24. One may query the direct influence of the Arabic and English editions of these volumes, as
their distribution can hardly have been very large. Their importance, however, lies in their
being a symptom. It is known that such attitudes are frequently repeated by preachers
during the Friday religious services and are mentioned by Arab political leaders.
25. The position of a state and its policies should not be assessed merely through the narrow
vista of its concrete behavior or the official pronouncements of its leaders. A political
analysis which is based only upon such external realities will be inadequate. Ideologies,
beliefs, aspirations, and emotions are part of the inner realities on which policies evolve,
and they should also be taken into consideration. Deliberations such as those that took
place at the Fourth Conference may shed some light on the substratum of Arab attitudes
toward Jews and Israel. Herein lies their political significance.
26. The absolutist self-righteous tenor which pervades all the deliberations of the Fourth
Conference is most repelling. It stands in blatant contradiction to what I consider a moral
imperative in molding positions in international conflicts: relativism, that is, the
understanding that one’s adversary also has rights and virtues. In these deliberations, and
the attitudes underlying them, there is not a modicum of such relativism, only a
pretentiousness that all justice and all rights belong to the Arabs and the Muslims, who
represent everything that is good. The Jews and Israel are denigrated as utterly wrong,
without any rights, and their cause is considered as devoid of any merit.
27. The aim here is not to pour fuel on the flames of this conflict: its blaze has already caused
enough suffering, and its calamities have perverted the souls of many. It is to be hoped that
this appeal may serve as a general exhortation against the dangers lurking in the ide-
ologization (or worse, in the theologization) of a political conflict.
28. When such books, published under government auspices, cease to appear a step toward
reconciliation will have been made.

—D. F. Green, London, August 197614

29. The Association for World Education again appeals to the Acting High Commissioner for
Human Rights; the Commission and the Sub-Commission on Human Rights; the UN
Special Rapporteurs; and all other UN bodies and representatives to act urgently, and
publicly, on this grave matter—and to promote actively education for interfaith
understanding and mutual respect.
 31
THE IDEOLOGY OF JIHAD
Antisemitism/Genocide/
Slavery in the Sudan
Robert S. Wistrich

It is fitting for this commission to address the alarming wave of anti-Xsemitism that today
characterizes not only Europe but a growing part of the Arab/Muslim world. To continue to turn a
blind eye is to ignore a major motivating force behind the ideology of jihad responsible for the
shocking acts of Islamist terror that have left a bloody trail in Manhattan, Washington, Bali, Istanbul,
Riyadh, Djerba, Casablanca, Jerusalem, Ashdod, and the recent atrocity in Madrid [March 11, 2004]
—a clear warning to Europe of what lies ahead.
[The deadly cocktail of terrorism—jihad and antisemitism embodied in Islamist organisations
from al Qaeda to the Palestinian Hamas movement— represents a potent totalitarian threat to the
open society and the cause of human rights and civilization. These totalitarian Islamists have
hijacked and blackened the name of Islam and are as much a threat to Muslims as they are to
Christians, Jews, and millions of other peaceful citizens going about their daily business.]
Europe’s reaction to this scourge has thus far been disappointing. It con-tinues to permit
Islamists to preach openly their antidemocratic values and poisonous Judeophobia in the heart of
Europe—a continent on which only sixty years ago the Jewish people suffered the greatest mass
slaughter in its history. In the last three years there has been an unprecedented wave of attacks on
Jewish institutions, synagogues, and individual Jews throughout the European Union.

This oral statement prepared by Prof. Robert S. Wistrich—a guest representative of the WUPJ to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR—with aid from David G. Littman should
have been delivered by Professor Wistrich on March 26, 2004. In the end, it was delivered by David G. Littman on March 29. with a concluding paragraph by him. when a reliable
source provided information on another potential “slavery” tragedy in Sudan. This text was circulated at the UNCHR with WUPJ’s written statement, E/CN.4/2004/NGO/I5.
reproduced as chapter 32 in this volume.

[Not only that, but the constant double standards applied to Israel, its denigration, defamation,
and delegitimization are a chilling reminder of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. Everyone understands
that no state is immune to criticism. Israelis themselves are Olympic gold medalists when it comes to
criticizing their own government. That is not the same as seeking the demise and disappearance of a
member state of the United Nations. Such discourse is now heard even in mainstream circles in
Europe, as has long been the case in the Middle East. It feeds antisemitism and it must be stopped.]
[I should like to remind this commission that just as Palestinians have human rights that
deserve to be respected, so, too, do all the victims of totalitarian Islamism. Israelis also have human
rights—the right to walk down a street, to go to a shopping mall, to take a bus, to sit in a bar, a
cafeteria, a pizzeria, to go to the cinema, the theater, a disco, or any other public place, to pray in the
House of God, or to study on a university campus, without being blown to pieces by a jihadist
bomber. At my own University in Jerusalem, on July 31, 2002, I witnessed such an atrocity, carried
out by the Hamas organisation.]
[Like other Islamists, Hamas uses antisemitic/Judeophobic language, full of hatred toward
Jews, ever since its foundation in 1987. In its Sacred Covenant (August 18, 1988), there are frequent
references to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which would have gladdened the hearts of Hitler
and Goebbels. It is difficult to see what any of this has to do with spirituality, works of charity,
dialogue, or the search for peace.]
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, jihadist terrorism, antisemitism, and racism have
become globalized. The struggle against these evils is an indivisible part of the worldwide campaign
for human rights. One blatant, recurring “crime against humanity” was highlighted ten days ago by
the UN resident coordinator in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, who referred to “ethnic cleansing” in Darfur
in a BBC interview. Last Thursday’s major article in the New York Times, “Don’t Let Sudan’s Ethnic
Cleansing Go On,” deplored “a campaign of murder, rape and pillage by Sudan’s Arab rulers that has
forced 700,000 black African Sudanese to flee for their lives.”1 Already in his 1995 report on Sudan,
the first UN special rapporteur, Gaspar Biro, wrote, “The racial aspect of the violations cannot be
disregarded.”2
[Nicholas Kristof added in his above-mentioned article, “If we turn away simply because the
victims are African tribespeople who have no phones and live in one of the most remote parts of the
globe, then shame on us.” Mukesh Kapila, the UN resident coordinator to Sudan, speaking to the
BBC on March 19, said that more than one million people were being affected by ethnic cleansing:
“It is more than just a conflict. It is an organised attempt to do away with a group of people. . . . This
is ethnic cleansing, this is the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, and I don’t know why the world
isn’t doing more about it.” This crime against humanity is being carried out by Arab militias, fully
backed by the Sudanese government, who have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. A
month ago, said Kapila, seventy-five people were killed in the village of Tawila: “over 100 women
were raped, six in front of their fathers who were later killed,” he said. All these people are black
African Muslims. This matter and that of the thousands of enslaved Sudanese Christians, animists,
and Muslim black Africans should again be addressed urgently by this commission, and by Western
and African countries too.]
Thirty-two hundred years ago, the children of Israel fled from the Egyptian house of bondage.
In three days, Jews begin the celebration of the festival of Passover, which has inspired many peoples
and many faiths ever since—especially Christianity and Islam. It is a celebration that should remind
all of us that we were once “slaves.” Indeed, the Exodus from Egypt was a foundation stone for
universal human rights: [a commandment to Jews—and, indeed, all mankind—to show solidarity
with the poor, the needy, and the oppressed, without distinction of race or creedl. The biblical call to
Pharoah, “Let my people go!” is as relevant today as ever before!

We here include a “special sitting appeal” to the chairman and the commission—to act urgently
on this massive humanitarian tragedy—and also on the latest news to reach us from Sudan. An
exodus of slaves was underway as this commission convened. Five hundred three non-Muslim
Africans— mainly women and children—are currently held in a government CEAWC [Committee
for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children] compound in Mieram [near the border
between northern and southern Sudan—cf. Radio Omdurman and other government sources]. But
last week the government-backed PDF [Popular Defense Forces] militias halted this official exodus,
threatening that the slaves would never reach their southern homes alive. They are now in imminent
danger of becoming enslaved again or perishing in the wilderness. This commission should take
urgent action for their immediate liberation, so that before both Passover and Easter begin, these five
hundred three slaves too will rejoice in that universal dream, reaffirmed by Martin Luther King Jr.
forty years ago: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last”3
 32
THE ALARMING GROWTH OF
JUDEOPHORIA/ANTISEMITISM
SINCE THE VIENNA WORLD
CONFERENCE ON HUMAN
RIGHTS (1993) AND THE UN
DECADE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
EDUCATION: 1995-2004

1. The World Union for Progressive Judaism wishes to stress the appeal made last year by
High Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello—tragically assassinated six months later by
terrorists in Baghdad—in his first report to the Commission (Human Rights and Follow-up
to the World Conference on Human Rights): “I call the Commission and, through it, the
international community at large to conscience . . .”/ “Actions, not words, is what matters.
Protection, not rhetoric is needed. We cannot shield gross violations of human rights—
wherever they occur—behind the veneer of sovereignty or the chicanery of diplomatic
procedures.”1
2. In his report on “Information and Education: Study on the Follow-up to the UN Decade for
Human Rights Education (1995-2004),” the high commissioner suggested: “A second
decade would need to be properly structured, also through the organization of regular
periodical events to create momentum and continuity.”2
3. A preamble to last year’s Commission Resolution 2003/30, under agenda item 4 reads:
“Reaffirming the views of the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993,
on the urgency of eliminating denials and violations of human rights.”

This NGO written statement E/CN.4/2004/NGO/I5—submitted by the WUPJ to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. and posted on UN Web site—was prepared by David G.
Littman. with Professor Wistrich’s June 19, 2(X)3. Vienna address, and his approval.

4. In an address to a symposium on antisemitism held in Vienna (June 17, 2003) by the

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the acting high
commissioner, Dr. Bertrand Ram-charan, reiterated that “denial is not an option. Many
people of course would like to deny the reality of anti-Semitism.” He then went on to
recommend “programs of educational activities that can help deal with this phenomenon.”
5. Two days later, a renowned historian and world expert on antisemitism Prof. Robert
Wistrich delivered his address, as an independent expert, on “Antisemitism in Europe
Today” to the same symposium, hosted by the OSCE.
 6. Twenty years ago (October 1984), in the preface to his Hitler’s Apoc-alypse. Jews and the
Nazi Legacy, Wistrich predicted that “the evidence I have been able to marshal concerning
the continuity of a radical and murderous antisemitism into the post-war era convinced me
that we are dealing with a highly dangerous and fateful phenomenon which may possibly
determine the future of our planet.”3 Today this is a certainty.
7. Again, concluding his global remarks at the opening meeting of the sixtieth session of the
commission on January 19, 2004, Acting High Commissioner Bertrand Ramcharan
stressed that “the duty of conscience and the duty of protection go hand in hand.” He
reiterated— and may well have had it in mind—the late high commissioner’s call to the
commission, and the international community, to “conscience”—quoted above under our
paragraph 1.
8. At the close of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), the
World Union for Progressive Judaism is reprinting in full, with his permission. Prof. Robert
Wistrich’s important text delivered at a very special event which should create momentum.4
9. “Antisemitism in Europe Today,” address by Prof. Robert S. Wistrich at a symposium in
Vienna on June 19, 2003, to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Speaking to you this afternoon from the majestic setting of the Hofburg in Vienna, I am very
mindful of certain historic events that can never be erased. Sixty-five years ago, in the Heldenplatz,
only a few hundred meters from this building, hundreds of thousands of cheering Austrians greeted
Adolf Hitler with a truly hysterical enthusiasm. In the next three years following the 1938 Anschluss,
the Jews of Austria were subjected to indescribable humiliations and cruelties. Over one-third of
Austria’s Jews (over sixty thousand) were sent to the death camps in Poland—a highly symbolic
microcosm of the six million Jewish men, women, and children across Europe who would suffer a
similarly horrible fate. Today, shocking to relate, the specter of antisemitism has once more returned
to haunt Europe, although it is assuming some radically new forms that require a different approach
if we are to deal effectively with the challenge. This session is devoted to education, a subject of
great importance. But let us not delude ourselves that education or enlightenment in themselves offer
any quick fix or magic wand which will dissipate the dark clouds that are gathering around us. What
goes on in the school classrooms, in colleges, in the universities, or in adult education is not divorced
from standards of behavior in the broader culture, from family and socialization patterns, from the
media and politics. Let us remember, before we assume that knowledge alone is the answer, that the
“educators” themselves must be educated (or reeducated!) to quote that highly unfashionable
nineteenth-century thinker Karl Marx!
Let us also recall that although this conference is devoted to Europe, thus far no speaker has
seriously addressed the burning issue of contemporary Muslim antisemitism, something highly
relevant to our topic. Today, we are witnessing a dangerous, toxic, and potentially genocidal form of
antisemitism in the Arab-speaking Middle East. The scale and extremism of this literature and
commentary—in newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Arab and Islamic Web sites, on the
radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and soap-operas like the Egyptian-produced version of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—Rider without a Horse—is comparable only to Nazi Germany at
its worst. The educational materials of the Arab world are soaked in this poison, made even more
inflammatory by what is regularly preached in the mosques. The motifs and symbols of this
genocidal antisemitism combine the worst slanders of European anti-Jewish bigotry (including the
Christian blood-libel) with Nazi-style caricatures, the myth of the world Jewish conspiracy, and the
tendentious use of Islamic sources, including the holy Qur’an. The Islamists (but not only them) have
hijacked Islam and are producing a new and more deadly anti-Jewish cocktail, one which is now
being reexported back to Europe. It has already infected part of the Muslim youth in France, Holland,
Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and other European countries. This rebound effect has
brought Middle Eastern fanaticism and a violent new antisemitism right back into the heart of
Europe. No educational strategy that turns a blind eye to the acuity of this problem can possibly
succeed.
Educational methods also need to be revised in the light of the highly mediatized global
village in which we now all live. This has made the transmission and amplification of antisemitic
images and ideas so much more mobile, transnational, and globalized. Today’s educators have to
confront libels that whiz through cyberspace at the speed of light—malicious disinformation of the
kind that accuses not only the Israeli army but “the Jews” per se of infanticide (cold-bloodedly
murdering Palestinian children), libels which blame dark “Jewish cabals” for pushing the United
States into the Iraq war; or accuse “neo-cons” (a codeword for East Coast Jewish intellectuals) of
seeking a “war of civilization” with Islam. Then, there are the grotesque fantasies claiming that the
Mossad or the Jews orchestrated the September 11 attack on America. Millions of credulous people
out there believe these lies!
Contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theories often hide under the mask of anti-Zionism, anti-
Israel prejudice, and/or anti-Americanism. Their purveyors are far more likely to be Islamists that
Christians. They often come from the Left more than they do from the Right; they are not outwardly
racist and frequently adopt an “antiracist” disguise. They almost never call themselves “antisemitic,”
unlike their predecessors of sixty or one hundred years ago. Indeed, the “new Judeophobes”
invariably wax indignant at the very suggestion that they are against the Jews. Their main focus is on
demonizing Israel, on dissolving the so-called Zionist entity and making the world Judenstaatrein—
cleansed of the world’s only Jewish state.
We cannot deal educationally with this “new look” antisemitism unless we tackle its changing
dynamics head-on and expose the pretensions of its new intellectual garb. This is not the ethnic,
nationalist, racist, or Nazi antisemitism of six decades ago, which had its roots in late nineteenth-
century Europe. All the delegates we have heard from today appear united in their opposition to that
type of brutal racist antisemitism, in their rejection of Neo-Nazism, right-wing populism, and
xenophobia. That is, of course, gratifying and I welcome it. But we will accomplish little if we think
that this is the real problem confronting us in 2003.
Let me, then, share with you some heretical thoughts. Antisemitism at the dawn of the twenty-
first century comes nicely wrapped in the radiant and beatific glow of human rights. It is an
“antisemitism without antisemites,” an antisemitism with a good conscience! Not only that, but some
of its most prominent spokesmen think of themselves as being in the forefront of the struggle against
racism, fascism, and other related evils. In its “anti-Zionist” masquerade, this style of antisemitism is
part of the new religion of Humanity—adapted to a postnational Utopia without frontiers—which
Israel’s existence is allegedly and bizarrely obstructing. Already, at the UN Conference against
Racism in Durban5we witnessed the shameful spectacle of how such a worthy cause as “antiracism”
can be hijacked and turned into an ugly hatefest against Israel and the Jewish people.
We must also contend with the twisted use of the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon against
the Jewish state and the Jewish people. I am not just talking about Holocaust denial. What does an
educator do when he or she is confronted with the numerous examples of European intellectuals,
artists, clerics, journalists, and caricaturists who today twin the Nazi swastika with the Star of David?
Here are just a few random examples from an ever-expanding dossier: The Greek caricature in
Ethnos6showing two Israeli soldiers somewhere in the disputed territories. One says to the other:
“Don’t feel guilty, my brother! We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer but to learn!” Or the
Nobel prize winner for literature from Portugal, Jose Saramago, who last year compared what was
happening in Ramallah to Auschwitz; or the well-known British poet Tom Paulin, who periodically
offloads his venom against the so-called Zionist SS; or Abbe Pierre, one of France’s most revered
Catholic priests, who informs us: “The Jews, once victims, have become executioners.”7
This is the surreal climate of “democratic,” “humanistic,” bienpen-sant stereotyping of Jews as
Nazis and the libeling of the Jewish state as an apartheid, racist monster engaged in the “ethnic
cleansing” of Pales-tinians. Worse still, it is the intellectual and political elites of Europe who seem to
encourage, repeat, aid, and abet such falsehoods under the impeccably respectable but deeply
misleading label of “criticizing” Israel. There is a world of difference between criticism and
defamation. The disproportionate and relentless singling out of Israel alone for human rights
violations is a sure sign of discriminatory practice.
In the media, churches, universities, and in the mainstream politics of the European Union
there is an elusive but unmistakable whiff of antisemitism, which we ignore at our peril. What kind
of “Enlightenment” is it, for example, when the more “progressive” European media use archaic
Christian motifs, to suggest that Ariel Sharon is a deicidal Jew and Yasir Arafat is Jesus Christ? At
the end of December 2001, the French left-wing daily Liberation ran a cartoon about the fact that
Arafat, a Muslim, was not allowed by the Israeli government to go to Bethlehem to celebrate
Christmas. Sharon was shown preparing a cross for the Palestinian leader, with hammer and nails at
the ready (an Israeli tank in the background) and a caption underneath stated that Arafat would be
welcome for Easter—that is, for the Crucifixion!
Then there is La Stampa8—a liberal Italian paper which is certainly not antisemitic—but
which could nevertheless run a caricature showing the baby Jesus, asking when “they” (i.e., the
Israelis/Jews) are going “to annihilate me once more.” Britain’s liberal newspaper, the Independent,
depicts Ariel Sharon crunching a Palestinian baby in a clear echo of the medieval blood-libel. The
Press Complaints Commission in the UK did not censure the paper, claiming that nobody in Britain
today knows what the ritual murder accusation means! So while we talk about education against
antisemitism, it transpires that highly educated journalists in the UK are so ignorant of the history of
antisemitism, they do not even know what the blood-libel is or why it matters! Who needs to be
educated?
The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is not to engage in well-meaning, ritualized indictments of
racism and antisemitism. We have to address the fact that even some highly educated people do not
recognize Jew-hatred except when it is dressed up for them in a Nazi uniform. The problem is that a
Heil Hitler salute is no longer the main criteria for measuring antisemitism.
Of course, echoes of the Nazi past are still with us in Europe, America, the Middle East, and
beyond. Indeed they must not be ignored. Jewish cabals and conspiracies are once again the flavor of
the month, as they were back in 1938. We hear a great deal about warmongering Jews, about Sharon,
Israel, and the “Jewish lobby” who allegedly control America and would like to control the whole
world. Even the much-respected BBC encourages documentaries about these “dangerous liaisons” in
tones uncomfortably reminiscent of darker times.
Great Britain, it should be said, has not been a major bastion of antisemitism in modern times.
Yet, the much revered Labor MP Tarn Dalyell recently alleged that British Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw—who apparently has a Jewish grandfather—was also a member of the “Jewish cabal” behind
the Anglo-American assault on Saddam Hussein. According to such a reckoning, this would make
Mr. Straw a Mischling Zweiten Grades—a second-degree Mischling (mixed race) as defined by the
Nazi racial laws of 1935. Tarn Dalyell is a pacifist, a strong critic of Mr. Blair, a pro-Palestinian
advocate, and a passionate opponent of the Iraq war. There are many like him who have begun to
move from pro-Palestinian advocacy down the slippery slope of intemperate Israel-bashing to
outright anti-Jewish mythologizing. This greatly complicates our task.
It is made even more difficult where there is obstinate denial that the phenomenon even exists,
as happened in France, until about one year ago. I still remember the incredible spectacle of the
president of the French Republic, declaring that there was “no antisemitism in France” and Mr.
Shimon Peres, then foreign minister of Israel, nodding in agreement. That was before the last French
presidential elections, at a time when synagogues and community centers were going up in flames,
schools and Jewish students were attacked, and individual Jews harassed on a scale unknown since
1945.
There are ten times as many Muslims as there are Jews in France today. But since September
2000 there have been three to four times as many racist acts against Jews as compared to Muslims on
French soil. That is an alarming statistic. I am the first to deplore and denounce Islamophobia, but the
truth must be told. The majority of antisemitic attacks in France in the past three years have been
carried out by North African Arab Muslims. There have been no comparable attacks by Jews on
French Muslims!
In the “milieu scolaire” since 2000, things are especially serious, though the French
government has at least begun to deal with the problem. Let me recommend that you read Les
Territoires Perdus de la Republique,9 which gives outsiders a flavor of what Jewish pupils and
teachers have been experiencing, primarily at the hands of North African Arab students in French
schools. Any teacher trying to communicate materials on the Holocaust in French lycees in the
banlieux or the so-called quartiers difficiles is liable, especially since September 2000, to be subject
to frightening abuse.
This last example brings me squarely back to the educational sphere and contemporary
antisemitism, which a decade ago in my book on the subject I described as the “Longest Hatred.”10
But it is not only its longevity and persistence that make it so difficult to eradicate. Antisemitism is
endlessly protean, adapting itself to the Zeitgeist—like an extraordinarily cunning virus which flares
up with renewed force just when it is pronounced extinct.
The old slogans and tactics employed against Nazism, racism, and xenophobia—some of
which have been repeated here—are not enough. Indeed, they may even be feeding the very evil—
antisemitism—which they are supposed to defang. To “Nazify” Israel and the Jewish people is, for
example, a contemporary form of Holocaust inversion that palpably incites antisemitic feelings. The
kind of mindless “antiracism” that pillories Israel as an apartheid state produces exactly the same
effect. Moreover, the constant effort to subsume antisemitism under the general category of racism is
not only untenable historically—it denies the specificity of anti-Jewish bigotry just as it diminishes
the distinctive features of other forms of prejudice. The hostility to Jews predated the emergence of
racism and racial ideology by many centuries.
To successfully combat antisemitism today—educationally, morally, legally, or politically—we
must be alive to its changing contours. We must go beyond conventional pieties about tolerance,
pluralism, and multiculturalism—important though it is to uphold these values in practice. We must
put an end to the disgraceful international campaign to delegitimize, defame, demonize, dismantle, or
destroy the Jewish state. We must also condemn classic antisemitic tools employed in the political
war against Israel, such as economic, academic, scientific, or cultural boycotts. For such boycotts are
not only intrinsically discriminatory but contradict the principles of free scholarly exchange and of an
open democratic society. In the matter of antisemitism, as with terrorism and human rights, this
impressive international gathering must call things by their proper name. The very act of holding this
meeting here in Vienna is an important statement—that the time of denial is over.
 33.
“FREE AT LAST”
Slaves in Sudan/ Disappearing Jews of Iran: Their History
David G. Littman

In our statement on Monday [March 29, 2004] we called for “urgent action” after learning the
tragic news from Sudan that 503 African slaves—mainly women and children—due to be liberated
by the official CEAWC Committee had become hostages in a compound in Mieram, near the
southern Sudan border, by PDF [Popular Defense Forces] militia forces. We appealed to the
commission to do something for their immediate liberation. This plea was heard! It may well be that
it was the acting high commissioner’s prompt action that convinced the government of Sudan to
intervene. We are overjoyed to announce here that yesterday—three days after our appeal—374
slaves reached the town of Warawar in SPLA-controlled southern Sudan, led by James Aguer and
others. They were met by Christian Solidarity International representatives with humanitarian aid,
who were greatly moved to tears in seeing with their eyes the fulfillment of that dream immortalized
by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!” To the
high commissioner we wish to express our deepest thanks, adding that biblical passage concerning
the prophet Elijah: that “the Lord” was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but “in a still
small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). May that “still small voice”—from wherever it may come—continue
to be used, rather than fire and brimstone, to liberate soon the tens of thousands of slaves in northern
Sudan. […]
In 2003 the International Committee of the Red Cross held several conferences on “The
Missing: End the Silence,” the last with the Red Crescent in early December. On December 11, in a
written text submitted as an official question to Iranian president Khatami, when he spoke at the
World Council of Churches, we called on the Iranian government to end the long “silence” regarding
twelve missing Jews, secretly incarcerated for more than a decade, simply because they tried to leave
Iran. The freeing of these missing prisoners, still held “incommunicado” without trial, would be a
welcome sign now. All the facts and details, including names, are in our written statement that
incorporates the text submitted to President Khatami for the Iranian government. It also provides a
brief historic overview of the ancient Jewish community of Persia, from the time of Cyrus the Great,
as well as the Shiraz “show trial” of 2000.1

NGO oral statement, prepared and delivered by David G. Littman tor the WUPJ on April 2, 2004 (item 11). to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. Thirteen lines were
deleted. The entire text was circulated at the UNCHR with WUPJ written statement E/CN.4/2(XW/NGO/87, as reproduced in chapter 34.
 34.
THE ANCIENT JEWISH COMMUNITY OF
IRAN
End Silence,
Disappearances,Discrimination,“Dhimmitude”

I. PROLONGED “DISAPPEARANCES’ THE MISSING: END THE SILENCE”

1.An international ICRC conference of governmental and nongovernmental experts was held
February 19-23, 2003 in Geneva on the • theme “The Missing: End the Silence.”
“Uncertainty about the fate of their relatives is a harsh reality for countless families in
armed conflict and internal violence.” The purpose in launching this process was to
“respond to the need of families that have lost contact with their loved ones; raise this
concern higher on the agendas of governments, the United Nations and NGOs.” This theme
was stressed at the Twenty-eighth International Conference of the Red Cross and Red
Crescent in Geneva (December 2-6).
2. On December 2, 2003, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoen-lein, and the secretary general of the Iranian
American Jewish Federation, Sam Kermanian, wrote to UN secretary general Kofi Annan
on the subject of twelve missing Iranian Jewish males and requested his intervention: “We
believe that this is a priority humanitarian issue given the length of their detention,
separation from families and denial of even the most fundamental rights.” They recalled
that three years earlier relatives had written a letter to PresidentMohammad Khatami on
this matter (with a copy sent also to the UN secretary-general).

This written statement, E/CN.4/2004/NGO/87—submitted by the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR and posted on the UN
Web site in March 2(K)4—was prepared by David G. Littman.

3. Text submitted to President Mohammad Khatami at WCC meeting.1

Your Excellency. Member States which have ratified UN Human Rights Conventions remain
bound, under all circumstances, by the provisions of those Universal Instruments—and also by the
obligations under customary international law.2 The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD)
has referred to many aspects3 of the Institutional and Legal Framework for Detention in its report to
the 2004 Commission on Human Rights.4
Last February the International Committee of the Red Cross convened in Geneva in its first
ever International Conference of Government and Non-Governmental Experts, to discuss the issue of
missing persons. At the Conference it was unanimously agreed that families had the right to know the
whereabouts of their loved ones.

Question: Your Excellency, nearly ten years ago, twelve young Iranian Jews disappeared on
their way to the border with Pakistan, with the aim of immigrating to the West. A few months ago a
member of the Majles (Parliament) disclosed to Iranian reporters that he knew of ten people from a
non-Muslim minority who were detained in Iranian prisons for long periods. Nobody knows where
they are. Secrecy surrounds their imprisonment. The list of these persons is provided below, aged
from fifteen to forty-five, some from the same family. I appeal to you to give this forum, comprised
of religious leaders of different denominations, your assurance regarding an investigation into the
whereabouts of the twelve missing Jews. This is a humanitarian appeal, unconnected with politics.
On these grounds alone, I make this plea in the form of a “question.”

1. Babak TEHRANI was fifteen when he “disappeared” in a city near the border with
Pakistan.
2. Shahin Nik-Khou ZAHEDAN, a young person, “disappeared” along with TEHRANI.
3. Behzad SALARI was arrested in 1994, when he was twenty years old.
4. Farhad EZZATI “disappeared” along with Behzad SALARI.
5. Homayoun BALA-ZADEH “disappeared” when he was in his thirties—is now about forty-
five.
6. Omid SOLOUKI, born in 1972, “disappeared” at the same time.
7. Reuben BEN-MATZLIAH, who also “disappeared” then, was born in Shiraz.
8. Abraham BEN-MATZLIAH “disappeared” with his brother, and Omid SOLOUKI.
9. Cyrus GHAHREMANI, who also “disappeared” then, was born in Kermanshah.
10. Abraham GAHREMANI, probably the brother of Cyrus, “disappeared” at the same time.
11. Nourollah RABII’-ZADEH
12. Yitzhak Hassis KHORAM-ABAD was arrested near Hamadan and then “disappeared.”
4. The WGAD’s report on its visit to Iran states: “2. Second cause: abuse of ‘solitary
confinement’ (para.54-55) Solitary confinement covers the generalized use of
‘incommunicado’ imprisonment. . . . The Working Group considers that owing to the
absence of guarantees such ‘imprisonment within imprisonment’ is arbitrary in nature and
must be ended. . . . Furthermore, such absolute solitary confinement, when it is of long
duration, can be likened to inhuman treatment within the meaning of the Convention
against Torture.”
5. Last year’s ICRC conferences and that of the Red Cross and Red Crescent unanimously
established a fundamental human right that families had the right to know about the
whereabouts of their loved ones.

II. ANCIENT JEWISH COMMUNITY OF IRAN: BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIF:W

FROM ANTIQUITY TILL NOW

6. An important Jewish community existed in Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and Persia from
biblical times. Tens of thousands of Jews were successively deported to Assyria from the
northern kingdom of Israel (after 732 BCE) and to Babylonia from the southern kingdom
of Judea (597-581 BCE), particularly after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the
First Temple, built by King Solomon in the tenth century BCE, nearly three thousand years
ago. After conquering Babylon in 538 BCE. the new Persian ruler. Cyrus, authorized the
Jews to return to their homeland. About fifty thousand did, while thousands remained in
 exile “by the rivers of Babylon.” The remembrance of his magnanimity is mentioned in
several books of the Bible, and Cyrus the Great is extolled—almost in messianic terms—in
the late Isaiah: “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd . . . even saying to Jerusalem, Thou
shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his
anointed, to Cyrus.” (44:28^5:1). Jewish community life then flourished during two
hundred years of Persian rule in Judea (local coins bear the name Yehud) and in Persia-
Mesopotamia for a millennium.5
7. All the regions invaded by the conquering Arab armies from the seventh century CE were
henceforth governed by Islamic legislation. The native majority inhabitants either
converted to Islam or became dhimmis, that is: non-Muslim peoples “protected” by the
dhimma— a pact granted to them by a treaty of submission that ended the jihad onslaught.
The application of this inferior status (“dhimmitude”) for the indigenous populations—
Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Sabeans, Zoroastrians, and others—varied in different
regions and periods, but in Iran, Yemen, and North Africa it survived in its harshest form
into the twentieth century. This traditional climate of tolerated contempt is revealed in
thousands of Islamic juridical and other texts, as well as in historical dhimmi sources. The
legal inequality of dhimmis with Muslims is exemplified by the invalidity of their
testimony in an Islamic court, which was based on a strict interpretation of the traditional
Sharia law.
8. Over the centuries, the Jews of Shiraz—like their coreligionists in other places of Iran—
were the target of constant discrimination and persecution from the clergy, who considered
them impure. One example from the early twentieth century is relevant: in 1910 their entire
quarter was destroyed by a fanatical mob, following a false “blood libel” accusation;
twelve Jews were killed, fifty wounded, and six thousand left homeless and in tatters.6

III. JEWS OF SHIRAZ: “SHOW TRIAL” OF 2000—A LANDMARK CASE OF RELIGIOUS

DISCRIMINATION

9. In the 1990s the pious Jews of Shiraz were considered by the authorities to be an “assertive
community,” mainly because they refused toclose their shops on Friday and open them on
the Sabbath—one of the more plausible reasons for the arrest of thirteen Jews on Passover
eve in 1999, among whom were a rabbi, three teachers of Hebrew, and a kosher butcher.
This, in spite of the fact that articles 12 and 13 of Iran’s Islamic Constitution purports to
accord “full respect to their religion.”
10. The Jewish community of Iran, which numbered approximately 120,000 in 1948, had
declined to 70,000 in 1978, many of them leaving for Israel and the West. Their number is
now under 20,000, and this remnant is again—as so often in the past—in danger of cus-
tomary scapegoat discrimination and of disappearance as a religious minority. One obvious
aim of the Shiraz “show trial” was to create a situation of insecurity, so that most Iranian
Jews would follow those who had previously abandoned their homes, before and after the
1979 Islamic revolution. Since the first Shiraz arrests and the television “show trial”—all
the accusations of espionage stemmed from contacts with their relatives in Israel—the
departures have continued, achieving this objective.
11. Before the trial began, President Mohammad Khatami guaranteed that, under Islamic law,
the “protected minorities”—this includes Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians but not the
persecuted Bahais—had civil rights and freedom from persecution. But in its resolution
1999/13, Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Commission on
 Human Rights, in its operative paragraph 3(c), expresses its concern “at the continuing
discrimination against religious minorities”; this was reiterated in resolution 2000/28.
12. In his wide-ranging report on Iran to the fifty-sixth session, in 2000, special rapporteur
Maurice Danby Copithorne devotes a section to the status of minorities.7 In his conclusion,
he declares that “one of the backwaters of the human rights situation in Iran is the status of
minorities, ethnic and religious.” In annex 2, he referred, to the case of the thirteen arrested
Jews. He also mentioned that Iran’s thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth periodic reports on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination were closely considered at the
August 1999 session of the CERD.8 On August 4, 1999, the plight of Iran’s Jewish
community was raised by a member, Regis de Gouttes of France; Iran’s promised “written
response” on the question of Iranian Jews—and on other Iranian minorities—was never
received.
13. The show trial of the thirteen Jews was “balanced” for the media with eight Muslims, but
no outside observers or lawyers were accepted. The court-appointed defense lawyers were
quoted in the Iranian press as saying that their clients were guilty. The head of the local
judiciary stated that four of the defendants had confessed and had asked for mercy. This
was denied by defense attorney Esmail Naseri. Just before the trial began (May 1, 2000),
the executive director of the Middle East and North African division of Human Rights
Watch, Hanny Megally, was quoted as saying, “The defence lawyers have not had access to
all the files in the case, even for the minimum five-day period required by Iranian law.” In
September 2000, the appeals court reduced slightly the harsh sentences handed down
against ten of the thirteen Iranian Jews, three of them being acquitted.
14. In two urgent appeals addressed to the high commissioner for human rights (July 3, and
September 21, 2000, copies of which were sent to the special rapporteur on Iran and to the
special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Param Cumaraswamy), the
Association for World Education (AWE) raised a key point in this trial. It related to the fact
that while thirteen of the accused were Jews and eight Muslims, yet all the trial proceedings
—held in an Islamic court, behind closed doors “for security reasons”—appear to have
been separate for each religious group. No details of the trial of the eight Muslims were
ever provided, other than that they were acquitted, or received light sentences. None of
them went to prison. Experts on Islamic law explain this anomaly by the fact that, under the
traditional interpretation of the Islamic Sharia law—whether Sunni or Shi’ite—any
testimony by a non-Muslim in regard to a Muslim never had validity in an Islamic court
and consequently could not have any validity today in the Islamic Republic of Iran.9
15. On the initiative of Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami—soon after he took office in
1997—the year 2001 was officially designated by the United Nations General Assembly as
the “United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.” On May 3-5, 1999—acting on
behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference—Teheran hosted a widely publicized
“Islamic Symposium on Dialogue among Civilizations.” In an official paper, under
“General principles, A.9,” the Islamic Republic of Iran set out its official position:
“Compliance with principles of justice, equity, peace and solidarity, as wellas the
fundamental principles of international law and the United Nations Charter.”10
16. The high commissioner was encouraged by the AWE to initiate a special procedures
mechanism, via Param Cumaraswamy, “to enquire whether it is true that, in the Shiraz trial,
any testimony from a Jew with regard to a Muslim was considered invalid by the court,
because of the traditional and imperative obligations of the sacred Islamic sharia law which
forbids it. If this is still the actual situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, then ‘justice’
would have been basically flawed, and the appropriate UN body should intervene
immediately to insist that all international human rights norms (ratified by Iran) be upheld
 for all in this case—and from now on.” In February 2001 Iduring her visit to Tehran], she
did not receive “a satisfactory answer” on this point.
17. A decade earlier, the special rapporteur on Iran, Galindo Pohl, had suggested in his final
report that there was a need for “an academic-study on the compatibility of Islamic and
international law.”11
18. As indicated by special rapporteur Maurice Danby Copithorne, no trial of the eight accused
Muslims ever took place. Fortunately, the remaining Shiraz Jews, unjustly incarcerated,
were finally released from prison by 2003 after much media attention, external pressure,
and constant reminders at UN bodies by the Association for World Education.
19. Despite this welcome decision by the Iranian judiciary, the World Union for Progressive
Judaism calls upon this commission to examine diligently this landmark case, particularly
in regard to the “universality of justice.” We also call upon special rapporteur Leila
Zerrougi to examine all the ramifications in her coming report on discrimination in the
criminal justice system, as requested at the sub-commission on August 6, 2003, by an
NGO.12
20. The WUPJ calls on the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to end the long
“silence” regarding the twelve “missing” Jews, secretly incarcerated for more than a
decade. The freeing of these missing prisoners, held “incommunicado” without trial, would
be a welcome sign. Such a gesture would be a clear response to the recent report of the WG
AD after its February 2003 visit to Iran, and also to the humanitarian conferences held in
2003 by the ICRC, as well as the Twenty-eighth International Conference of the Red Cross
and Red Crescent.
21. The international human rights norms set out in the international covenants—all are
binding on Iran—should be firmly upheld on all occasions by the commission, UN bodies,
and by all UN member states. An effective implementation of these international
instruments should be mandatory for all national institutions.
 35.
THE REMNANT DHIMMI POPULATIONS
OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH
AFRICA
Forgotten Jewish Refugees and Persecuted Indigenous
Christian Communities
David G. Littman

We are once again reminding this commission of a neglected issue—here 11 and elsewhere:
the modern exodus of Jews from Middle East and North African countries since the 1940s—that
“forgotten million,” who suffered the habitual religious cleansing—whether by violent means or
otherwise— from Arab countries, now virtually judenrein, with barely a remnant one-half of 1
percent—under five thousand. They and their progeny now number over 3 million, of whom 2.5
million make up more than 50 percent of Israel’s 5.2 million Jews.1
It is a historical fact that the tragedy of the Arab refugees of mandated Palestine occurred
because of the refusal of the Arab League and the Palestinian leadership to accept “international
legality” in 1947, and their unashamed aim of eliminating the nascent State of Israel, a policy
maintained for forty years, which has been reactivated by some states—and by those Islamist groups
like Hamas. On the other hand, the Jewish refugees from Arab countries—far from the war zones—
were victimized simply because of their religion.
. . . Worse, everything is simply denied—even the documented condition of “dhimmitude” for
thirteen centuries alongside their fellow dhimmi Christians.2 . . .
[We wish also to mention that only twelve days ago, US Senate Resolution 325 was submitted
and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on “The Creation of the Refugee Populations in
the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf area as a result of Human Rights violations.” We
have this text.]

NGO oral statement, prepared and delivered by David G. Littman for the WUPJ on April 13. 2004 (item 14). to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. Several lines indicated in
square brackets have been omitted. The entire text was circulated at the UNCHR with WUPJ written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/35 (July 2003) from the fifty-fifth session of
the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights, as reproduced in chapter 36 of this volume.

There is a commonplace saying in the Middle East: “After Saturday comes Sunday!” The
World Union of Progressive Judaism wishes to recall the petition two years ago that was deposited
with the high commissioner |on April 11, 2002) by the Christian Barnabas Fund (UK). Signed then
by over 123,000 persons from seventy countries—and many more since—it requested indigenous
“Christian minorities in Muslim-majority countries to be given the same rights and freedoms as those
enjoyed by Muslim minorities in Western countries.” A UN truism, indeed!
Gravely concerned at this shameful collective “blindness” by the international community, we
are once again calling on the acting high commissioner, the commission, and appropriate UN bodies
—and to all Church leaders (Catholic, Protestant, and others), and particularly Muslim spiritual and
lay leaders, to hear the lamentations of the remnant Christian dhimmi communities, who often must
endure persecutions and discrimination as an inferior, religious minority, while being falsely accused
by their oppressors.
Albert Camus defined this situation well: “The day on which crime adorns itself with the
effects of innocence, by a strange reversal . . . innocence is summoned to provide its own
justifications.”3
 36.
HISTORICAL FACTS 36. AND FIGURES
The Forgotten Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

INTRODUCTION

1. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted its res--A. • olution 181.
Called the “Partition Plan,” it delineated the land west of the Jordan river into two parts: an
Arab state and a Jewish state, with an international corpus separatum for Jerusalem. It
comprised about 22 percent of the roughly 120,000 square kilometers of the original 1922
League of Nations area of Palestine. All the land east of the Jordan river—78 percent,
about 94,000 square kilometers of the entire mandatory area—had been transferred to Emir
Abdullah of Arabia by Britain, thus creating the de facto Emirate of Trans-Jordan, later to
be renamed in 1949 the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
2. This 1947 Partition Plan was categorically refused by all the Arab League States and also by
the Arab-Palestinian leadership, still nominally headed by the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, who found refuge in Egypt in 1946 (he moved to Beirut in 1962).
Recently praised by Yasir Arafat in an interview, Husseini was declared a war criminal in
1945 after his sojourn in Germany during the Second World War, where he participated in
the creation of aBosnian and an Arab brigade to fight alongside Nazi SS units. He was
received officially by Hitler on November 28, 1941, “to discuss the Arab-Nazi alliance and
the methods to exterminate the Jews.”1 Known for his “ominous role in the extermination
of European Jewry,”2 he broadcast genocidal appeals to the Arab world on Radio Berlin,
even three months before D-Day: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases
Allah, history, and religion. This saves your honour. Allah is with you.”3

The original form of this article was NGO written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/2(X)3/NGO/35—submitted by the WUPJ to the fifty-fifth session of the Sub-Commission on
Human Rights in Summer 2003 and posted on the UN Web site and prepared by David G. Littman. With the author’s permission, this written statement—with several modifications
by him—is based on his “The Forgotten Refugees: An Exchange of Populations.” National Review Online, December 3, 2002, www.nation-alreview.com/script/asp’?
ref=/comment/comment-littmanl20302.asp.

3. On November 24, 1947, when addressing the Political Committee of the UN General
Assembly, Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha warned about the Partition Plan for Palestine:
“The United Nations… should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might
endanger a million Jews living in the Muslim countries. … If the United Nations decides to
partition Palestine, it might be responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of
a large number of Jews … if a Jewish state were established, nobody could prevent
disorders. Riots would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between
the two races.”4
 4. Seven weeks later, the president of the World Jewish Congress, Dr. Stephen S. Wise,
appealed to US secretary of state George Marshall to intervene, and his political director,
Dr. Robert S. Marcus, referred to al-Husseini’s involvement in the June 1941 Baghdad
pogrom (farhud), warning about the menacing situation for Jews in Arab countries: “This
conspiracy is inspired by the Mufti, notorious war criminal, who participated in the Nazi
plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. . . . Acts of violence already perpetrated, together
with those contemplated, being clearly aimed at the total destruction of the Jews, constitute
genocide which under the resolutions of the General Assembly is a crime against
humanity.”5
5. The title of a detailed article in the New York Times of May 16, 1948—a day after Israel
declared its independence—echoed this dire official warning: “Jews in Grave Danger in all
Moslem Lands: Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of Their Foes.”

THE INDIGENOUS JEWS FROM ARAB COUNTRIES BEFORE 1948 AND WHY THEY
FLED OR CHOSE EXILE

6. During the first half of the twentieth century thousands of Jewish men, women, and
children, the young and the old, were brutallymassacred in Arab countries in North Africa,
Iraq, Syria, Egypt. Libya, and Aden—even under French and British colonial rule—and
also in Palestine by lawless gangs soon after the British conquest in 1918 and throughout
the Mandate period.
7. Already in Iraq (1936, and especially the Baghdad farhud of 1941), Syria (1944, 1945),
Egypt and Libya (1945), and Aden (1947), murderous attacks had killed and wounded
thousands. All these events occurred before Israel’s independence. Here is a description
from the official firsthand report in 1945 by Tripoli’s Jewish community president Zachino
Habib on what happened to Libyan Jews in Tripoli, Zanzur, Zawiya, Casabat, and Zitlin on
November 4—5, 1945: “The Arabs attacked Jews in obedience to mysterious orders. Their
outburst of bestial violence had no plausible motive. For fifty hours they hunted men down,
attacked houses and shops, killed men, women, old and young, horribly tortured and
dismembered Jews isolated in the interior. … In order to carry out the slaughter, the
attackers used various weapons: knives, daggers, sticks, clubs, iron bars, revolvers, and
even hand grenades.”6
8. A recent example of such terrorist acts was perpetrated on April 11, 2002, when the jihadist
bombing of the ancient al-Ghariba synagogue of Djerba in Tunisia killed seventeen and
badly wounded many others, most of them elderly German tourists. A spokesman for al
Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing. Tunisia’s remaining Jewish community of
about one thousand—a remnant of an indigenous community with roots in the country’s
Phoenician past—will probably soon seek security in Israel and elsewhere, as have 99
percent of their coreligionists since the late 1940s.
9. In 1945 about 140,000 Jews lived in Iraq; 60,000 in Yemen and Aden; 35,000 in Syria;
5,000 in Lebanon; 90,000 in Egypt; 40,000 in Libya; 150,000 in Algeria; 120,000 in
Tunisia; 300,000 in Morocco, including Tangiers—a total of roughly 940,000 (and
approximately 200,000 more in Iran and Turkey). Of these indigenous communities, less
than 50,000 Jews remain today—and in the Arab world their number is barely 5,000, one-
half of 1 percent of the overall total at the end of the World War II.
10. Pogroms and persecutions—and grave fears for their future—regularly preceded the mass
expulsions and exoduses of these indigenous Jews, whose ancestors had inhabited these
regions from time immemorial, over a millennium before the successive jihad waves
 ofArab invaders from the seventh century. Beginning in 1948^19, more than 650,000 of
these Oriental Jewish refugees, stripped of everything, were integrated into Israel’s sparse
area of 20,000 square kilometers—even as the new state was being threatened with
extinction by neighbouring Arab states. A further 300,000 or so Jewish refugees found
asylum elsewhere, in Europe and the Americas.
11. About half of Israel’s 5.2 million Jews—from a population of about 6.5 million, of whom
roughly 20 percent are Arab, Druze, and Bedouin Israelis—is composed of these forgotten
refugees and their descendants, who received no humanitarian aid from the United Nations
and did not ask for it. It was Israel alone, with the help of Jewish communities just
emerging from the Holocaust, which achieved their humanitarian survival and integration
into a nascent society.
12. No parallel political commitment was made for the integration of the less numerous Arab
refugees from Palestine (numbering about 550,000 in 1949, although an inexact figure of
750,000 and above is often claimed—rising to 4 or even 6 million today in the world’s
media). The Arab League countries cover 15 million square kilometer—about 10 percent
of the world’s land surface—and many states possess immense oil and gas reserves, yet
little was done to alleviate the plight of their Arab brethren. But the full moral
responsibility lies exclusively with the Arab League and the Arab Palestinian leadership,
which defied international legality, beginning in 1947—a “refusal” clearly echoed by
Farouq al-Qaddoumi, head of the PLO political bureau and the secretary-general of Fatah’s
Central Committee, when he stated in 2003: “The [Palestinian] problem was created by the
United Nations when it decided on a partition resolution.”7
13. George Orwell’s saying about everyone being equal, but some being more equal than
others, could also be applied to refugees in general since the 1940s. Some refugees are,
indeed, considered more equal than others. The forgotten million Jewish refugees from
Arab lands were not helped by the United Nations, nor were they kept—as were the
Palestinian Arabs—for over half a century in “refugee camps,” breeding hopelessness,
frustration, and also a religious-inspired culture of hate and death in which jihadist bombers
are thriving.
14. The transfer of populations on a large scale, a consequence of war or for political reasons,
has been a characteristic of human history, particularly in the Islamic Orient. Deportations,
expropriations, andexpulsions of the dhimmis—Jews, Christians, and other indigenous
peoples—were recurrent throughout the long history of dhimmitude, after Arab jihad wars
of conquest, expropriation, and occupation, including Palestine.8 One should question the
real motivation of a selective, historically flawed memory that systematically spotlights
Arab refugees from a part of Palestine during an Arab League war to destroy Israel.
15. UN Security Council Resolution 242, of November 22, 1967, was also rejected by the
Khartoum Arab League Summit Conference, with the unchanging line, ‘Wo peace with
Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no concessions on the questions
of Palestinian national rights.” Yet resolution 242 also referred to “a just solution to the
refugee problem”—a term that included the Jewish refugees from Arab countries (dixit
President Carter in 1978).
16. The dire hardships endured by the great majority of these indigenous Jewish refugees from
Arab countries have never been examined— certainly not at the United Nations—nor has
the loss of their inestimable collective heritage dating back from two to three millennia and
their vast personal property rights. This great injustice should be addressed at the United
Nations, within the context of an equitable global solution to the ongoing Middle East
tragedy and as a just contribution to the current “Road Map” to peace and mutual
recognition.
17. The question of these forgotten Jewish refugees from Arab coun-tries—now over three
million—has often been raised by the WUPJ at the Commission on Human Rights and its
subcommission. At the fifty-eighth session of the commission (April 24, 2002), speaking in
“reply,” a representative of Iraq, Saad Hussain—after the usual ad hominem attack against
the speaker—declared, “The Arab history, the Arab and Islamic history for fourteen
centuries, has not witnessed any harm to the Jews—quite the contrary. The Jews have
lived, and continue to live in peace, and their sacred places and their property have been
protected until today. . . . They live in Arab countries today in perfect safety, despite the
events—the horrible events in Palestine.”9
18. Such gross official denials contrast with the irrefutable historical facts that Jews have been
forbidden to reside in Arabia since the advent of Islam (except for Yemen and a part of the
Gulf region)— and in Jordan since 1922. Today, there are no Jews in Libya, lessthan 100 in
Egypt and Syria, and scarcely 5,000 in the Arab world. Before the Arab conquest, Iraq was
populated only by Christians and Jews, with smaller communities of Zoroastrians. When
Iraq’s representative addressed the commission, only 33 elderly Jews remained in Iraq from
a 1948 population of over 140,000. All their ancient Scrolls of the Law (Sifrei Torah) had
been confiscated in the 1960s and stacked one against another in a locked room at the
Medressa al-Moustansariyya, a market near the Souk al-Haraj in Baghdad.10 The survival
of these ancient sacred scrolls and other libraries is still uncertain.
19. The major stumbling block to peace in the Middle East remains the necessary
establishment of democratic institutions and, above all, the acceptance by all Arab states,
including the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, of the inalienable and legitimate de jure
rights and existence of the State of Israel within a part of its historic homeland.
20. There is also the divisive question of a return of, or compensation for, Arab refugees as a
result of two Arab wars to destroy Israel. The refusal in 1947—and for forty years and
more, by Arab Palestinian leaders and the Arab League—of Israel’s existence in any part of
the biblical “Land of Israel” is the fundamental reason for a double refugee tragedy. But the
deliberately targeted victims—far from any war zone—were, indisputably, the totally
innocent and indigenous Jewish communities from ten Arab countries, which have now
become virtually judenrein (“cleansed” of all Jews). These facts can no longer be denied.
21. The World Union for Progressive Judaism solemnly calls on the High Commissioner for
Human Rights, the High Commissioner for Refugees, all competent UN bodies, and
particularly the Commission on Human Rights and its subcommission—as well as the Arab
League—to recognize formally the fundamental and equal human rights of these Jewish
minorities, those forgotten millions—indigenous Jewish refugees from their former
countries.11; This key recognition of a great historic injustice could usefully be addressed in
the future work of the Working Group on Minorities, and especially “on peaceful and
constructive approaches to situations involving minorities,” as well as the subcommission’s
work on “The return of refugees’ or displaced persons’ property” under item 4.12
 37.
DISCRIMINATION IN THE EGYPTIAN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
The Exemplary Case of Dr. Neseem Abdel Malek— Grave
Attacks and Discrimination against Copts

1. The commission and the subcommission have long been greatly J- • concerned with the
protection of human rights in “state of emer-gency” conditions worldwide, especially that
of minorities. Egypt is an example of the constant misuse of military tribunals and of a
“state of emergency” system that was reintroduced and reinforced in 1981 after the
assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. Although Egypt is not officially at war, this
“emergency system” was again extended for a further three years in February 2003; it
automatically refers any civilian to a military court by a presidential decision if the case
falls under the general category “act of terrorism.”1
2. Since 1998, the case of Dr. Neseem Abdel Malek has been high-lighted by the Association
of World Education at several UN bodies as an exemplary case. It illustrates very clearly
how Egypt’s iniqui-tous criminal justice system functions, via a “military tribunal,” to
provide discriminatory ad hoc condemnations without appeal on what is often blatantly
false or totally inadequate evidence.
3. This discrimination in the criminal justice system affects all citizens,as illustrated by the
case of Prof. Saad Eddin Ibrahim—director of the Cairo-based Ibn Khaldun Center for
Development Studies, a staunch human rights defender, advocate of democracy and
women’s rights, and of the Christian Coptic minority—recently released from prison after
an international outcry. But millions of members of the indigenous Christian Coptic
minority are even more vulnerable to such arbitrary decisions due to their perceived
inferiority—resulting from their traditional dhimmi status under the Islamic “protection
pact” (dhimma) granted to non-Muslims by the Sharia law. An Islamist trend has led to the
return of a “jihad ideology,” conducive to a form of “dhimmitude” status today.2

This text—with the exception of paragraphs 9, 10, and 11—comprises all of the AWE’s written statement E/CN.4/2004/NGO/90 (titled “Discrimination in the Egyptian
Criminal Justice System: ‘State Security’/ ‘States of Emergency’/ ‘Military Tribunals’ / An Exemplary Case: Dr. Neseem Abdel Malek/ Discrimination against Copts”). It was
submitted to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR and posted on the UN Web site in March 2004. It was prepared for publication by David G. Littman, with advice from Rene Wadlow.

4. Thus, Dr. Abdel Malek, a Christian, was considered responsible for the crime committed by
a Muslim, Saber Farahat Abu Ulla, who— aided by his brother—killed nine German
tourists and their Egyptian driver on September 17, 1997. Although Saber had been
confined to a mental asylum after killing four foreign tourists outside the Cairo Semiramis
hotel in 1993, his testimony was accepted as valid. He first alleged that he had obtained a
special weekend furlough by bribing Dr. Sayed el-Qut, then deputy health minister and the
 former head of another mental institute, although el-Qut had signed a certificate of insanity
four years earlier, thus saving Saber from the gallows. However, Saber later retracted this
“testimony” and then accused Dr. Abdel Malek, the Christian Copt, director of the El-
Khanka mental hospital since mid-1992, of having accepted his bribes.
5. “Thus, the doctor who had signed the certificate [of insanity in 1993] was duly acquitted
and Dr. Abdel Malek found guilty in his place.”3 In this way, a Copt was accused of
corruption by a certified madman, even though he was absent from the El-Khanka clinic on
that fatal September 1997 weekend. By a “religiously correct” sleight of hand, the false
testimony of a condemned killer—duly certified insane and incompetent—was accepted,4
even though this allegation was contradicted in court by Saber’s own mother. No other
plausible evidence or “proof was provided to justify a verdict against the Christian doctor.
The original bribe allegations against a high-ranking Muslim doctor were dropped.
6. During an interview on Egyptian television—widely reported just before both brothers were
executed in May 1998—Saber proudly stated that his murderous actions were a part of his
“jihad for Allah.” He had only one sincere regret: that he had not killed more “infidels.”
7. Opinion 10/1999 (Egypt) of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention detailed all these
facts and asked the Egyptian government to review the case of Dr. Abdel Malek, unjustly
condemned to twenty-five years’ imprisonment with hard labor by a military court. The
AWE’s 2001 written statement contains this opinion, the brief “Reply of the Government of
Egypt,” and some of our comments.5
8. The conclusion of opinion 10/1999 states, “The deprivation of liberty of Dr. Neseem Abdel
Malek is arbitrary, as being in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights and falls within category III of the applicable categories to the
consideration of the cases submitted to the Working Group” (para. 19). “Consequent upon
the opinion rendered, the Working Group requests the Government: to take the necessary
steps to remedy the situation, and bring it in conformity with the standards and principles
set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (para. 20). . . .
12. Five years after submission, the recommendations of the WGAD in its opinion 10/1999
have been ignored by the government of Egypt. However, the arbitrary sentence by a
military tribunal under the “state of emergency” regulations was reduced from twenty-five
to ten years in January 2000, two-thirds of which have been served by Abdel Malek.
13. In a statement to the commission last year (April 9, 2003), the AWE’s representative
explained that this matter had been referred to Param Cumaraswamy, the then special
rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, asking him to pursue it under his
mandate with respect to resolution 2002/43 and especially 2002/37, Integrity of the Judicial
System. He sent a communication to the Egyptian government before the fifty-ninth session
of the commission, which has remained unanswered until this date.
14. The AWE again calls on the WGAD—in the light of the continued arbitrary detention of
Dr. Abdel Malek—to reconsider his case, taking into account the findings made in opinion
10/1999, and the more recent action taken by former special rapporteur Param
Cumaraswamy last year.
15. In a statement to the Sub-Commission on Human Rights (August 6, 2003), we also
appealed to the new special rrapporteur on discrimination in the criminal justice system,
Ms. Leila Zerrougi, to examinethis clear case of discrimination in her forthcoming
“detailed study of discrimination in the criminal justice system with a view to deter-mining
the most effective means of ensuring equal treatment… for all persons without
discrimination, particularly vulnerable persons.”
16. Anyone reading opinion 10/1999 will wonder why a former director of the Cairo El-
Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health—a distinguished Copt—should
 remain incarcerated while thousands of Islamists, condemned for violent crimes, regularly
receive presidential pardons on Muslim holidays. If such an obvious “discrimination in the
criminal justice system” of Egypt cannot be corrected five years after a WGAD opinion,
what does it say about this UN mechanism?
17. As Egypt’s ‘“state of emergency’“ system allows no appeal from a military tribunal ruling,
the Association for World Education is once again reiterating its appeal to President Hosni
Mubarak—based solely on WGAD opinion 10/1999—to free Dr. Abdel Malek on
compassionate grounds by a presidential pardon before the Coptic Easter of 2004, so as to
reverse this grave miscarriage of justice with a humanitarian gesture that would be warmly
welcomed even now.

IMPUNITY: THE MASSACRE OF TWENTY-ONE COPTS AT AL-KHOSHEH (JANUARY

2000) AND THE BRUTAL ATTACK AT AL-GIRZA (NOVEMBER 14, 2003)

18. The case of Dr. Abdel Malek is but one of many examples of reli-gious discrimination in
the Egyptian criminal justice system. There are many others in which members of the
Coptic minority are victims. We have constantly referred to this grave situation,
highlighting the ghastly al-Khosheh village massacre—the fortieth collective attack on
Copts since 1972—when twenty-one Copts were massacred and their property destroyed
by Muslim mobs over the weekend of December 31, 1999-January 2, 2000. Already in
August-September 1998, over one thousand innocent Copts from the same village—
including women and children—were brutally tortured by the local police, as reported by
Hafez Abu Saada, the then secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human
Rights; this resulted in his being gravely intimidated by the government and even officially
accused of disseminating false accusations.
19. On February 27, 2003 an Upper Egyptian criminal court freed all the criminals involved in
the massacre of the Copts at Al-Khosheh, leaving the bereaved Coptic families of victims
in total shock. Youssef Sidhom, a member of the Coptic Community Council and editor of
Watani Weekly, lamented, “The case of El-Khosheh with its painful weight of victims and
losses cannot be forgotten.”6
20. As recently as November 2003 a mass attack took place against the Coptic village of Al-
Girza by Muslim mobs, when all their property, crops, and chattel were either looted or
destroyed—with no protection from security forces.7 In this case—as with that of Al-
Khosheh, and the scores of other attacks that have been the bitter lot of the indigenous
Egyptian Christian Coptic minority for over thirty years—the Egyptian criminal justice
system has been shown to be gravely flawed.
21. Many Egyptian Muslims have opposed this iniquitous discrimination, like Farag Foda,
defender of secularism and of the Copts (assassinated on June 8, 1992), the above-
mentioned Hafez Abu Saada and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and the well-known writer Has-
sanein Heikal in his book Al-Koutoub: Weghat Nazzar (Books: Viewpoints) (March 2000),
when he appealed to President Hosni Mubarak to act now on this matter. Indeed, it is a
truism that “Egyptian laws are autocratic by nature.” This was the verdict of Neged Borai
in July 2002—a leading lawyer and political reform advocate—who courageously
contradicted the oft-repeated general affirmations in Egypt’s last report to the CERD that
portrayed Egypt as a land of democracy and justice in the Middle East where universal
human rights norms were taught in all elementary schools— and implemented nationally.8
22. The Al-Khosheh massacre of 2000, the subsequent acquittals and release of the murderers,
and the recent attacks on Al-Girza provide an urgent reminder to the commission, to
 special rapporteur (on “discrimination in the criminal justice system”) Leila Zerrougi, and
to human rights defenders in general. It is time to monitor this grave situation of a martyred
dhimmi people—the Christian Copts of Egypt, the direct heirs to one of humanity’s oldest
civilizations— painfully forced to choose between the creeping renewal of a modern form
of “dhimmitude” in Egypt or freedom in Western democracies.
23. The Association for World Education is appealing to this HumanRights Commission—
called by the UN secretary-general “the conscience of humanity”—to find the proper
means and to take the effective measures to stop the recurrence of these massacres and
mass sectarian attacks, as well as the injustice and discrimination systematically committed
against the defenseless and besieged Coptic community. To this end, the AWE appeals also
to all UN competent bodies and special rapporteurs. Now is the time to call on the
government of Egypt to ensure that inquiries and trials be conducted openly, with the active
participation of prominent human rights defenders and international observers.
 38.
“RUSHDIE AFFAIR”
Syndrome and Histories Overview—the Right to Life and
Human Rights Mechanisms

1. On February 14, 2004, the 15 Khordad Foundation declared in a A. • press release that
thefatwa/hukm death sentence on Salman Rushdie remained valid. On February 15, 2004,
the Teheran daily, Jomhouri Islami, announced that “the committee for the glorification of
the martyrs of the Muslim world” had offered a $100,000 bounty to anyone who killed
Rushdie.1
2. Last year, on February 14, 2003, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards renewed the death sentence
on Salman Rushdie with a clarification: “The historical decree on Salman Rushdie is
irrevocable and nothing can change it.”2
3. On the fifteenth anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the British
writer, the Association for World Education is submitting a substantive documentation on
the “Rushdie Affair”—the greatest freedom-of-opinion-and-expression issue of our time—
and also on the silence and, alternatively, the efforts of United Nations human rights bodies
to address that issue.
4. Although the Association for World Education sent an “Urgent Appeal on the Rushdie
Affair Syndrome” on February 17, 2004, to Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, we
maintain that a clear condemnation of the fatwa by the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) and by its member states, at the sixtieth session of the Commission on
Human Rights, would be a real contribution to the protection of article 19 of the Universal
Declaration of HumanRights—and for the struggle against terrorism and any arbitrary
execution of dissident writers. The OIC is the appropriate body to make this condemnation,
as representatives of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran constantly stress that
the fatwa is binding on all Muslims, not just on Iranians.

This NGO written statement, E/CN.4/2004/NGO/252, was submitted by the AWE to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR and posted on the UN Web site in April 2(K)4—
enlarged by David G. Littman from an earlier text submitted to the UNCHR.

5. The Iranian government has repeatedly cited the declaration adopted at the eighteenth
meeting of foreign ministers of the OIC, held in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) on March 13-16,
1989, which “had proclaimed, in unambiguous terms, the apostasy of Salman Rushdie.”
Indeed, the forty-four foreign ministers present at that meeting did promulgate a ban on
The Satanic Verses, but they did not comment on the fatwa that sentenced its author and
publishers to death. However, they did pronounce Salman Rushdie to be an apostate. As the
traditional interpretation of Sharia law requires that the punishment (hadd) for an apostate
(ridda) should be death—one of the three cases where a Muslim’s blood may be legally
 shed—we maintain that it is the OIC that should declare the fatwa contrary to all the human
rights norms that UN member states have ratified.
6. The fatwa has remained for fifteen years a constant threat against the life of Salman Rushdie
and of others—and is an impediment to the normal functioning of the Islamic Republic of
Iran within the world community and an example and encouragement to others, and to
states.
7. Meeting with British foreign secretary Robin Cook on September 24, 1998—ten years after
the publication of The Satanic Verses—the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
Dr. Kamal Kharazi, declared that the Iranian government “has no intention, nor is it going
to take any action whatsoever to threaten the life of the author of The Satanic Verses or
anybody associated with his work, nor will it encourage or assist anybody to do so.
Accordingly, the government dissociates itself from any reward that has been offered in
this regard and does not support it.”
8. Although this statement allowed the British government to resume full diplomatic relations
with Tehran, broken off in 1989, it soon became evident that these assurances were similar
to those expressed by Iranian diplomats in June 1989, soon after the death of Ayatollah
Khomeini, and since then. Foreign Minister Kharazi readily acknowledged that he was
saying nothing new: “We did not adopt a new position with regard to the apostate Salman
Rushdie,and our position remains the same as that which has been repeatedly stated by the
Islamic Republic of Iran’s officials.” Since Iran considers that Islam does not allow a
division between religion and government, the separation of this fatwa from government
policy would violate that principle.
9. It is important to distinguish between two types of religious rulings in Iran: a fatwa and a
hukm. The former remains valid only during the lifetime of the religious authority who
issues it; the latter continues in effect beyond his death. Despite the Western habit of
referring to the edict against Rushdie as a fatwa, Iranian spokesmen have universally
regarded it as a hukm?3
10. Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwalhukm of February 14, 1989, states, in the English translation,
“I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic
Verses—which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the
Prophet, and the Qur’an—and all those involved in its publication, who were aware of its
content, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly,
wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. . .
. Whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.”
11. On February 17, 1989, President Seyyed Ali Hoseyni Khamanei declared that if Rushdie
were to repent, “it is possible that the people may pardon him.” But two days later,
following Rushdie’s inadequate apology, Ayatollah Khomeini confirmed his “execution
order”: “Even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of [our] time, it
is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and his wealth, to send
him to hell. If a non-Muslim becomes aware of his whereabouts and has the ability to
execute him quicker than Muslims, it is incumbent on Muslims to pay a reward or a fee in
return for this action.”4
12. On March 1, 1989, the UN special rapporteur on summary or arbitrary executions, Amos
Wako, referred to this unusual call for an arbitrary execution when introducing his annual
report to the commission: “The Human Rights Committee has observed that arbitrary
killings are forbidden and the law must strictly control and limit the circumstances in which
a person may be deprived of his life. . . . The right to life is a right from which all other
rights flow.”
13. In a subsequent reply to the special rapporteur’s March 3, 1989, cable from the Centre for
Human Rights, the Iranian governmentmade its position clear: “The Special Rapporteur’s
 intervention in the case of Salman Rushdie’s criminal offence against Islam and the world
Muslim community was outside his mandate and thus unwarranted.”5
14. In an interview four years later, Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani referred
to the fatwalhukm against Salman Rushdie: “This is prescribed by an Islamic law that has
been in existence for a thousand years. Even if the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] had not
pronounced a fatwa, it could have been traced in the books of great Islamic scholars. It is
written that anyone cursing the Prophet is condemned to death.”6
15. Soon after the /arua’s proclamation, the Iranian ambassador to the Holy See even declared
that he would kill Salman Rushdie with his own hands, and Iranian interior minister Ali
Akbar Mohtashemi called on Hizbollah agents worldwide to execute him. Also, on
February 15, 1989, Ayatollah Hassan Sanai, head of the 15 Khordad Relief Agency
Foundation—created on June 15, 1979, by the Iranian government—appeared on Iranian
television and offered $3 million [on the inflated official rate of 200 million rials], to any
Iranian, and $1 million to a foreigner, who killed Rushdie. This was raised to $2 million in
March 1991—and then “with additional expenses” on June 17, 1992.7 On November 2,
1992, he called on “all Muslims of the world to unite and make an effort to end the life of
the apostate Rushdie.” Three days after Ayatollah Sanai announced that the 15 Khordad
Foundation would “send volunteers abroad to execute the death sentence,” Iranian supreme
guide Ali Khamanei reappointed him—and nine others—as a member of the official
Council on Expediency and Discernment.8 Yet in December 1997, when Ayatollah Sanai
once more raised the bounty for a non-Muslim assassin to $2.5 million. President
Rafsanjani casually announced that “this foundation is a non-governmental foundation and
its decisions are not related to government policies.”
16. On July 3, 1991, Ettore Caprioli, the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, was
grievously injured, and on July 12 Hitoshi Igarishi— professor of literature and an admirer
of Islamic civilization, who had translated the book into Japanese—was assassinated in
Tokyo. William Nygaard, the Norwegian translator, was later knifed.
17. On June 30, 1992, 147 out of 270 deputies of the newly elected Majles (Iranian National
Assembly) signed a letter condemning theBritish Parliament for receiving Salman Rushdie.
It stated, “We deputies of the Majles, in obedience to the decisive views of the eminent
leader, His Eminence Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, declare that the Imam’s historic fatwa on
the apostasy of Salman Rushdie remains in force as before and that all Muslims and all the
world’s hezbollah forces are duty-bound to carry it out.”
18. In November 1992 Iran’s chief justice, Ayatollah Morteza Moqtadi, also confirmed that
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwalhukm was irrevocable.
19. On February 14, 1993, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, who had succeded the Ayatollah
Khomeini in June 1989 as Iran’s supreme guide, confirmed that the death sentence must be
carried out whatever the circumstances: “Imam Khomeini has shot an arrow at this
impudent apostate. The arrow is moving to its target and will sooner or later hit it. The
verdict must undoubtedly be carried out and will be carried out. . . . Solving the Rushdie
issue is possible only with the handing of this apostate and infidel person to Muslims.”

REACTIONS BY UN BODIES TO THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI’S DEATH EDICT

AGAINST RUSHDIE

20. The Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights dealt explicitly with the
“Rushdie Affair” in its concluding observations on Iran’s initial report.9
21. On October 30, 1992, during the examination of Iran’s second peri-odic report at its forty-
sixth session, three experts of the Human Rights Committee10 raised the case of Salman
Rushdie, concerning the incompatibility between the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa.11
22. On April 7, 1993, at the forty-seventh session, the representative of Iran’s Judicature,
Hussain Mehrpour, replied, “Several members had referred to the death sentence passed on
the writer Salman Rushdie and had requested an explanation of its relationship to the
Covenant. The Western world must understand that Mr. Rushdie’s book was a severe insult
not to Iran but to Islam and to the Prophet, a person considered by all the Islamic world as
the messenger of God’s Word. That insult had caused a reaction in many countries besides
Iran. . . . Moreover, it was important to point out that the Iranian Parliamenthad not passed
any law calling for Mr. Rushdie’s execution, nor had any court condemned him. Any action
taken in response to that decree would be based on an individual’s religious belief, not on a
formal judicial decision.”12
23. It is most regrettable that for four years, until 1993, neither the commission nor the
subcommission passed a resolution, nor did anything to condemn the fatwa or the
subsequent public incitements to murder Rushdie. Finally, in its resolution 1993/62,
Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the commission made a brief
reference to it: “Also expresses its grave concern that there are continuing threats to the life
of a citizen of another State which appears to have the support of the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran and whose case is mentioned in the report of the Special
Rapporteur” (para. 5).
24. A year later, resolution 1994/73 added “to the life of Mr. Salman Rushdie, as well as to
individuals associated with his work” (para. 5). This wording remained in resolutions
1995/68 and 1996/84; in 1997/54, after lobbying, two additions were added: “and deeply
regrets the increase announced in the bounty offered for the assassination of Mr. Rushdie
by the 15 Khordad Foundation” (para. 2(d)); and “Calls upon the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran . . . to provide satisfactory written assurance that it does not
support or incite threats to the life of Mr. Rushdie” (para. 3(f)). Resolution 1998/80 went
further, stating, “and deeply regrets the failure of the Government to condemn the bounty
for the assassination of Mr. Rushdie by the 15 Khordad Foundation” (para. 3(e)); and,
“Calls upon to provide satisfactory written assurances . . .”(para. 4(i)).
25. Resolution 1999/13 echoed the words of foreign minister Kharazi on September 24, 1998
(para. 7 above): “Welcomes: The Assurances given by the Government of the Islamic
Republic of Iran that it had no intention of taking any action whatsoever to threaten the life
of Mr. Salman Rushdie and those associated with his work or of encouraging or assisting
anyone to do so, and that it dissociates itself from any reward offered in this regard and
does not support it” (para 1(f))- No reference was made to this matter in the resolutions for
2000 and 2001 concerning Iran—and nothing since, even though on February 14 of each
year the death threat is restated, as in 2004.
26. Today, there is near unanimous agreement in Iran, and elsewhere, that the religious edict
against Rushdie is a permanent decree, onewhich both constitutes government policy and at
the same time is beyond the competence of the government to change. Therefore, neither
the Iranian president nor the foreign minister can speak for the government of Iran on this
subject. Theoretically, only the Ayatollah Khamanei, successor to the Ayatollah Khomeini,
could act, and he has steadfastly supported the death edict.
27. The “Rushdie Affair” began as a somewhat exotic matter that many—especially in the
United Nations—tried to ignore. But the infection festered, eating away at international
norms, attacking the very heart of the International Bill of Human Rights, particularly the
right to freedom of opinion and expression. Waves of Islamist-inspired assassinations have
 struck several Muslim countries, killing and maiming writers—beginning with Egyptian
Nobel laureate for literature Naguib Mahfouz—journalists, artists, intellectuals, and anyone
considered by religious extremists as a “heretic” or an “apostate,” and therefore a
legitimate target for arbitrary execution.
28. Regarding “insults against Islam,” there has been an escalation of death edicts emanating
from Iran and elsewhere, against individuals and entire groups—even incitements to
genocide by Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi, the head of the Iranian judiciary, in a sermon on
July 4, 1997, broadcast by Tehran’s Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran.13 Since 1989, a
new form of religious-inspired terrorism has developed, leading to the September 11, 2001,
climacteric, all of which has been characterized by some as a “clash of civilizations” and
differently by others.14
29. The Association for World Education maintains that an authoritative revocation of the
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwalhukm of February 14, 1989, which arbitrarily sentenced
Rushdie to death—to be executed by any Muslim or non-Muslim assassin—can no longer
be postponed at UN bodies. We therefore call upon the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) to make a clear and firm declaration indicating that the fifteen-year-old
fatwalhukm is not compatible with international human rights norms that are binding.
30. The Association for World Education also calls upon the Commission on Human Rights at
its sixtieth session to condemn the February 14, 2004, reconfirmation of the arbitrary death
edict of the Ayatollah Khomeini by the 15 Khordad Foundation, which annually declares it
to be valid, as well as the announcement by a new “committee for the glorification of the
martyrs of the Muslim world,”which has offered a further bounty of $100,000 to any
assassin of Salman Rushdie.
31. An appropriate declaration by the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran—on behalf
of Iran’s president or spiritual leader— would give hope to many millions worldwide, who
will never accept that any authority, whether religious or secular, can ar bitrarily condemn a
person from any country to death by decree—for either heresy or apostasy, for an opinion
or a book.
32. We wish to conclude by endorsing the words of Libyan ambassador Najat Al-Hajjaji, the
chairperson of the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on Human Rights, pronounced at
last year’s tenth meeting of special rapporteurs and representatives, independent experts,
and chairpersons of Working Groups of the Special Procedures of the Commission on
Human Rights and of the Advisory Services Programme (June 23-27, 2003). This opinion
is particularly applicable to the “Rushdie Affair,” especially with regard to human rights
mechanisms and the special procedures: “I would like to exhort all of you to continue your
work. Speak freely as you have done in the past. Continue to do so in the interests of truth,
of justice, irrespective of the pressure that is brought to bear upon you by Governments.
Even if what you say is contrary to the interests of the Government, there are thousands,
millions, of victims who look upon the Commission, the special procedures, as the
conscience of humanity, of mankind. So I would just like to exhort you once again, urge
you, to continue. . . . Stand firm, let nothing stand in the way of truth.”15
 39
BLASPHEMY LEGISLATION IN
PAKISTAN’S PENAL CODE

1 The Association for World Education submits the present written statement in memory of a
prominent human rights defender, the late _L • John Joseph, bishop of Faisalabad,
chairman of the Human Rights Commission established by the Catholic Bishops’
Conference of Pakistan, who killed himself on May 6, 1998, to protest the con-tinued
application of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
2. Bishop Joseph’s suicide was related to the “blasphemy” case of Ayub Masih, who had been
incarcerated in solitary confinement since October 14, 1996, and sentenced to death on
April 27, 1998, by Sessions Court Judge Rana Abdul Ghaffar. Distinguished lawyer Asma
Jahangir, who had secured the release of Salamat and Rehmet Masih in 1995 on a similar
charge of blasphemy, is also involved in the defense of Ayub Masih. The appeal against the
death sentence is still pending in the High Court.
3. A few hours before his tragic death. Bishop Joseph publicly declared that the charges were
false and were merely concocted to force fifteen Christian families to drop a local land
dispute with Muslim villagers. In his last circular letter, published on May 7, in the Lahore
edition of the newspaper Dawn, he strongly urged Church leaders, parliamentarians,
Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and all segments of society in Pakistan to support the
campaign for the repeal of the iniquitous blasphemy laws. This legislation violates the
international instruments that were signed and ratified by Pakistan.

This NGO written statement. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/NGO/3 (July 1998). was submitted by the AWE to the fiftieth session of the UNCHR’s Sub-Commission and was posted on
the UN Web site. It was prepared by David G. Littman and Rene Wadlow.

BACKGROUND TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE BLASPHEMY LEGISLATION

4. During the presidency of Gen. Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988), a Federal Shariat (legal) Court
(FSC), was instituted, which was granted “jurisdiction over convictions or acquittals from
district courts in cases involving . . . Islamic criminal laws; exclusive jurisdiction to hear
[petitions] . . . challenging ‘any law or provision of law’ as repugnant to the Holy Koran;
exclusive jurisdiction to examine ‘any law or provision of law’ for repugnancy to the Holy
Koran”1Although non-Muslims may not appear before the Shariat Court, they are subject to
its rulings.
5. President Haq introduced the hudood (punishment) ordinances in 1984, which “define
crimes against Islam” and “enforce punishment for those who commit such crimes.” In
hudood cases, the testimony of a non-Muslim is considered to be worth half that of a
Muslim. Section 298-B and 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code singles out, pejoratively, the
 “non-Muslim” minority group Ahamadiyya—considered by Sunni theologians to be
heretics.

THE SUBCOMMISSION’S 1985 REACTION TO ORDINANCE XX (1984)

6. Ordinance XX was incorporated into the 1985 constitution. That year, the subcommission
adopted resolution 1985/21, in which it

1. Expresses its grave concern at the promulgation by Pakistan of Ordinance XX of 28 April

1984 which, prima facie, violates the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to
freedom of thought, expression, conscience and religion, the right of religious minorities to
profess and practise their own religion, and the right to an effective legal remedy;
2. Further expresses its grave concern that persons charged with and arrested for violations of
Ordinance XX have been reportedly subjected to various punishments and confiscation of
personal property, and that the affected groups as a whole have been subjected to
discrimination in employment and education and to the defacement of their religious
property;
3. Requests the Commission on Human Rights to call on the Government of Pakistan to repeal
Ordinance XX and to restore the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons in
its jurisdiction.

7. In 1986 the government of Pakistan used the power granted it by Ordinance XX to insert
section 295-C into the Pakistan Legal Code, making the death sentence mandatory for
anyone convicted of blaspheming the prophet Muhammad. From 1986 to 1993, over two
hundred Ahmadis were charged with “blasphemy,” but none were convicted. Soon this law,
originally directed at the Ahmadis, was being used primarily against Christians and also
against Muslims, several of whom have been convicted.
8. In 1993 a further bill, generally supported by anti-Shia groups as a means of persecuting
Shias, was introduced to extend the law to the defiling of the Prophet’s family and
companions.
9. An editorial in the Pakistani newspaper the Frontier Post stated,”Now, not only has
theocracy been presented as a model for law and procedure, but discrimination on the basis
of religion has become a part of the law.”2
10. On February 10, 1995, the United Nations special procedures system was used to send an
urgent appeal to the government of Pakistan regarding the cases of a thirteen-year-old
illiterate boy, Salamat Masih—accused of having written blasphemous words on a mosque
wall—and his uncle, Rehmet Masih. A reply was received within four days, and the
international outcry in this case resulted in their release from prison; they fled to Europe.
11. Over a dozen Christians have been jailed under the blasphemy laws, four of whom were
reported killed in detention. Ayub Masih is the fourth Christian to be condemned to death;
the other three were acquitted on appeal and fled Pakistan. This is the background for
Bishop Joseph’s tragic “sacrificial death.”

A DEATH SENTENCE FOR “BLASPHEMY” IS ILLEGITIMATE

 12. The Association for World Education questions the legitimacy of Pakistan’s blasphemy
laws under the international instruments, the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All
Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, and fundamental
human rights standards.
13. In addition to questioning the legitimacy of such blasphemy laws, our association wishes
to raise questions concerning the conditions in which trials for blasphemy are conducted:
the right to a fair andspeedy trial; the independence of the judiciary; the safety of defense
lawyers; and the holding of the trial in a serene atmosphere, isolated from political, social,
and religious pressures. We ask the subcommission to undertake inquiries as to whether
Pakistan’s courts are meeting these international human rights standards in all trials related
to charges of blasphemy.
14. In particular, we wish to stress five points in regard to blasphemy charges under the section
295 of Pakistan’s Penal Code: (a) blasphemy, as a civil crime under section 295-B and 295-
C, is tried in civil courts, where only Muslim judges may hear cases; (b) the death penalty
is a punishment for blasphemy under section 295-C; (c) blasphemy accusations may be
applied to non-Muslims, whose testimony is given less weight in court than Muslims; (d)
blasphemy charges may be used to mask other, more material or political, moti-vations;
and (e) blasphemy charges are being increasingly used as a way of limiting discussion and
debate—what has been called since 1989 the “Rushdie syndrome.”
15. In a statement on August 21, 1992, to the forty-fourth session of the subcommission, a
member of the subcommission, Claire Palley, declared, “This is not a century—and
certainly the twenty-first century is not one—in which the death penalty should exist for
heresy. I hope the Sub-Commission will, as a body, make it clear that both fatwas and the
death penalty for heresy are themselves gross violations of human rights.”3

A SUBCOMMISSION RESOLUTION ON “BLASPHEMY” CHARGES IS A NECESSITY

16. In the same spirit, the Association for World Education calls on the fiftieth session of the
subcommission to adopt a resolution along the lines that “this is not a century, nor is the
twenty-first century one, in which the death penalty should exist for blasphemy.”4
17. The use of an accusation of “blasphemy”—an ill-defined term that can be expanded to
mean anything that any accuser dislikes—merits serious attention. Some accusations of
“blasphemy” can be ill-disguised death threats—as was the case in 1994 regarding the UN
special rapporteur for Sudan, Gaspar Biro—and when they are not, they can be considered
as sufficiently dangerous to lead to kowtowing, and even censorship at the United Nations.
18. The Association for World Education has provided essential facts about the “UN
Blasphemy Affair” of April 18, 1997, in a subcommission written statement,5 in several
oral statements made to last year’s subcommission. to the fifty-fourth session of the
commission, and more fully in two out of three articles recently published.
19. Such rigid doctrinal accusations of “blasphemy”—charges that are constantly revived to
the detriment of basic human rights in Pakistan and elsewhere—merit unreserved
condemnation by the United Nations now.
 40
PUNIVERSALITY OF
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN
RIGHTS TREATIES
David G.Littan

our written statement entitled International Bill of Human Rights:

Universality/International Standards/National Practices1 concludes with the
following passage from the new high commissioner’s ground-breaking
report to the commission:2 “I. THE NEED FOR STRONGER
PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. In the 55 years since the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, the international community has
developed a solid body of international norms of human rights and
humanitarian law aimed at the tangible protection of human rights. A global
consensus has been strengthened around the universality and the
irreducibility of human rights” (para. 7). “An adequate national protection
system is one in which international human rights norms are reflected in the
national constitution and in national legislation” (para. 11).
A key aspect of universality as a fundamental basis of world human rights law was strongly
stressed in General Comment no. 18 of the thirty-seventh session (1989) of the Human Rights
Committee, under Nondiscrimination: “Non-discrimination, together with equality before the law
and equal protection of law without any discrimination, constitute a basic and general principle
relating to the protection of human rights. Thus article 2, paragraph 1 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights obligates each State party to respect and ensure to all persons … the
rights recognized in the Covenant without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”3

This NGO oral statement was prepared and delivered by David G. Littman for the AWE on July 30, 2(X)3, at the fifty-fifth session of the UN Sub-Commission on Human
Rights. This text was circulated with written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/I5, reprinted in this book as chapter 42.

General Comment no. 22, adopted by the Human Rights Committee, 48th session (1993)
declares:

The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (which includes the freedom to
hold beliefs) in article. 18.1 is far-reaching and profound.
 Article 18 protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to
profess any religion or belief. The term “belief and “religion” are to be broadly construed.
Article 18 is not limited in its application to traditional religions or to religions and
beliefs with institutional characteristics or practices analogous to those of traditional religions.
The Committee therefore views with concern any tendency to discriminate against any religion
or belief for any reason, including the fact that they are newly established, or represent reli-
gious minorities that may be the subject of hostility on the part of a predominant religious
community.
Article 18 distinguishes the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief from the
freedom to manifest religion or belief. It does not permit any limitations whatsoever on the
freedom of thought and conscience or on the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of
one’s choice. These freedoms are protected unconditionally, as is the right of everyone to hold
opinions without interference in article 19.1. In accordance with articles 18.2 and 19, no one
can be compelled to reveal his thoughts or adherence to a religion or belief.4

The aims of article 18 are further developed in the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms
of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, proclaimed by the General
Assembly in 1981, with concern for “manifestations of intolerance and by the existence of
discrimination in matters of religion or belief still in evidence in some areas of the world.”
Twenty years later the situation is more alarming. On this grave matter, we wish to call
attention to an appeal, dated today [July 30, 2003], to be submitted tomorrow by the Barnabas Fund
(UK) to the Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Chairpersons of the Human Rights
Committee, the CHR, the subcommission, and the special rapporteur on religious intolerance: “The
Suffering of Muslims Who Adopt Another Belief.” It deals with apostasy in Islam and criminal
pressures against those who are accused of changing their belief. Their appeal also refers to a motion
of the British Parliament,5 which has already received the signatures of 45 MPs [the total reached 92
by November 2003]. On this religious freedom and belief issue, the motion states: “That this House
supports liberal Muslims, human rightscampaigners and others who are calling for an end to cruel
traditional punishments for apostasy.”
In a similar context, we wish to recommend a remarkable book, Leaving Islam: Apostates
Speak Out, by Ibn Warraq, containing moving and courageous testimonies from Muslims accused of
“apostasy” and then physically menaced.6
This commonplace situation should neither be ignored by the UN secretary general, the high
commissioner for human rights, nor by the commission and the subcommission, nor by special
rapporteurs and human rights treaty bodies! Our appeal will also be delivered to the chairman and all
members of the Human Rights Committee currently in session, whose comments have been quoted
extensively here on this crucial matter. We therefore call upon the subcommission to take action now
through an appropriate resolution.
On the fundamental right of freedom of thought and speech and religious tolerance, we shall
conclude with the words of Spinoza, a glowing beacon of light, from the seventeenth century:

I have thus shown:

—That it is impossible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they
think. .. .
—Every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.7
 41
HOMAGE TO UN HIGH
COMMISSIONER SERGIO
VIEIRA DE MELLO
David G. Littman

Last year, on March 21, 2003, we concluded a joint statement under item 4 by warmly
welcoming the new high commissioner for human rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello: “Sir, you have a
long task before you, not an easy one, but we are confident that with sustained collective efforts you
will overcome, always bearing in mind Shakespeare’s advice, in the words of John of Gaunt: ‘Small
showers last long, but sudden storms are short;/He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes.’“1
Today, we wish to pay a worthy homage by quoting key passages from last year’s
groundbreaking report, E/CN.4/2003/14, by the high commissioner.
However Utopian it may sound here, point 5 of the introduction has a very pertinent message:
“Membership of the Commission on Human Rights must carry responsibilities. I therefore wonder
whether the time has not come for the Commission itself to develop a code of guidelines for access to
membership of the Commission and a code of conduct for members while they serve on the
Commission. After all, the Commission on Human Rights has a duty to humanity and the members
of the Commission must themselves set the example of adherence to the international human rights
norms—in practice as well as in law.”
Indeed, a courageous suggestion from a courageous man, and appreciated by many NGOs. . . .

This NGO joint oral statement was prepared and delivered by David G. Littman on April 19, 2004 (item 18), for the Association for World Education (AWE), the
International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). and the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), at the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. This is an abridged version, omitting
some passages. The entire text was circulated at the UNCHR with AWE’s written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/15, International Bill of Human Rights:
Universality/International Standards/ National Practices reprinted in this book as chapter 42.

We also endorse the conclusion in paragraph 55: “Without universal respect for human rights,
the vision of the Charter of a world of peace grounded in respect for human rights and economic and
social justice will remain an illusion. Let us vindicate the Charter’s vision by being faithful to the
universal implementation of human rights. In doing so we shall continue in the direction of history,
rather than allowing ourselves to be diverted from the course we know to be just.”
Our association’s written statement entitled International Bill of Human Rights:
Universality/International Standards/National Practices provides much useful data on this matter.2
Mr. Chairman, Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights [Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan], you
will remember that in his inaugural statement on March 17 2003, Sergio referred with dismay to
terrorists who would kill anyone at any time in any place—and yes! they killed him five months
later! To Osama bin Laden—who in his message just last week once again threatened the United
Nations, as well as the United States and others3—and to all the bloodthirsty jihadists, who dare to
champion (and defame) Islam by killing and mutilating in Allah’s name while threatening the entire
world by their crimes against humanity, our answer can only be Winston Churchill’s.
Speaking [to the City Carlton Club] on June 28, 1939, and referring to Hitler’s “March of
Folly” only two months before World War II began, which resulted in fifty million deaths, Churchill
declared, “Is he going to blow up the world or not? The world is a very heavy thing to blow up! An
extraordinary man at a pinnacle of power may create a great explosion, and yet the civilised world
may remain unshaken. The enormous fragments and splinters of the explosion may clatter down
upon his head and destroy him . . . but the world will go on.”
We should all make it clear here to those “jihadist bombers”—the term suicide bomber is
inaccurate—that the civilized world will never surrender to their vile threats. Only a total victory
over such ignominious religious depravity and terror will bring salvation for the free world, for free
people— and for those still to be freed! We ask the commission—in a true homage to Sergio Vieira
de Mello—to make that point crystal clear. Sergio would have appreciated it—and, surely,
Churchill’s words too!
 42
INTERNATIONAL BILL OF 42. HUMAN
RIGHTS
Universality/
International Standards/
National Practices

1. The secretary general’s note on specific human rights issues indi-J_ • cates that as of
June 1, 2003, 146 states had ratified, acceded to, or succeeded to the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and 149 states to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.1 Section 5 of this note relates to the “Effective
Implementation of International Instruments on Human Rights, including Reporting
Obligations of States Parties to the United Nations Instruments in the Field of Human
Rights”; it also mentions the Meeting of Chairpersons of Human Rights Treaty Bodies of
2002 and that of June 23-27, 2003.
2. The principal aim of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was to
create a framework for a universal code based on mutual consent. The early years of the
United Nations were overshadowed by the division between the Western and Communist
conceptions of human rights, although neither side called into question the concept of
universality. The debate centered on which rights—political, economic, and social—were
to be included among the universal instruments. In the 1960s, with the arrival of a large

NGO written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/15—submitted by the AWE to the fifty-fifth session of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights (July 2003) and posted
on the UN Web site—is based on an article by David G. Littman, “Human Rights and Human Wrongs: Sharia Can’t Be Exception to International Human-Rights Norms,” National
Review Online. January 19, 2(X)3, http://www.nation-alreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/commentycomment-littman() 11903.asp (accessed September 27. 2004). This text—with
additions by the author—was edited with pertinent modifications by Rene Wadlow. It was circulated at the fifty-fifth session of the Sub-Commission on Human Rights and at the
sixtieth session of the UNCHR, with the respective oral statements (July 30. 2003. and April 19. 2004).

number of third world states that had not been present in 1948, there were discussions as to
whether new states were bound by covenants that had been adopted before they became independent
and joined the United Nations. In general, by 1975 (the Helsinki Accords), consensus was reached on
the universality of human rights.

3. A crucial part of the debate has consisted in bringing national legislation into conformity
with the universal human rights standards, as defined in what is usually called the
International Bill of Human Rights, comprising the UDHR; the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Usually, states that ratified, or acceded to, the international covenants modified their
legislation if it was not in conformity.
 4. Nevertheless, there are states that consider that the UDHR is not a universal standard
for all legislation, and they continue a policy of selective conformity. For instance, the Web
site of Saudi Arabia’s embassy in London contains a new document titled, “Saudi Arabia—
Questions of Human Rights.” There, in a response to a question whether Saudi Arabia accepts
“universally accepted human rights,” it is officially stated, “No, Saudi Arabia doesn’t accept
that. Some human rights are controversial, and yet others are an anathema to a large portion of
humanity.”2
5. Likewise, a bill in the Iranian parliament to raise the marriage age for girls from nine to
fourteen was refused three years ago by religious groups on the grounds it would be against
Islamic teachings to make changes to the current law, since “Islamic scholars had put a lot
of efforts into these laws” (Muhammad Ali Sheikh, quoted in parliament.) Yet, in 1994,
Iran had signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose article 1
specifies, “For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being
below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is
attained earlier.”3 After the 1979 Islamic revolution, Sharia law had effectively halved the
girl child’s marriage age to nine years.
6. When encouraged to bring their national legislation into agreement with the UDHR, some
states have responded negatively. In his first report, dated February 1, 1994, the then
special rapporteur on Sudan, Gaspar Biro, called upon “the Government of Sudan to bring
its legislation into accordance with international instruments to which it isa party. “On
February 18, 1994, the Sudanese ambassador, Ali Ahmed Sahloul, sent a letter to all
permanent representatives and observers at the United Nations in Geneva. This followed a
similarly worded text circulated by the Sudanese delegation the previous day at the
Commission on Human Rights, boldly titled “Attack on Islam.” In its official “Comments
on the Report,” Sudan declared, “All Muslims are ordained by God to subject themselves
to Sharia Laws and that matter could not be contested or challenged by a Special
Rapporteur or other UN agencies or representatives.”4
7. The continuing need to have international human rights norms reflected in national
legislation has been one of the themes of the World Decade for Human Rights Education,
in which the Association for World Education has been active.
8. In addition to the issue of selective conformity within national legislation, there has been a
greater challenge to the universalistic framework of the UDHR with the presentation of an
alternative, more narrowly based human rights system. This alternative framework was
presented primarily by the Islamic Republic of Iran, shortly after the 1979 Islamic
revolution.5
9.Already at the thirty-sixth session of the UN General Assembly, in 1981, the representative
of Iran expressed the Iranian government’s position, reaffirmed at the GA’s thirty-ninth
session, in 1984: “It recognises no legal tradition apart from Islamic law. . . . Conventions,
declarations and resolutions or decisions of international organisations, which were
contrary to Islam, had no validity in the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . . The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which represented a secular understanding of the Judeo-
Christian traditions, could not be implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the
system of values recognised by the Islamic Republic of Iran.” If a choice had to be made
between its stipulations and “the divine law of the country,” Iran would always choose
Islamic law. Since then, Iran has led the constant effort to modify the UDHR.6
10. These efforts led to the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed at
UNESCO in 1981, and to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI),
adopted on August 5, 1990, in Cairo by the nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign
Ministers of the 45 (now 57) Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference
 (OIC), subsequent to the Report of theMeeting of the Committee of Legal Experts, held in
Tehran from December 26-28, 1989.7
11. It is significant that article 24 of the English CDHRI states, “All the rights and freedoms
stipulated in the Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia,” and article 25 confirms,
“The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of
any of the articles of this Declaration.” Thus it is clear that the Sharia law has supremacy,
and the 1990 Cairo Declaration primacy—in the view of its authors—over the International
Bill of Human Rights (the UDHR included) and all other UN covenants.
12. When the CDHRI was tabled for adoption at the Summit Meeting of OIC Heads of State
and Government, held in Dakar on December 9, 1991, the Geneva-based International
Commission of Jurists (ICJ) warned in a press release, “The ICJ wishes, however, to call
the attention of the Muslim communities and world public opinion to the negative
implications which might follow the Summit’s adoption of the Islamic Draft Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam, as elaborated on 5 August 1990 in Cairo during the Nineteenth
Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers.” In February 1992, its secretary general—Adama
Dieng, a preeminent Senegalese jurist—declared in a joint statement to the Commission on
Human Rights on behalf of the ICJ and the Paris-based International Federation for Human
Rights, in regard to the 1990 CDHRI:

i. It gravely threatens the intercultural consensus on which the international human rights
instruments are based;
ii. It introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination
against both non-Muslims and women;
iii. It reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and
freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standard in effect
in a number of Muslim countries;
iv. It confirms under cover of the “Islamic Sharia (Law)” the legitimacy of practices, such as
corporal punishment, that attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.8
13. Representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran have continued to present the CDHRI as an
alternative framework for human rights.Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi—the first
speaker at the Jubilee Commemoration of the UDHR to address the commission on March
17, 1998—called for a “revision of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” On
November 9-10, 1998, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights jointly
hosted a seminar with the OIC, titled, “Enriching the Universality of Human Rights:
Islamic Perspectives on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” at which twenty
Muslim experts on Islam presented papers.9
14. In his opening address the secretary-general of the OIC, Azeddine Laraki, stated, “An elite
of Muslim experts in the field of Sharia and Law are thus being offered the opportunity to
present researches which expound the Islamic perspective as to human rights and recall the
contribution of Islam to the laying of the foundations of these rights through which Islam
aimed at leading people out of the obscurities and into enlightenment, at ensuring dignity in
their life and non-submission to anyone but God, and at asserting their freedom and their
right to justice and equality on the basis of the two sources of Islamic Shari’a: Qur’an and
Sunna and on Fiqh jurisprudence, away from politicking, demagogy or reliance on local
practices and mores which are subject to variations according to historical legacies.”10
15. In a prior letter to all delegations, the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary
Robinson, explained, “We have agreed that for the purpose of this seminar, Islam is
understood in terms of ‘Sharia’ (Qur’an and Hadith) and not in terms of tradition or
practices that may vary and mix with historical heritage.”
16. A follow-up seminar, organized by the OIC alone—Symposium of Human Rights in Islam
—was held March 14-15, 2002, just prior to the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on
Human Rights. It covered much the same ground as the 1998 seminar. The first paper,
titled “War against Terrorism: Impact on Human Rights,” was delivered by Ahmad al-
Mufti; after having threatened Biro in 1994 and 1995, he had been reprimanded implicitly
in a UN General Assembly resolution (December 5. 1995). No longer a senior official in
the Sudanese Justice Department, he had become director general of the Khartoum
International Centre for Human Rights. His written paper concluded with an affirmation:
“We believe that Islam adds new positive dimensions to human rights, since, unlike
international instruments, it attributes them to a divine source thereby adding a new moral
motivation for complying with them.”11
17. On March 15, 2002, the high commissioner addressed the OIC Conference Symposium. In
her statement she declared, under the heading “A Greater Need for an Understanding of
Islam,”

No one can deny that at its core Islam is entirely consonant with the principles of
fundamental human rights, including human dignity, tolerance, solidarity and quality.
Numerous passages from the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad will testify to
this. No one can deny, from a historic perspective, the revolutionary force that is Islam, which
bestowed rights upon women and children long before similar recognition was afforded in
other civilisations. Custom and tradition have tended to limit these rights, but as more Islamic
States ratify the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, ways
forward for women are being found and women are leading the debate. And no one can deny
the acceptance of the universality of human rights by Islamic States.

18. At the back of the room where she spoke could be found various written statements by the
participants, as well as copies of the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam12—
but not the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, normally available in five official
languages.
19. To date, no other religiously based human rights declarations have been put forward in
discussions at the United Nations. Rather, the universality of the UDHR is increasingly
stressed.
20. Moreover, on September 14, 2000—in a reply to the Association for World Education’s
formal request concerning the inexplicable inclusion of the CDHRI in the UN’s 1997
volume 2 of International Instruments—the legal advisor to the then high commissioner
confirmed the official UN opinion: “The Member States which have acceded to and ratified
United Nations Human Rights Conventions remain bound, under all circumstances, by the
provisions of those texts, as well as the erge omnes obligations under customary
international law.”
21.424 Today, we see a broad international consensus that the UDHR should be the common
framework for all states as reflected both in their national legislation and in their dealings
with citizens of other states. This consensus was clearly stressed by the new HCHR,Sergio
Vieira de Mello, in his groundbreaking report to the fifty-ninth commission:13

[. THE NEED FOR STRONGER PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. “In the 55

years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, the international
community has developed a solid body of international norms of human rights and
humanitarian law aimed at the tangible protection of human rights. A global consensus has
been strengthened around the universality and the irreducibility of human rights:14 “An
adequate national protection system is one in which international human rights norms are
reflected in the national constitution and in national legislation.”15
 43
COMBATING DEFAMATION
OF RELIGIONS
Roy Brown

In relation to the adaptation and strengthening of the UN machinery for human rights, the
International Humanist and Ethical Union notes the additions made to the text of resolution 2004/L.5,
“Combating Defamation of Religions,” and in particular to points 3 and 4, which urge states to
commit themselves, inter alia, to ensuring equal access to education for all; to refrain from measures
leading to racial segregation in schooling, and to ensure access to free primary education for both
girls and boys. We regret, however, that the resolution does not call upon states to refrain from
measures leading to religious segregation in education. The IHEU has long held that unsegre-gated
education for all children, based on our shared human values, regardless of race or religion, are the
surest safeguard against sectarianism, hatred, and violence in the future.
We also note with some concern that the word defamation is undefined in the text of the
resolution.1 We urge the commission and the special rapporteur |on contemporary forms of racism,
racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance] to accept the distinction between
defamation of a religion and valid criticism of its practices, in particular when those practices are in
contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related instruments. In this regard
we note with concern that when, under agenda item 11 [at this sixtieth session of the commission],
we raised the issue of the treatment of those accused of apostasy in some Islamic countries, this was
construed by one delegation [Pakistan] as an attack on Islam. We respectfully request all states to
address honestly and openly [the] concerns [that may be expressed] about genuine abuses of human
rights. Accusations of defamation of religion should not be allowed to stifle legitimate criticism [of
the laws and practices of any country].

This NGO oral statement was prepared and delivered by Roy Brown, the main representative and president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) on April
15, 2004 (item IX), to the sixtieth session of the UNCHR.

We would also urge the commission and the special rapporteur to be mindful of the distinction
between defamation of a religion and the publication of academic research into its origins, history,
and practices. We all deplore defamation and falsehood. But it would be a tragedy if concerns about
defamation were allowed to stifle honest inquiry and the publication and expression of factual data.
[We would also urge all states to recognize that with so many differing beliefs current in the world,
genuine differences will arise. The honest belief of one man should not be treated as defamation of
his religion by another.]
Finally, we would urge those states whose laws are based on their understanding of God’s law
not to treat calls for the change or repeal of any law as defamation of their religion, or worse, as
blasphemy or as evidence of apostasy. Allow me to conclude, Mr. Chairman, by quoting Mr.
Abdelfattah Amor, [special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief], who said here [at a parallel
session] on April 2, “There are two problems—when religion is the property of the state, and when
the state is the property of religion.”
 44
APOSTASY, HUMAN RIGHTS,
RELIGION, AND BELIEF—
NEW THREATS TO THE
FREEDOM OF OPINION AND
EXPRESSION
A General Overview of
Apostasy
Ibn Warraq

The very notion of apostasy has vanished from the West, where one would L talk of being a
lapsed Catholic or nonpracticing Christian rather than an apostate. There are certainly no penal
sanctions for converting from Christianity to any other religion. In Islamic countries, on the other
hand, the issue is far from dead.
The Arabic word for apostate is murtadd, the one who turns back from Islam, and apostasy is
denoted by irtidad and ridda. Ridda seems to have been used for apostasing from Islam into unbelief
(kufr in Arabic), and irtidad from Islam to some other religion.1 A person born of Muslim parents
who later rejects Islam is called a murtadd fitri—fitri, meaning “natural,” can also mean “instinctive,
native, inborn, innate.” One who converts to Islam and subsequently leaves it is a murtadd milli,
from milla, meaning “religious community.” The murtadd fitri can be seen as someone unnatural,
subverting the natural course of things, whose apostasy is a willful and obstinate act of treason
against God and the one and only true creed, and a betrayal and desertion of the community. The
murtadd mUli is a traitor to the Muslim community and equally disruptive.

This paper was delivered (in part, over twenty minutes) at a panel discussion on “Apostasy. Human Rights, Religion, and Belief at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, April 7,
2004, during the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. Sponsors included the Association for World Citizens, the Association for World Education, and the International Humanist and
Ethical Union. The full text was widely circulated at the UNCHR and to the UN media. The final section is an NGO oral statement prepared by Ibn Warraq and delivered for him on
April 2 (item 11) by Roy Brown at the sixtieth session of the UNCHR.

Any verbal denial of any principle of Muslim belief is considered apostasy. If one declares, for
example, that the universe has always existed from eternity or that God has a material substance, then
one is an apostate. If one denies the unity of God or confesses to a belief in reincarnation, one is
guilty of apostasy. Certain acts are also deemed acts of apostasy, for example, treating a copy of the
Qur’an disrespectfully, by burning it or even soiling it in some way. Some doctors of Islamic law
claim that a Muslim becomes an apostate if he or she enters a church, worships an idol, or learns and
practices magic. A Muslim becomes an apostate if he defames the Prophet’s character, morals, or
virtues, or denies Muhammad’s prophethood and that he was the seal of the prophets.

QUR’AN

It is clear quite clear that under Islamic law an apostate must be put to death. There is no dispute
on this ruling among classical Muslim or modern scholars, and we shall return to the textual evidence
for it. Some modern scholars have argued that in the Qur’an the apostate is threatened with
punishment only in the next world, as for example in sura 16:106, “Whoso dis-believeth in Allah
after his belief—save him who is forced thereto and whose heart is still content with the Faith but
whoso findeth ease in disbelief: On them is wrath from Allah. Theirs will be an awful doom.”
Similarly, in sura 3:90-91, “Lo! those who disbelieve after their (profession of) belief, and afterward
grow violent in disbelief, their repentance will not be accepted. And such are those who are astray.
Lo! those who disbelieve, and die in disbelief, the (whole) earth full of gold would not be accepted
from such an one if it were offered as a ransom (for his soul).Theirs will be a painful doom and they
will have no helpers.”
However, sura 2:217 is interpreted by no less an authority than al-Shafii (died 820 CE), the
founder of one of the four orthodox schools of law of Sunni Islam, to mean that the death penalty
should be prescribed for apostates. Sura 2:217 reads, “But whoever of you recants and dies an
unbeliever, his works shall come to nothing in this world and the next, and they are the companions
of the fire for ever.” Al-Thalabi and al-Khazan concur. Al-Razi, in his commentary on sura 2:217,
says the apostate should be killed.2
Similarly, sura 4:89: “They would have you disbelieve as they themselveshave disbelieved, so
that you may be all like alike. Do not befriend them until they have fled their homes for the cause of
God. If they desert you seize them and put them to death wherever you find them. Look for neither
friends nor helpers among them.” Baydawi (d. c. 1315-16), in his celebrated commentary on the
Qur’an, interprets this passage to mean, “Whosover turns back from his belief (irtada), openly or
secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself
from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard.”3 Ibn Kathir, in his commentary on this
passage, quoting al Suddi (d. 745), says that since the unbelievers had manifested their unbelief they
should be killed.4
Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979), the founder of the Jamaat-i Islami, is perhaps the most
influential Muslim thinker of the twentieth century, being responsible for the Islamic resurgence in
modern times. He called for a return to the Qur’an and a purified sunna as a way to revive and
revitalize Islam. In his book on apostasy in Islam, Maududi argued that even the Qur’an pre-scribes
the death penalty for all apostates. He points to sura 9 for evidence: “But if they repent and establish
worship and pay the poor-due, then are they your brethren in religion. We detail our revelations for a
people who have knowledge. And if they break their pledges after their treaty (hath been made with
you) and assail your religion, then fight the heads of disbelief. Lo! they have no binding oaths in
order that they may desist”(9. 11-12)5

HADITH

In the Hadith we find many traditions demanding the death penalty for apostasy. According to
Ibn Abbas, the Prophet said, “Kill him who changes his religion,” or “behead him.”6 The only
argument was as to the nature of the death penalty. Bukhari recounts this gruesome tradition:

Narrated Anas: Some people from the tribe of Ukl came to the Prophet and embraced
Islam. The climate of Medina did not suit them, so the Prophet ordered them to go to the (herd
of milch) camels of charity to drink their milk and urine (as a medicine). They did so, and after
they had recovered from their ailment they turned renegades (reverted from Islam, irtada) and
killed the shepherd of the camels and took the camels away. The Prophet sent (some people) in
their pursuit and so they were caught and brought, and the Prophet ordered that their hands and
legs should be cut off and that their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that
their cut hands and legs should not be cauterised, till they die.7
Abu Dawud has collected the following saying of the Prophet: ‘“Ikrimah said: Ali burned
some people who retreated from Islam. When Ibn Abbas was informed of it he said, if it had been I, I
would not have them burned, for the apostle of Allah said: ‘Do not inflict Allah’s punishment on
anyone.’ But I would have killed them on account of the statement of the Apostle of Allah, ‘Kill
those who change their religion.’“8
In other words, kill the apostates (with the sword) but certainly not by burning them—that is
Allah’s way of punishing transgressors in the next world. According to a tradition of Aisha’s,
apostates are to be slain, crucified, or banished.9 Should the apostate be given a chance to repent?
Traditions differ enormously. In one tradition, Muadh Jabal refused to sit down until an apostate
brought before him had been killed “in accordance with the decision of God and of His Apostle.”10
Under Muslim law, the male apostate must be put to death, as long as he is an adult and in full
possession of his faculties. If a pubescent boy apostatizes, he is imprisoned until he comes of age,
when if he persists in rejecting Islam he must be put to death. Drunkards and the mentally disturbed
are not held responsible for their apostasy. If a person has acted under compulsion he is not
considered an apostate, his wife is not divorced, and his lands are not forfeited. According to Hanafis
and Shia, a woman is imprisoned until she repents and adopts Islam once more, but according to the
influential Ibn Hanbal, and the Malikis and Shafiites, she is also put to death. In general, execution
must be by the sword, though there are examples of apostates tortured to death, or strangled, burned,
drowned, impaled, or flayed. Caliph Umar used to tie them to a post and had lances thrust into their
hearts, and Sultan Baybars II (1308-1309) made torture legal.
Should attempts be made at conversion? Some jurists accept the distinction between murtadd
fitri and murtadd mUli and argue that the former be put to death immediately. Others, leaning on sura
4:137—”Lo! those who believe, then disbelieve and then (again) believe, then disbelieve, and then
increase in disbelief, Allah will never pardon them, nor will he guide them unto a way”—insist on
three attempts at conversion, or have the apostate imprisoned for three days to begin with. Others
argue that one should wait for the cycle of the five times of prayer and ask the apostate to perform the
prayers at each. Only if he refuses at each prayer time is the death penalty to be applied. If he repents
and embraces Islam once more, he is released.11
The murtadd, of course, would be denied a Muslim burial, but he suffers other civil
disabilities. His property is taken over by the believers; if he returns penitent he is given back what
remains. Others argue that the apostate’s rights of ownership are merely suspended; only if he dies
outside the territory under Islam does he forfeit his property to the Muslim community. If either the
husband or wife apostasizes, a divorce takes place ipso facto; the wife is entitled to her whole dower,
but no pronouncement of divorce is necessary. According to some jurists, if husband and wife
apostasize together their marriage is still valid. However, if either the wife or husband were singly to
return to Islam, then their marriage would be dissolved.12 According to Abu Hanifa, legal activities
such as manumission, endowment, testament, and sale are suspended. But not all jurists agree. Some
Shii jurists would ask the Islamic law toward apostates to be applied even outside the dar al-Islam,
in non-Muslim countries.
 Finally, according to the Shafiites, it is not only apostasy from Islam that is to be punished
with death, but also apostasy from other religions when this is not accompanied by conversion to
Islam. For example, a Jew who becomes a Christian will thus have to be put to death since the
Prophet has ordered in general that everyone “who adopts any other religion” shall be put to death.13
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR, 1948] states, “Everyone has
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his
religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to
manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and obser-vance.”14
The clause guaranteeing the freedom to change one’s religion was added at the request of the
delegate from Lebanon, Charles Malik, who was a Christian.15 Lebanon had accepted many people
fleeing persecution for their beliefs, in particular for having changed their religion. Lebanon
especially objected to the Islamic law concerning apostasy. Many Muslim countries, however,
objected strongly to the clause regarding the right to change one’s religion. The delegate from Egypt,
for instance, said that “very often a man changes religion or his convictions under external influences
with goals which are not recommendable such as divorce.” He added that he feared in proclaiming
the liberty to change one’s religion or convictions the UDHR would encourage without wishing it
“the machinations of certain missions well-known in the East, which relentlessly pursue their efforts
with a view to converting to their faith the populations of the East.”16 Significantly, Lebanon was
supported by a delegate from Pakistan who belonged to the Ahmadi community, which, ironically,
was to be thrown out of the Islamic community in the 1970s for being non-Muslim. In the end all
Muslim countries except Saudi Arabia adhered to the UDHR.
During discussions of article 18 in 1966, Saudi Arabia and Egypt wanted to suppress the
clause guaranteeing the freedom to change one’s religion. Finally a compromise amendment
proposed by Brazil and the Philippines was adopted to placate the Islamic countries. Thus, “the
freedom to change his religion or belief was replaced with “the freedom to have or adopt a religion or
belief of his choice.”17 Similarly, in 1981, during discussions on the Declaration on the Elimination of
All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Iran, under its new Islamic
regime, reminded everyone that Islam punished apostasy by death. The delegate from Iraq, backed up
by Syria, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, expressed his
reservations about any clauses or terms that would contradict the Islamic Sharia, while the delegate
from Egypt felt that they had to guard against such a clause being exploited for political ends to
interfere in the internal affairs of states.18
The various Islamic human rights schemes or declarations—such as the Universal Islamic
Declaration of Human Rights (1981) are understandably vague or evasive on the issue of the freedom
to change one’s religion, since Islam itself clearly forbids apostasy and punishes it with death. As
Anne Elizabeth Mayer says, “The lack of support for the principle of freedom of religion in the
Islamic human rights schemes is one of the factors that most sharply distinguishes them from the
International Bill of Human Rights, which treats freedom of religion as an unqualified right. The
[Muslim] authors’ unwillingness to repudiate the rule that a person should be executed over a
question of religious belief reveals the enormous gap that exists between their mentalities and the
modern philosophy of human rights.”19 Islamic human rights schemes are clearly not universal since
they introduce a specifically Islamic religious criterion into the political sphere, whereas the UDHR
of 1948 places human rights in an entirely secular and universalist framework. The Islamic human
rights schemes severely restrict and qualify the rights of individuals, particularly women, non-
Muslims, and those, such as apostates, who do not accept Islamic religious orthodoxy.
As for the constitutions of various Muslim countries, many do guarantee freedom of belief
(Egypt, 1971; Syria, 1973; Jordan, 1952), some talk of freedom of conscience (Algeria, 1989), and
some of freedom of thought and opinion (Mauritania, 1991). Islamic countries, with two exceptions,
do not address the issue of apostasy in their penal codes: the two exceptions are Sudan and
Mauritania. In the Sudanese Penal Code of 1991, article 126.2, we read, “Whoever is guilty of
apostasy is invited to repent over a period to be determined by the tribunal. If he persists in his
apostasy and was not recentlyconverted to Islam, he will be put to death.” The Penal Code of
Mauritania of 1984, article 306 reads, “All Muslims guilty of apostasy, either spoken or by overt
action will be asked to repent during a period of three days. If he does not repent during this period,
he is condemned to death as an apostate, and his belongings confiscated by the State Treasury.” This
applies equally to women. The Moroccan Penal Code seems to only mention those guilty of trying to
subvert the belief of a Muslim or those who try to convert a Muslim to another religion. The
punishment varies between a fine and imprisonment for anything up to three years.20
The absence of any mention of apostasy in some penal codes of Islamic countries of course in
no way implies that a Muslim in the country concerned is free to leave his religion. In reality, the
lacunae in the penal codes are fdled by Islamic law. Mahmud Muhammad Taha was hanged for
apostasy in 1985, even though at the time the Sudanese Penal Code of 1983 did not mention such a
crime.21
In some countries, the term apostate is applied to some who were born non-Muslim but whose
ancestors had the good sense to convert from Islam. The Bahais in Iran in recent years have been
persecuted for just such a reason. Similarly, in Pakistan the Ahmadi community were classed as non-
Muslims and are subjected to all sorts of persecution.
There is some evidence that many Muslim women in Islamic countries would convert from
Islam to escape their lowly position in Muslim societies or to avoid the application of an unfavorable
law, especially Sharia law governing divorce.22 Muslim theologians are well aware of the temptation
of Muslim women to evade the Sharia laws by converting from Islam, and take appropriate measures
are taken. For example, in Kuwait an explanatory memorandum to the text of a law reform says,
“Complaints have shown that the Devil makes the route of apostasy attractive to the Muslim woman
so that she can break a conjugal tie that does not please her. For this reason, it was decided that
apostasy would not lead to the dissolution of the marriage in order to close this dangerous door.”23
The following is just one recent example among many (others are discussed in my book,
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out:

A Somali living in Yemen since 1994, Mohammed Omer Haji converted to Christianity
two years ago and adopted the name “George.” He was imprisoned in January 2000 and
reportedly beaten and threatened for two months by Yemeni security police, who tried to
persuade him to renounce his conversion to Christianity. After he was rearrested in May, he
was formally put on trial in June for apostasy under article 259 of Yemen’s criminal law.Haji’s
release came seven weeks after he was given a court ultimatum to renounce Christianity and
return to Islam or face execution as an apostate. Apostasy is a capital offense under the
Muslim laws of “sharia” enforced in Yemen.
After news of the case broke in the international press, Yemeni authorities halted the
trial proceedings against Haji. He was transferred on July 17 to Aden’s Immigration Jail until
resettlement could be finalized by the UNHCR, under which Haji had formal refugee status.
One of the politicians who tabled a motion in July 2000 in the British House of Commons was
David Atkinson: “Early Day Motion on Mohammed Omer Haji. That this House deplores the
death penalty which has been issued from the Aden Tawahi Court in Yemen for the apostasy of
the Somali national Mohammed Omer Haji unless he recants his Christian faith and states that
he is a Muslim before the judge three times on Wednesday 12th July; deplores that Mr Haji
was held in custody for the sole reason that he held to the Christian faith and was severely
beaten in custody to the point of not being able to walk; considers it a disgrace that UNHCR
officials in Khormaksar stated they were only able to help him if he was a Muslim; and calls
on the British Government and international colleagues to make representations immediately
at the highest level in Yemen to ensure Mr Haji’s swift release and long-term safety and for the
repeal of Yemen’s barbaric apostate laws.”24
 Amnesty International adopted Haji as a prisoner of conscience in an “urgent action” release on
July 11, 2000, concluding that he was “detained solely on account of his religious beliefs.” The
government of New Zealand accepted Haji and his family for emergency resettlement in late July
after negotiations with the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).25
However, charges of apostasy, unbelief, blasphemy, and heresy, whether upheld or not, clearly
go against several articles in the UDHR of 1948, and the legally binding International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] of 1966, to which 147 states are signatories.
General Comment no. 22, adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission at its forty-eighth
session (1993) declares: “Article 18 protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the
right not to profess any religion or belief. The term ‘belief and ‘religion’ are to be broadly
construed.”26
As with my statement to the UN Human Rights Commission delivered by the president of the
International Humanist and Ethical Union, we urge the UN Human Rights Commission to call on all
governments to comply with applicable international human rights instruments like the ICCPR, to
bring their national legislation into accordance with the instruments to which theywere a party, and to
forbid fatwas and sermons preaching violence in the name of God against those holding unorthodox
opinions or those who have left a religion.
 45
APOSTASY, HUMAN RIGHTS,
RELIGION, AND RELIEF—
NEW THREATS TO THE
FREEDOM OF OPINION AND
EXPRESSION
A Concrete Proposal
Shafique Keshavjee

Iwish to thank again the organizations that invited me to participate in this Xroundtable. The
subject is not theoretical and touches the concrete lives of millions of men and women worldwide.
For many years, I have been active as a pastor in the promotion of dialogue between the
Churches and other religions.
Along with others, I direct a center dedicated to this dialogue in Lausanne, Switzerland.1
There, Christians of all denominations—Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants—Jews, Muslims,
Buddhists, Hindus, and Bahais meet in order to build bridges of harmony, and, as our charter says,
“without confusion of doctrine or proselytizing pressure.” By means of the pen, I have also
stimulated this dialogue in many countries all over the world through my novel dedicated to this
subject, The King, the Sage, and the Fool: The Great Tournament of Religions, which has been
translated into more than fifteen languages—from most of the European languages to Chinese and
Japanese, as well as Turkish (but unfortunately not yet into English).2
When we think of apostasy and the dramatic misdeeds that result from it, most glances are
turned toward contemporary Islam. Hardly a day passes without some terrible news reaching us, in
which we learn that a Muslim who has become a Christian, Bahai, Buddhist, or atheist has been
persecuted for his beliefs.3 An important aspect of Islamophobia—a regrettable phenomenon that
must be resisted—is rooted in this lack of respect for the religious convictions of others.

This paper was delivered in French (translated by Robert Spencer, with assistance from David G. Littman) at a panel discussion on “Apostasy. Human Rights, Religion, and
Belief at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, April 7, 2004. at the sixtieth session of the UNCHR.

By way of an introduction to my brief presentation, I must recall that the pressures

experienced by apostates, or what are perceived as such—pressures from strong psychological
constraints to the threat of being killed—are not unique to Islam. The great monotheistic religions of
the past, like new religious movements of today, have been, or can be, extremely violent.
 I was involved in the funeral service of the Order of the Third Personality in the Solar Temple,
which, on October 4, 1994, caused the collective suicide (voluntary or not) of forty-eight of its
members. Who really chose to commit suicide, and who was forced to do so? We will never know. I
have also met many people belonging to sectarian movements such as Scientology or Jehovah’s
Witnesses who have experienced enormous pressure once they wished to leave the movement. It is
well to recall that over the centuries the Christian Churches could—despite all the love taught by
Christ—hate, torture, banish, and put to death apostates and heretics. For the past two centuries,
thank God—and the promotion of respect for human rights, notably in Protestant countries—these
practices virtually disappeared. But it took time! It was only when the Churches gave up using—
generally by constraint and sometimes by choice—their privileged position within the state to
exercise power over consciences that changes took place. This dark picture could have raised hope
that atheist states ought to have and could have been more tolerant. As you know, it did not happen.
During the twentieth century, it was the most antireligious states that caused the death of the greatest
number of people because of questions of conscience and belief.
After a short recapitulation of the etymology of the word apostasy, my presentation will
articulate three points: (1) some religious and social bases of violence toward apostates; (2) some
juridical implications; and (3) a practical proposition.
In the word apostate there are two Greek roots: apo, “far from,” and statos, “that which is
stable, that which is stationary.” The root sta, of Indo-European origin, is found elsewhere among
Latin words as statio, in German as stehen, and in English as stand.
An apostate is one who is separated from that which is stable and sta-tionary. An apostate is
resented as a menace to the stability of a community or a society, as a traitor to the Truth, which is
regarded as stationary and eternal. Through a personal choice differing from the majority, the
apostate seems to put in danger the stability and constancy of the community. That is true for
religious communities, but not only for them. I have had contactswith senior Chinese officials
responsible for religious affairs. I have particularly noticed that they also can perceive unregistered
religious communities—wrongly or rightly—as menaces to the stability of the State.

SOME RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF VIOLENCE TOWARD

APOSTATES

In Judaism, foundational texts justify the killing of apostates.4 In

Deuteronomy 13, one can read, “If your brother … or your friend who is as
your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other
gods,’ . . . you shall not yield to him or listen to him . . . but you shall kill
him” (6, 8-9). The apostate, in this text, is not only one who abandons the
God of his father but one who invites his contemporaries to change gods.
Because of centuries of domination and persecution by Christians and
Muslims, it was not until recently that Jews could have reactivated such
texts. But to my knowledge, no rabbi takes this text literally.
In Christianity, Jesus, who died for all and was raised up by God, has been perceived as the
fulfillment of the Truth announced to the Jews. To abandon that Truth after having known it could
not but be perceived as a disaster. A severe text from the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms, “For if we
sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for
sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries”
(10:26).
Because of such passages in particular, Martin Luther had doubts about the authenticity of this
epistle. Over the centuries, the Church justified physical violence against apostates and heretics as
aimed at saving them from a future “devouring fire” that would come from God. Fortunately, over
the last two centuries, the mentality of the clergy has largely changed. What has facilitated matters is
that there is no text of the Gospels that can be cited to justify physical violence toward, or the killing
of, an apostate.
In Islam, the message of the Qur’an is considered to be the final revela-tion. To leave would be
a “step backward” (ridda). A hadith—a saying attributed to Muhammad—affirms, “Whoever
changes his religion, kill him.” According to a Muslim’s degree of openness, this hadith must be
applied literally or set aside as being of doubtful authenticity. (It pertains to the category ahad; that is
to say, it was reported by only one person.) In Islamic centers, the debate is extremely virulent; we
may hope that the interpretation that respects the liberty of conscience will triumph.
Here is what Mohamed Charfi, emeritus professor on the faculty of juridical sciences of Tunis
and president of the League of Human Rights, wrote,

God is not a fanatic, but the ulema of yesterday, like the ulema and the fun-damentalists
of today, are. … As Sami Abu Sahlieh recalled, the classical Muslim jurists prescribed “in
keeping with their contemporary Jewish and Christian colleagues, the death penalty for all
people who abandoned their religion. In fact, religious freedom for the jurists is a liberty in
one unique sense: the freedom to enter, but a prohibition to leave.”5
The Christians and Jews abandoned that shameful law. Islam has not abandoned it,
because of the theologians and fundamentalists. It is a question of development.
Underdevelopment is not solely economic or social; it is also cultural and intellectual.
Fundamentalism, with us, is the most obvious expression of our underdevelopment.6

Also according to Charfi, the accusation of apostasy is a weapon brandished by the

theologians against every intellectual who proposes a new idea; then they put pressure on the state for
him to be judged. The first to suffer from this are the Muslims themselves—those choosing to revive
the static interpretation of Islam or those choosing to change their religion, or even to become
atheists. That is true in their own countries. But not only there. One well-known pastor in French-
speaking Switzerland, a convert from Islam, escaped from an attack by a member of his own family,
who felt dishonored by his choice. Fortunately, this pastor was not killed, and with the passage of
years he may, while always guarding his Christian faith, be reconciled with them.
The foundations of the accusation of apostasy are religious. However, in these times of
globalization and the acceleration of planetary exchanges, and of the economic, technological, and
financial domination of the West, religion has become a rampart against the loss of identity and a
form of resistance. Amid the fragmentation of our world, the apostate is perceived, wrongly in my
opinion, as a destroyer of the social bond.

SOME LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

There is, as you know, tension between juridical and religious norms.
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states, “Everyone has the
right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his
religion or belief.”
 This clause on “freedom to change his religion” was added at the recommendation of the
representative of Lebanon, a country where many people who were persecuted for having changed
their faith were refugees. In the Canton of Vaud, where I live, I was part of the assembly that wrote a
new constitution. As my contribution, I proposed that there be included an article that stipulated, “All
persons have the right to join the community of their choice or to leave it” (article 16). And that was
fully accepted.
Religious liberty, to be realistic, must be able to include not only the freedom to enter a
community but especially that of being able to leave it.
However, for the partisans of a traditionalist reading of their religion, to leave the community
is a menace to the stability of their faith. It is also a door opened to all the aggressive forms of
missionary activity coming from outsiders. For the right to abandon or change one’s religion to
become effective, it is important to reassure those who hold to the religious tradition in three ways:
first, by emphasizing that one who changes religion is not necessarily an enemy of the common good
—quite to the contrary; second, by stating that the genuine freedom to leave a religious community is
not a sign of weakness, but rather of strength; and third, by declaring that this liberty is not
synonymous with a “religious free market,” in which all forms of militant pros-elytism are accepted.
In the same way that multinational corporations must be regulated by political laws, religious
communities should be subjected to ethical principles. Any abuse of them should be denounced
vehemently.

A CONCRETE PROPOSITION

The special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimina-tion, xenophobia,

and associated intolerance wrote an alarming report about the situation of Muslim and Arab
populations in various areas of the world.7 It notes that Islamophobia tends to spread in the West. In
his report, he suggests that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights create “a center
to monitor the contemporary phenomena of racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.” In our global
society, the phenomenon of conversion from one faith to another will multiply. To avoid violent
reactions and to end situations of increased violence, throughout the world, I suggest, if a suitable
place does not yet exist, that such a center can collect throughout the year testimonies from the entire
world where the act of leaving one’s religion is a source of persecution. This would be a significant
contribution to the reinforcement of human rights, while offering to the victims of flawed justice the
certitude of being heard.
The United Nations has the goal notably to “maintain international peace and security”
(Charter of the United Nations, art. 1, para. 1) and to realize international cooperation in
“encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to
race, sex, language, or religion” (art. 1, para. 3).
The fundamental freedom to change one’s religion is menaced today. The credibility of the
Commission of Human Rights depends on its protection.
 46
APOSTASY, HUMAN RIGHTS,
RELIGION, AND BELIEF—
NEW THREATS TO THE
FREEDOM OF OPINION AND
EXPRESSION
Pakistani Blasphemy Law
Muhammad Younus Shaikh

Muslims are the first victims of Islamism. In a novel and unethical way, Pakistani mullahs
have started abusing the dreadful Islamic blasphemy laws to terrorize liberal and moderate Muslims.
I am a Pakistani doctor, a physiologist, a patriotic and law-abiding citizen, a Muslim by birth. I
trained as a surgeon and worked for some years in the United Kingdom. I gave up my job there in
order to return to Pakistan to serve the people of my own country. I obtained a position as a lecturer
in physiology at the Capital Homeopathic Hospital, Islamabad.
One of my reasons for returning to Pakistan was to campaign for human rights and civil
liberties in Pakistan: to work for the Pakistan-India peace movement; to struggle for liberalism,
secularism, and humanism; and to counter the forces of religious extremism and fundamentalism.

MY TRIAL

If you are accused of blasphemy in Pakistan, you will usually be denied bail and held in custody
until trial. If found guilty, you will face a mandatory death sentence. My trial was held in a series of
sessions throughout the summer of 2001. Although neither a body of crime was established nor did
the evidence prove any occurrence of blasphemy, I was pronounced guilty on August 18, 2001, fined
one hundred thousand rupees, and sentenced to death—nearly nine months after my arrest.

This paper was delivered (in large part over a twenty-minute span) at a panel discussion on “Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion, and Belief at the Palais des Nations, Geneva.
April 7. 2(XM, at the sixtieth session of the UNCHR. Sponsored by the Association of World Citizens, the Association for World Education, and the International Humanist and
Ethical Union.
 The specific charge on which I was found guilty was “Insulting the Prophet.” To many
European observers it might seem illogical that a death sentence could be pronounced without
proving the incidence or establishing the body of crime; however, that is the way blasphemy cases
are adjudicated upon in the very Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
For the next two years, I was held in solitary confinement in a very small death cell in the
Central Jail, Rawalpindi, a dark and dirty death cell with unbearable, stinking, and distasteful food.
There was no facility for walking or exercise, and I was without books, newspapers, medication, or
treatment for my worsening diabetes. I remained constantly under threat of murder by Islamic
fundamentalist inmates in jail for murder and gang rape, as well as by some religiously minded
prison warders. I appealed. My appeal was heard over several sessions lasting fifteen long months
before the two judges managed to disagree over their verdict; one Islamic-minded judge rejected the
appeal without giving any legal grounds for doing so, while the other, legal-minded judge stated that
the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt and that the witnesses were
neither trustworthy nor reliable. The referee High Court judge took another year and sent the case for
retrial.
The retrial was held in November 2003 at the Court of the Session in Islamabad. Because of
threats and harassment no lawyer was ready to plead my case, and I was forced to defend myself for
my survival, which I did after secretly smuggling law books into my death cell. At the retrial the
courtroom was full of mullahs and the Pakistani Taliban. The two mullah advocates and the public
prosecutor tried to exploit the religious feelings of the court, but I confined my defense to legal
arguments. I was inspired by the defense speech of Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.
Fortunately, the outcome in my case was different. The judge accepted my legal arguments and found
the charges against me baseless. My accusers, the two mullahs and the Islamist students, had lied
under oath. I was acquitted on November 21, 2003.

MY ORDEAL

I feel I have been a victim of Islamic mullah terrorism through the abuse of the state apparatus
and the civil law. My first trial was a show trial, almostreminiscent of the trials and tortures of the
infamous Spanish Inquisition and the trials and burning of European women as witches. After my
acquittal and release, I wanted to stay in my country with my family and friends, but instead I found
myself under a. fatwa by the same mullahs that I should be killed. I had to say goodbye to my loved
ones and flee to Europe for my safety.
I am very thankful to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the various humanist
organizations and individual humanists, and all of the other human rights organizations who
campaigned on my behalf: Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights USA, the Jubilee
Campaign USA, the many honorable senators and congressmen from the United States, and the UK
members of Parliament. I also want to thank the Swiss and US embassies in Islamabad and the Swiss
government for their ceaseless support for justice and equity in my case. I am very grateful to the
Swiss government for granting me refugee status in Switzerland.

WHAT IS BLASPHEMY?

What, then, constitutes blasphemy? Unfortunately the Pakistan Penal Code provides little
guidance. The law is vague and the term is undefined. In view of the mandatory death penalty for the
offense, this would seem to be an important oversight. The law is a relic of 1860 British Colonial
criminal law but was modified in 1926 again under the British, then in 1986 by General Zita to make
it more strictly in accordance with the Sharia, and finally in 1992 when the death penalty was made
mandatory—this under the democratically elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Whereas the original
law had been even-handed and applied equally to all religions, under the revised law the death
penalty applies only to blasphemy against Islam. More than a hundred victims are currently in jail
awaiting trial, fifteen of whom face the death penalty under section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal
Code. Mercifully, none have so far been executed.
In another famous case, a Christian, Ayub Masih, was condemned to death for blasphemy on
the unsupported evidence of a neighbor, Muhammad Akram, who was involved with him in a land
dispute and who was awarded property belonging to the accused after the case was decided. The
verdict and the sentence were upheld by the Lahore High Court on July 25, 2001. However, after
seven long years of unnecessary incarceration in a death cell, he was found innocent and acquitted by
the Supreme Court.
Despite there successes in obtaining convictions, the fundamentalists have not been willing to
leave judgment and execution to the courts. Several people have been murdered by Islamic zealots
after having been acquitted by the courts. Others accused of blasphemy have been murdered in jail
while awaiting trial, and even a High Court judge was murdered after finding one prisoner not guilty.

PAKISTAN’S SHAME

The blasphemy law has brought shame on Pakistan. The law itself is unjust and inequitable, the
offense it treats is poorly defined and open to abuse, and its operation has been widely misused and
abused. Since the introduction of Sharia law in Pakistan in 1986, the blasphemy law has been used on
hundreds of occasions by fundamentalists to silence moderate opponents, to intimidate non-Muslims,
and to settle personal scores.
While praising President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his liberal and secular steps, and for his
courageous fight against Islamic jihadi terrorism, I appeal to him to curb this menace of Islamic
mullah terrorism: the abuse of Pakistani Islamic blasphemy laws. I call upon the Commission on
Human Rights to press the government of Pakistan
1. To urgently review the cases of all those currently charged or convicted of blasphemy and
awaiting execution, including an urgent judicial review of all cases currently subjudice;
2. To immediately review the application of the blasphemy law and to introduce safeguards
against its abuse;
3. To replace the blasphemy law by laws which respect the human rights of individuals in
conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Pakistan is a
signatory; and finally,
4. To compensate the victims of these unjust and iniquitous laws and to punish the false
accusers and untruthful witnesses.
 47
APOSTASY, HUMAN RIGHTS,
RELIGION, AND RELIEF—
Art NEW THREATS TO THE
FREEDOM OF OPINION AND
EXPRESSION
The Problem of Apostasy
in an Islamic-Christian
Context
Paul Cook

Iam very pleased to be here as part of the panel. I would like to take this opportunity to share
with you some of the work Barnabas Fund has been doing over the past fifteen months through our
campaign on the issue of apostasy.
In the nine years since Barnabas Fund was established, our work has brought us into direct
contact with hundreds of Muslims who have adopted another belief from many different countries. It
is tragic to relate that of these hundreds, fewer than ten informed us that their families recognized and
respected their decision to adopt another belief and have been supportive and understanding. The rest
have faced widespread hostility and aggression from their families and communities. Some have
endured imprisonment, death threats, torture, and beatings because of their decision. A few have been
executed; others have died in prison or disappeared.
It is astonishing that at the beginning of the twenty-first century such abuses are still being
perpetrated against human beings merely for exercising such a basic human right as freedom of
belief. More astonishing still is the silence that surrounds this issue.

This paper was delivered al a panel discussion on ‘“Apostasy. Human Rights. Religion, and Belief at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. April 7, 2004, at the sixtieth session of
the UNCHR. Sponsored by the Association of World Citizens, the Association for World Education, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

BARNABAS FUND’S APOSTASY CAMPAIGN

 In January 2003 Barnabas Fund launched a major international campaign designed to break this
silence and draw attention to the crucial issue of apostasy and the suffering of Muslims who adopt
another belief. What we are calling for is no more than an affirmation of the basic human right to
“change” one’s religion as affirmed in article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We
believe that a Muslim (or any other person) who chooses to change his belief (whether to
Christianity, Buddhism, atheism, or any other faith or belief) should be free to do so without having
to face violence, intimidation, and persecution as a result.
Prejudice and persecution is directed against “apostates” in many religious traditions. In
Eritrea today many Orthodox Christians who choose to adopt certain forms of Evanglical
Protestantism face persecution. In India Hindus adopting Buddhism or Christianity often similarly
suffer. In Sri Lanka those who convert from Buddhism to another belief may be persecuted.
However, it is Muslims choosing to adopt another belief who face the greatest suffering in the world
today.
The prejudice and persecution with which apostates are viewed in most traditional Muslim
societies does not occur in a vacuum. It is a direct result of traditional teachings found in Islamic law
(Sharia) that adult Muslim men who choose to adopt any other belief and refuse to return to Islam
should be put to death. Some schools of Sharia teach that this should be applied to women as well.
Other punishments prescribed by the Sharia include the annulment of marriage, the removal of
children, and the loss of all property and inheritance rights. This tradition is still upheld and taught by
most Muslim religious leaders around the world today.
This is a tradition that affects not only individuals who choose to adopt another faith but also
whole communities, such as the Ahmadis in Pakistan and the Bahais in Iran. The accusation of
apostasy is also used by extremists to victimize many liberal and secular Muslim academics and
journalists, including many prominent human rights defenders. In Sudan in January 1985 Mahmoud
Muhammad Taha, a renowned Islamic scholar, liberal, and reformer, was executed for apostasy for
publishing a leaflet calling for the reform of Islamic law to make it more just and humane.
As long as this tradition goes unchallenged by Muslim leaders and other religious and political
figureheads, this persecution will continue. Only when more reformist and moderate interpretations
that fit better with the religious freedoms enshrined in the International Bill of Rights become widely
accepted as normative will this persecution cease.
To this end over seventy-six thousand people from more than thirty different countries have
now signed an international petition launched by Barnabas Fund in July 2003. The petition calls upon
“Muslim religious leaders and Islamic organizations to make a public call for a reform or
reinterpreta-tion of Shari’ah, so that Muslims who change their faith will not have to face
intimidation, harassment, persecution or death as a result.” The petition also urges the Commission
on Human Rights, Western governments, and other international institutions to “raise this as a matter
of urgency with Muslim leaders and organizations, and to exercise their influence by speaking out in
support of this call.”
This is not a matter of concern for Christians only. The petition has also been signed by
peoples of other religious and nonreligious backgrounds. This includes members of the Muslim
community in Britain, several of whom have signed even in the face of obvious intimidation by
others in the community. Noted signatories of the petition include several bishops and a former
president of Trinidad and Tobago.
The campaign has also been supported in Britain’s House of Commons, where ninety-two
MPs last year signed an Early Day Motion. The motion states “[t]hat this house supports liberal
Muslims, human rights campaigners and others who are calling for an end to cruel traditional
punishments for apostasy.”
Also in conjunction with the campaign, last July Barnabas Fund made an appeal to the high
commissioner for human rights, the chairman of the Human Rights Committee, and the chairpersons
of the commission and the subcommission. We asked them to give the issue of apostasy within the
Islamic tradition “the serious attention that it deserves under the international covenants.” We urged
them to “lend their support to the voice of liberal Muslims, human rights campaigners and British
parliamentarians who are speaking out on behalf of Muslims who have adopted another belief.”
Supporters of the campaign have been writing literally hundreds of letters to Muslim leaders,
parliamentarians, heads of state, public figures, and religious leaders around the world. They have
been alerting them to the suffering of Muslims who adopt another belief and urging them to make
public calls for a reform of Sharia and an end to the death sentence and other cruel penalties.
Among British MPs alone, lobbying has raised the level of awareness of this issue
significantly over the past year. In January 2003 many MPs were expressing astonishment and
admitting that they had never heard of the persecution of apostates from Islam before. By October
2003 the British Foreignand Commonwealth Office said apostasy was one of the top seven human
rights issues on which they were most lobbied.
The campaign has also received some coverage in the media, with interviews, articles, letters
and debates appearing on the BBC, on the Times of London, and Reuters news agency stories, among
others.

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Yet despite all of this activity and attention the silence of political and reli-gious leaders remains
deafening. Despite receiving hundreds of letters the Muslim Council of Britain has failed to issue any
kind of reply or make any statement on this issue. The offices of British prime minister Tony Blair
and Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, have both produced very noncommittal replies despite
being lobbied by hundreds of people. Christian leaders have also largely failed to speak out on this
issue, despite being extensively lobbied. Many privately acknowledge the terrible suffering of
apostates and admit to the gravity of the situation but are unprepared to speak out publicly.
During the past fifteen months, while the campaign has been running, Muslims who have
adopted another belief have continued to suffer. On February 17, 2003, Ziwar Muhammad Ismail was
shot dead in Zakho, in the Kurdish-authority area of North Iraq. His killer later admitted while in
police custody that he had murdered Ziwar because he had converted to Christianity.
In the same month that Ziwar was killed, an extremist group in Somalia issued a press release
calling for Somali Christians to be executed as apostates in accordance with Islamic law.
In October 2003 police in Alexandria, Egypt, launched a series of raids against twenty-two
converts and their supporters living in the city under false identities in order to avoid persecution.
They faced interrogation, beatings, torture, and abuse during their time in police custody. They are
now released on bail with charges pending.

REITERATING THE CALL

Distinguished representatives, it is good to have the opportunity this panel provides to reiterate
once more at the United Nations the call for political and Muslim religious leaders to issue prominent
public statements calling for a reform or reinterpretation of Sharia. We believe that at the beginning
of thetwenty-first century no religion (be it Islam, Christianity, or any other) can justify the
intimidation, harassment, and persecution of individuals simply for exercising their freedom of
belief.
It is a tragic day when no political or religious leader can be found who is prepared to simply
publicly affirm the most basic of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
It is our hope, and I am sure the hope of the rest of the panel, that this meeting will help to
draw more much-needed attention to the persecution of Muslims and other persons who adopt
another belief. It is also our hope that the meeting will encourage the members of the commission
and other UN representatives to respond with a public condemnation of such persecution. Finally, it
is our hope that the commission will issue a similar public encouragement to Muslim religious
leaders to publicly condemn the persecution of converts and to denounce it as something unworthy of
the Islamic faith.
 48
UTOPIA: A “UNITED
STATES OF ABRAHAM”
David G. Littman

I wish to thank Dr. Samuel Rubenson for suggesting, and Prof. Bo Holm-berg for accepting,
that I address you today on the Middle East. To be more precise: on the origins and development of
an “idea”—an idea that may be considered by many, not excluding myself, a “utopia”—and the
relationship of that idea to the present Middle East peace process, within a context of regional
reconciliation.
In this context, the words of seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke are worth
recalling: “All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest,
under temptation to it.”1
Such temptations to propose Utopian ideas on the Middle East can easily turn out to be pipe
dreams, yet the example of Europe comes to mind. Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Aristide Briand,
Winston Churchill, Gustav Stresemann, Maurice Schuman, and Jean Monnet—to name but six key
figures—were the prophets for thirty years, while the hermits hibernated, hypnotized by the
syndrome of gloom and doom that gripped Europe in the aftermath of the two world wars.
Only last month [October 1994] a centenary commemoration took place in Vienna to honor
Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, who first launched the pan-European “idea” in 1922. Today, thirty years
after Winston Churchill’s death, I would like to preface my statement on the Middle East by quoting
from his 1930 article in the London Saturday Evening Post, in which he wrote of that nascent pan-
European “idea” with his characteristic imagery. It may serve as a fitting introduction to my address:

This chapter was originally delivered by David G. Littman as an address to the Society for Semitic Studies (Semitiska Sallskapet), Department of Middle Eastern Languages,
Lund University, Sweden, on November 23, 1994.

Ideas are born as sparks fly upward. They die from their own weakness; they are whirled
away by the wind; they are lost in the smoke; they vanish in the darkness of the night.
Someone throws on another log of trouble and effort, and fresh myriads of sparks stream
ineffectively into the air. Men have always tended these fires, casting into them the fruits of
their toil— indeed, all they can spare after keeping body and soul together. Sometimes, at rare
intervals, something exciting results from their activities. Among innumerable sparks that
flash and fade away, there now and again gleams one that lights up not only the immediate
scene, but the whole world. What is it that lights up not only the immediate scene but the
whole world? What is it that distinguishes the fortunes of one of these potent incendiary or
explosive ideas from the endless procession of its fellows? It is always something very simple
and—once the surroundings are illuminated— painfully obvious. In fact we may say that the
power and vitality of an idea result from a spontaneous recognition of the obvious.2
 Sixteen years later, on September 19, 1946, no longer prime minister, Churchill made his
famous appeal at the University of Zurich for a future “United States of Europe.” That dream has
taken nearly half a century to take form, and his vision of a united Europe has yet to come to full
fruition, although more and more candidates are pressing at the gates. Sweden’s recent yes vote and
Finland’s ratification have opened the Nordic road to Europe, with Norway’s decision awaited next
week [which turned out negative]. It should be remembered that, at the time when Churchill made his
speech, the very idea that France and Germany should together begin the building of a new Europe
seemed not only Utopian but even totally unrealistic to most Europeans. Barely a year after the
World War II, the very name of Germany was still anathema as a result of the Nazi plague that had
dragged the world into the depths of hell, snuffing out the lives of over forty million and leaving half
of Europe enslaved by an equally ruthless Communist tyranny that has only recently been relegated
to the dustbin of history.
This is a subject that deserves more time than is available to me here. It raises issues about
what fundamental changes in a society are needed for democracy to triumph. Notwithstanding the
admirable work accomplished by the Russian organization Memorial, founded by Andrei Sakharov,
too little attention has been paid to “memory” or “atonement,” let alone to “redemption,” for decades
of countless crimes against humanity—against ecology too!—in the name of an ideological system
that systematicallyreduced men and women to robots while callously destroying nature itself in the
name of an allegedly socialist ideal. Recently, Russian historian Dmitry A. Volkogonov indicated a
figure of 21.5 million victims of Stalinist purges between 1929 and 1953, and Aleksandr S. Yakovlev,
the father of glasnost, referred to the 1917 Bolshevik coup d’etat as the most tragic event in Russia’s
thousand-year-old history.

I came across Churchill’s 1946 speech in autumn 1989 and, as an NGO representative to the
United Nations in Geneva, was inspired to adapt it, with the essential aid of sustained metaphor, to
the Israel-Jordan-Palestinian predicament. I hoped that his memorable peace framework, proposed at
a tragic period of Europe’s history, might yet serve not only as an inspiration, but as a model for
those who have no alternative other than to find a peaceful solution to generations of conflict. By
chance, over five hundred delegates—including ambassadors and heads of delegations—were present
at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on March 6, 1990, awaiting the voting procedure on resolutions
of the forty-sixth session of the Commission on Human Rights, when the chairman gave me the floor
as the last speaker of the six-week session. That [World Union for Progressive Judaism] statement
was printed verbatim soon after and published on Christmas Eve 1990 in Al-Fajr, the Palestinian
Jerusalem English weekly, as a contribution to Middle East dialogue—and a month later, during the
Gulf War, it again appeared in an abridged French version in La Tribune de Geneve, just prior to the
opening of the 1991 UN Commission on Human Rights.3
With Dr. Rubenson’s encouragement, I have welcomed the opportunity to repeat here in Lund
that Churchill-inspired Middle East “dream,” following which I shall explain its antecedents and in
what manner the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) [unnumbered note, pp. 467-68]
has endeavored to propagate that “idea” in UN circles and elsewhere—as well as the chances of its
fulfillment, if not in the remaining five years of this century, perhaps by the beginning of the twenty-
first century.

I wish to speak today about the tragedy of the Middle East. This noble ancient region is
the fountain of the three Abrahamitic faiths. It is the spiritual origin of more than half of
humanity. If the Middle East were united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there
would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which its tens of millions of
people would enjoy. Yet it is within the Middle East that have sprung frightful nationalist and
religious quarrels, which have wrecked the peace and marred the prospects of that vast area of
the world.
 Yet all the while there is a remedy, which, if it were generally and spontaneously
adopted by the great majority of people in these lands, would as if by a miracle transform the
whole scene, and would in due time make all of the Middle East, or the greater part of it, as
free and as happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to create a
“Family of Abraham,” or “Family of Ibrahim”—dependent on one’s pro-nunciation of that
revered personage—and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in
safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of “United States of Abraham.” The process is
simple. All that is needed is the resolve of millions of men and women to do right instead of
wrong and to gain as their reward blessing instead of cursing.
And why should a future United States of the Middle East not take its rightful place
with other great groupings and help to shape the onward destinies of man? In order that this
should be accomplished, there must be an act of faith in which millions of men and women,
speaking their diverse lan-guages, must consciously take part. With regard to the past, there
must be what that great nineteenth century British statesman. William Gladstone, called “A
blessed act of oblivion.” All must turn their backs upon the horrors of the past. All must look
to the future. One cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds
and revenges which have sprung from all the various injuries of the past. If the Middle East is
to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in
the concept of a “Family of Abraham”—a “Family of Ibrahim”—and this act of oblivion
against all the crimes and follies of the past.
Can the peoples of the Middle East rise to the height of these resolves of the soul and of
the instincts of the spirit of man? If they can, the wrongs and injuries which have been
inflicted will have been washed away on all sides by the miseries which have been endured. Is
there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is
unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy and freedom. The peoples have only to will it, and all
will achieve their hearts desire.
I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the creation of
this Family of Abraham—or Ibrahim—must be a partnership between Israel, Jordan and the
Palestinians within that geographical area designated as “Palestine” in the original 1922
League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. The structure of a future United States of Abraham,
if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single State less
important. Small Nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by the
contribution to the common cause. The ancient Peoples, Nations and States of the Middle East,
freely joined together for mutual convenience in a Federal—or other—system, might
eventually take their individual places within this unifying concept, or condominium. I shall
not try to make a detailed programme for tens of millions of peopleswho want to be happy and
free, prosperous and safe. If this is their wish, if this is the wish of so many peoples living in
so many lands—comprising the very cradle of the most ancient civilisations of the Near East
—they have only to say so, and means can certainly be found, and machinery erected, to carry
that wish to full fruition.
But I must give a warning: time may be short. At present there is a breathing-space. The
cannons have ceased firing. There is a lull in the fighting, but the dangers have not yet
stopped. If there is to be a United States of Abraham, or whatever name it may take, work on
this concept must begin now.
I must now sum up. Under and within the world concept of the United Nations
Organisation, one must create the Family of the Middle East in a regional structure called, it
may be, the United States of Abraham, and the first practical step would be to form a Council
of Abraham. If at first all the Peoples, Nations and States of the Middle East are not willing or
able to join the Union, one must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will
and those who can. The salvation of all the peoples in the Middle East must be established on
 solid foundations. In all this urgent work, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians must take the lead
together. The United Nations Organisation, the European Community, the British
Commonwealth of Nations, America and Russia—for then indeed all would be well—must be
the friends and sponsors of the new Community and must champion its right to live and shine.
Therefore I say to you: Let Abraham, let Ibrahim arise!
Winston Churchill’s vision of Europe has taken nearly half a century to become reality.
May Arab and Israeli political leaders and intellectuals—and also the representatives of all the
region’s minorities—act with determination, so that peace and reconciliation will come at last
to the Middle East, in an upsurge of enthusiasm. If this should be the people’s desire, surely
wise leaders would wish to achieve, within the next decade, genuine peace and reconciliation
(sulh in Arabk/shalom in Hebrew). Was it not written in the prophetic biblical Book of Joel
(2:28), “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” May the
dialogue begin now—

And, I then added, “perhaps even here at this Commission!”

Since making this proposal at the United Nations nearly five years ago, I have became more and
more aware that other persons and groups have had similar “ideas” and “dreams” over the past
decades, sometimes federalist, sometimes confederalist, sometimes far-flung Utopias or visions. But
then even Churchill himself did not believe that Great Britain would necessarily restrict its
participation to Europe. He always spoke of three overlapping circles: Britain and its
Commonwealth, the United States, and the future United States of Europe.
The term United States of Abraham, however, was new; it was again used last December for
the title of a long article by British historian Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer, in which
he assessed the potential global benefits that could flow from a secure Middle East peace. He pointed
out that Col. T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) first suggested that “the Jews might act as a
‘leaven’ for the whole Arab world, a leaven necessary, in his view, for the Arab world to take full
advantage from the emerging nationalism and economic advances of the 20th century.” He pointed
out that Lawrence’s idea contributed to both the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement and the Feisal-
Frankfurter Correspondence of January 1919. That agreement was signed at Akaba, where in June of
this year, seventy-five years later, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan
signed their own historical breakthrough in Israel-Jordan relations.
Let me quote more fully from that article by Gilbert, published on a whole page of the weekly
London Jewish Chronicle of December 31, 1993:

Lawrence wanted the Arabs, whose national cause he had espoused, to be able to benefit
from the European experience and Middle East aspirations of the Jews. The vision of a federal
Middle East, in which a vibrant Jewish state would form an integral and constructive part, was
put forward by Churchill in April 1945, when he met the Saudi Arabian ruler, Ibn Saud, at the
Fayyum oasis in Egypt. It has been revived several times since, Abba Eban being one of its
earliest advocates. Today, the work of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and their negotiations
with the PLO, brings it closer to reality, despite the momentary setbacks that give such cause
for concern. … In 1946, in Zurich, Churchill launched his United States of Europe concept. In
March 1990, a year and a half before the Madrid conference, David Littman, |WUPJ]
representative in Geneva, read out Churchill’s speech [at the UNCHR] as a model for a
“United States of Abraham,” whose kernel would be a partnership to be worked out freely
among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.4

A few days after that article was published, Joseph Abileah, an Austrian-born musician, died
in Haifa, aged eighty. It was he who founded a movement called the Middle East Confederation in
1972, while Ibrahim Siman served as chairman; Dr. Hugh Schonfield was a cosponsor; and Sir
Yehudi Menuhim a longtime supporter. At that time I had not related to such ideas, although three
years earlier the Journal de Geneve highlighted, on its international page, a long letter in which I had
proposed a future Israelo-Palestinian economic union (or Zollverein).5 For those interested in a
comprehensive study of federalist research, I would recommend the book by Daniel J. Elazar, Two
Peoples—One Land: Federal Solutions for Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan. Another thought-
provoking publication with original suggestions is Palestinians between Israel and Jordan: Squaring
the Triangle, by Raphael Israeli; and from a Palestinian viewpoint, there is Emile A. Nakhleh’s
article, “Palestinians and Israelis: Options for Coexistence,” in the Journal of Palestinian Studies.6
So many “ideas,” from here and there, those logs of trouble and effort, are starting to gleam in
the Middle East’s fiery firmament, now that the surroundings have been sufficiently illuminated by
so many dramatic events since the cataclysmic Gulf War. Yet the fundamental question remains—to
borrow again that vibrant image from Churchill’s 1930 article: will the power and the vitality of such
ideas take root, now that there appears to be a spontaneous recognition of the obvious?
The position of IFOR on the Middle East issue was subsequently set out in numerous
statements and in a joint article by IFOR’s representatives to the United Nations in Geneva, Rene
Wadlow and myself, under the title “A Time for Every Purpose under Heaven: The Peace Process
and New Forms of Regional Integration.” Headlined by Al-Fajr in Jerusalem on May 31, 1993, at a
crucial period in the Middle East negotiations, it was widely distributed in June to Israeli and
Palestinian leaders in Israel and to hundreds of delegates at the Vienna World Conference on Human
Rights. An updated version of this article was published in the September 1993 issue of the journal of
the Vienna-based International Institute for Peace. On September 13, 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin movingly recited at length that same timeless passage from the book of Ecclesiastes in his
memorable White House speech, when the river of time stood still, as he announced: “The time for
peace has come!”
In the context of a future confederation, comprising Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians, it
might be useful to circulate for those interested—as was done at the United Nations in Geneva on
several occasions—IFOR’s press release of February 2, 1993, and the above-mentioned two articles,
which contain the precise declarations made on this subject by Prime Minister Rabin, the Palestinian
spokesman Faisel Husseini, and King Hassan II of Morocco, who—in an interview published in Le
Monde on September 2, 1992—spoke of “[that idea for an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian
Confederation and its positive aspects for peace in that region of the world, and of] that dream of a
multi-religious and multi-racial peace which would be an extraordinary thing for all the sons of
Abraham.” To this may be added [the words of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the Knesset Foreign
Affairs and Defence Commission on September 22, 1992: “I place great importance on the transitory
period and on the intermediate agreements with the Palestinians. But I do not exclude the possibility
of a union with them which would guarantee Israel’s security and its right to develop within the
framework of a confeder-ation or a federation between us, the Palestinians and Jordan” (Jerusalem
Post, September 23, 1992)]; foreign minister Shimon Peres’s words ten weeks before the Oslo
breakthrough was announced in August 1993: “I suggest the establishment of an Israelo-Palestinian-
Jordanian Confederation”;7 and King Hussein of Jordan’s moving declaration in his White House
speech of July 25, 1994: “For many, many years and with every prayer I have asked God Almighty to
help me be a part of forging peace between the children of Abraham.” Three months later, on signing
the Israel-Jordan peace treaty with Yitzhak Rabin, the king of Jordan was more emphatic: “This is an
honorable peace, a balanced peace, a peace that will last because from the first instance it was our
determination to make it so.” To which Prime Minister Rabin replied, “I believe this is the most
beautiful act, to end not the state of war, but to establish the structure of peace to build the relations
of peace.” He added his hopes that Israel’s treaty with Jordan, like the September 1993 interim
agreement with the Palestinians, would be a model for other Arab neighbors.
 This is indeed the crux of the matter. We believe that there must be a wide range of
possibilities for new forms of regional integration, which should include regional security, individual
security, economic cooperation and development, and a spirit of mutual acceptance. Regional
security will require conventional arms control (including, eventually, chemical and nuclear
weapons), military confidence-building measures along the lines developed in the CSCE process by
the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and transparency in arms production, sales, and purchases. Regional
security will also require a more balanced relation between Syria and Lebanon, whose independence
should be guaranteed after the withdrawal of all foreign troops from its soil, linked to a broad
economic and social integration between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the future Palestinian
entity or state. Any Israeli withdrawal from the Golan plateau is only possible in a spirit of mutual
confidence, backed by solid military guarantees that could include an American military presence, as
has existed in the Sinai over the past dozen years. Syria is the key to regional peace, and that key is in
the hands of President Hafez al-Assad, who assumed power over twenty years ago and hassince ruled
the country with an iron fist but is ailing and still undecided. This present uncertainty
notwithstanding, the momentum of the peace process has attracted other Arab countries further
afield; Morocco and Tunisia have already taken giant steps along the road to reconciliation, and some
of the smaller Gulf states too have been encouraged to board the “‘Orient Express.”
Economic cooperation got off to an encouraging start during the Middle East and North Africa
Economic Summit held in Casablanca last month, sponsored by Morocco, the Council on Foreign
Relations, and the World Economic Forum, based in Geneva. Symbolic contacts were conspicuous
between Israelis and Arabs, and the most ambitious of the proposed regional agencies was a Middle
East Development Bank. Many reports were submitted, the most grandiose of which was the World
Bank’s program to develop the Jordan Rift Valley and address some of the region’s critical water
issues. In addition, two regional agencies were proposed in the summit’s declaration: a tourist board
and a chamber of commerce and business council, intended to place the proper emphasis on
promoting the region, disseminating information and transferring expertise, as pointed out by the
World Economic Forum’s president. Agricultural markets and industrial joint ventures were
envisaged in many fields. All this, and more, is intended to cement the peace process with a model of
cooperation throughout the region, where the stakes are enormous should essential economic reforms
succeed alongside mutual trust. There can be future stability in these regions only if the peoples of
the Middle East and North Africa see the economic dividends of peace; and there can be peace only
if they earnestly wish it. Once peace is achieved, the interrelationship of the Mediterranean world and
economic links with the European Union and its neighbors will follow as surely as day follows night,
ushering in a new era for a new millennium.
This brings me to the most critical issues, which will determine whether a new spirit of mutual
acceptance will be allowed to flourish—and which also includes an essential goal: individual security
for all! Without that spirit and that guarantee, the vision of a confederation, leading to an even wider
regional grouping—of the United States of Abraham Utopia, for instance— would remain a barren
dream, a pipe dream, no more, no less!
First, it must be stressed that such visions can only develop if democratic institutions and
respect for human rights become the natural bedrock of civil society in all the countries of the Middle
East. Egypt and Jordan, each in its own manner, have begun that process. The time has come for the
Palestinians to prove that their fledgling efforts to build a new society will provide a beacon of
democracy for other Arab neighbors. An excellent beginning may be foundin the “Draft Document of
Principles of Women’s Rights” released on August 3 in Jerusalem by the Palestinian Women’s
General Union. It declares in its preamble that “human dignity will be safeguarded by means of a
parliamentary democratic system of governance, itself based on freedom of expression and freedom
to form parties.” It calls for the constitution to be “based on the United Nations Conventions, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international documents and conventions
pertaining to political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights, specifically the Conventions on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.”8
Opposed to this enlightened democratic trend in Palestinian society, there is the ugly face of
fundamentalist Islam, whose ideological hatred leads its adepts to terror, murder, massacre, and
genocide, whenever possible—all carried out in the name of Allah! Islamic Jihad and Hamas derive
their inspiration from the Lebanese Hizbollah organization, and all of them are mainly financed by
the Islamic Republic of Iran. They are part and parcel of a Fundamentalist International, which held a
mass meeting in London’s Wembley Stadium on August 7 this year [1994] under the banner of “The
Khilafah Conference” (calling for the return of the caliphate), attended by over eight thousand
supporters from Europe, Africa, the Maghreb, and the Middle East. It was organized by the Hizb ut-
Tahrir, or HUT, the Islamic Liberation Party, Britain’s most active fundamentalist group. Among the
conference’s seven-point declaration, point 4 states, “All agreements with Israel are invalid—not
binding on Muslims. There can be no peace with Israel until the State of Israel is demolished.” The
chairman, at this particular point, added, “Tell that to Arafat and [King] Hussein!” which was greeted
by a thunderous chorus of “Allahu Akbars!” Point 7 declares, “All international organisations, e.g.
the United Nations … the World Bank, etc. are the tools of Imperialists and are rejected by Islam.”
The HUT is the same organization that, earlier in the year, called for the murder of Jews worldwide
in order to accelerate the coming of the Last Day, and then, following outraged protests, provided an
eschatalog-ical explanation for their genocidal appeal.
Distinguished French Arabist Olivier Carre has described and documented in a recent study
the irrefutable fact that virtually all of today’s militant Islamists expound a Judeophobie or
antisemitic doctrine, one of whose major ideological props is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
which they pretend is an authentic Jewish blueprint for world domination—just as Adolf Hitler
maintained seventy years ago in Mein Kampf.9
Concocted nearly one hundred years ago by certain Jesuit circles reacting to the Dreyfus Affair
in France, this apocryphal “document” wasfabricated in Paris at the turn of the century for the use of
the Russian czar’s secret police, the Okhrana. The long history of this forgery was recently analyzed
and documented by French sociologist Pierre-Andre Taguieff in his monumental work, Les
Protocoles des Sages de Sion: Faux et Usages d’un faux.10 In August 1922, over seventy years ago,
the Times of London published three articles from its Istanbul correspondent, Philip Graves, who
demonstrated, irrefutably, the apocryphal nature of The Protocols. The same conclusion resulted from
a 1935 court case in Bern, when a Swiss judge again declared The Protocols to be a forgery that had
caused much harm and might still cause even worse evils.
This dangerous racist myth consists in the belief that a Jewish-led conspiracy seeks to control
the world, a plot that is seen at work in every revolution, in every war, in the workings of all
international organizations, and in the efforts of most transnational associations—since the French
Revolution and even from time immemorial! The Protocols have had a long life because they still
help to reinforce this grotesque belief, which inspired Hitler’s radical antisemitism and helped pave
the way to World War II and all its horrors.
Not surprisingly, the August 18, 1988, covenant of the Palestinian Hamas movement splatters
in these murky waters, declaring with regard to Zionists—and Jews as a whole, “Their plan is
embodied in The Protocols of the Elders ofZion.”11 Article 22 provides evidence to “prove” that the
Jews have been responsible for all evils in the world for centuries—including the founding of the
League of Nations and the United Nations, after World War I and II, for which they were also
responsible.
It is a tragic reflection on our times—sixty years after the 1930s and their apocalyptic
aftermath—that The Protocols are still widely disseminated, having been reprinted over the last
decade in ten European countries: Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland,
and Russia, and also in the United States.
 But it is in the Arab/Islamic world that The Protocols remains a repulsive bestseller of hatred,
running into the hundreds of thousands of copies. As Professor Taguieff points out, Saudi Arabia is
the largest producer and exporter of this gross incitement to hatred,12 which is to be found in the main
centers of the Middle East and the Maghreb. The Islamic Republic of Iran provides the needs of the
Iranian market, spilling over into European languages for Western consumption.
Here in Sweden, The Protocols was one of the main “sources” used by Radio Islam (the
Swedish Islamic Association) to “prove,” inter alia, that there was a Jewish world conspiracy and that
the Holocaust was a Jewish “hoax.”Radio Islam began broadcasting its antisemitic propaganda in
1987 from the vicinity of Stockholm, which led to the longest and most extensive court trial of its
kind two years later, when the attorney general successfully prosecuted Ahmad Rami, a Moroccan
Muslim, for “incitement against an ethnic group.” Here is one quote from Rami’s words, referred to
by the district attorney in the trial: “Jews will conquer the whole world and kill everyone who resists
Jewish world domination and enslave all the other peoples.”13
The evening newspaper Expressen published several articles about Rami in May 1992,
revealing the sources of his financial support, which included Iran. Rami lost his lawsuit against
Expressen in August 1992. The radio was closed down as a result of the October 1992 Stockholm
District Court’s condemnation of David Janzon, who was legally responsible for the radio station and
is a member of the Nazi Swedish National League.
I have here with me this blatant bombshell of religious and racial hatred, which for a century
has incited people to kill and to justify their crimes. It is a 1990 Arabic edition of The Protocols,
published in Beirut by Dar an-Nafais, the “House of Precious Things.”14 It is being sold freely in the
Muslim Bookshop, at 233 Seven Sisters Road, London, which prides itself— as indicated in its
visiting card—on being “London’s Window on Islam,” but is in fact inciting hatred and genocide.
The cover of this second edition shows a white Star of David torn into pieces against a
crimson background. Superimposed is a Jewish menorah, made of barbed wire, which is dripping
blood. The sole illustration shows a spider grasping the globe of the world, with a crude human head,
a typical Sturmer-like caricature of a Jew, with the revealing title Le Peril Juif: Texte integral des
Protocols des Sages d’lsrael, which is then explained in Arabic: “This is the cover of the French
edition, whose title is The Jewish Peril, from which the present translation was made.” In fact, it is
the replica of the 1938 Paris edition, sold extensively in France during the Nazi occupation.
The conclusion of the preface is revealing: “They [the Jews] believe that they are God’s
chosen people, returning to the Promised Land in order to act immorally and foment trouble in
whatever way they can. But the inevitable course of history and the Arab and Muslim awakening, as
well as the Will of Providence, will make [the destruction of] Israel a lesson for all the people of the
world to see. This [destruction] is what we must believe and teach to our children, striving toward its
realisation and asking for success from Allah the Exalted One.”
A savage onslaught of antisemitic, racial hatred has been launched by the evil forces of
extremist obscurantism in their desire to derail the Middle Eastpeace process—and to kill any Jews
indiscriminately! A series of wholesale massacres of innocent civilians, committed by religious
fanatics in their ongoing war against the Jews, killed 96 persons and wounded 230 in central Buenos
Aires on July 18 [1994]. Soon afterward, a Panamanian airliner was blown up, killing 21 persons,
most of whose targeted passengers were also Jews. The two bombings in London on July 26-27
[1994] continued the series of hallmark missions of death and destruction, and a third international
crime was committed in Tel Aviv on October 19, killing a further 23 persons.
I have gone to some length to demonstrate the real problems that must be faced if one is to
overcome the fundamentalists’ negation of any kind of peace or reconciliation with Jews and Israel;
or, for that matter, with the non-Muslim world—for one should never forget that, in traditional
Islamic doctrine, the condition and destiny of Jews and Christians is identical. Now it is the
Christians and the West who are accused of fomenting a conspiracy in order to destroy Islam by
secularization. Here is, indeed, the major flaw, which could wreck the peace and mar the prospects of
all our dreams and visions. It must be squarely faced on all sides if the backlog of suffering and
suspicion is to be overcome. This is a highly dangerous and fateful phenomenon, which—in its
worldwide ramificatications—may possibly determine the future of our globe during the coming
generation.
Although comparisons would be inappropriate, there is also the serious problem of Jewish
religious extremism, which has led to outrageous acts of criminality against Muslims in Israel,
particularly the Hebron massacre of February 25, 1994, which took the lives of twenty-nine
Palestinian men at prayer in the holiest of sanctuaries. The government and people of Israel must find
a legal way to marginalize these Jewish extremists and muzzle the fanatics among them—and that
brings me to the question of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
We believe that strong ties must encompass full guarantees for the rights of minorities within
the geographical area of each party’s sovereignty and the autonomous area. The recent statistics
indicate Israel’s population at about 5,400,000 [in 2004, 6,500,000], of whom nearly 1 million, or 18
percent [in 2004, 1.3 million, or 20 percent], may be categorized as belonging to the country’s non-
Jewish minorities (about 120,000 Christians), whose equal rights as citizens are inscribed in the
country’s basic laws. The West Bank and Gaza combined have a population of just under 2 million
[in 2004, over 3 million], with a dwindling Palestinian Christian minority of scarcely 35.000 (not
counting about 10,000 living in East Jerusalem); and there are about 120,000 Israeli settlers in Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza (aside from thoseliving within the municipal bounderies of Greater Jerusalem).
The Christian minority thus forms 2 percent [in 2004, about 1 percent] of the Palestinian population
in these territories, and the Jewish settlers about 7 percent, outside of the Jerusalem area [in 2004,
about 8 percent]. Surely, all the minority groups throughout these regions should share the same
“rights of minorities” referred to in the above-mentioned women’s draft document. Yasir Arafat is on
record as having supported this point of view on several occasions, according to the well-known
Palestinian journalist Hanna Siniora, with whom I discussed this matter early last August in
Jerusalem.
There is no reason why Jews and Christians cannot live without fear in any Middle East
country, just as Muslims and Christians live peaceably as citizens in Israel. I have no doubt that the
Jordanian Citizen Law no. 6, dated February 4, 1954, will soon be revoked. It states under subsection
3, “Any man will be a Jordanian subject if he is not a Jew.”15 In the future, neither Jordan nor any
other country in the Arab world should be considered judenrein.
One could ask. What is the minimum degree of changed attitudes necessary to provide a
motivation for economic, social, and political integration? Having given the European example as a
model, one should recall that the integration of Western Europe was a slow process, seen by many
leaders as politically—and, to a lesser extent, economically—necessary, when popular attitudes
toward Germany were still colored by the sufferings of World War II. But such examples are perhaps
inappropriate, as Israel is still the only Western-type democracy in the region, and without a general
process of democratization the peace process will simply run out of steam. We need to ask. To what
extent can extremist forces stop the process of integration? To begin with, all institutional forms of
discrimination on both sides must be eliminated, and new forms of cooperation, leading to attitudinal
changes, are essential.
Paradoxically, the question of Jerusalem—the City of Peace—is probably the greatest
stumbling block to all those now genuinely striving toward “a new spirit of mutual acceptance.”
Many proposals have been made on this subject, but I prefer to abstain, remembering Alexander
Pope’s well-known warning: “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Unfortunately, Jerusalem
has been short of its full quota of angels for some time now! Nonetheless, competent historians can
be trusted to put the facts before us, which is what Martin Gilbert has done, in a seminal paper titled
“A Tale Of One City,” published last week (November 14), in the much-read American weekly the
New Republic. As this subject is not scheduled to come up for discussion till 1996, perhaps the “new
spirit” of cooperation that is beckoning on the horizon will coincide with a memorable event—the
trimillennial eelebration of the anointing in Jerusalem of David as king of Israel, a great historic
figure, recognized by Muslims as a prophet, whose psalms are called zabour in Arabic. King David
is, of course, a revered person in the Christian tradition, too. There is a motto that says. The Past Is
Prologue. With that thought in mind, let me conclude with an ancient “dream.”
At such a grand climacteric, when a highway is seriously being planned from Egypt to the
Arab Middle East via Israel, some may turn their eyes to the book of Isaiah, where it is written in
chapter 19, verses 23-25, “In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the
Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the
Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the
midst of the land. Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and
Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.”

NOTES

The “United States of Abraham” statement was first prepared by Littman and delivered at the
UNCHR on March 6, 1990, when he was the main NGO representative (at the UN’s Geneva
headquarters) of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He was greatly encouraged by historian
Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, several times a guest NGO representative
for the WUPJ, speaking on Soviet Jewry at the UNCHR in the late 1980s. From 1992 till 1995,
Littman was a representative of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), whose main
representative was Rene Wadlow. As a team, they have represented the Association for World
Education (AWE) since 1996. A written statement was submitted to the sixtieth session of the
UNCHR by the AWE: 14 Years after the Proposal at the UNCHR of a Future “United States of
Abraham” (1990), E/CN.4/2004/NGO/7, which was posted on the UN Web site in March 2004.
Much of this text is to be found in the 1994 lecture; several passages that have been added above [in
square brackets] have been integrated from this text. (The following paragraph is based on note 5 in
the AWE written statement.)
This documentation was widely circulated in UN, Israeli, and Palestinian circles. Among the
correspondence is one of several letters from Eitan Haber, then Israel advisor to Prime Minister
Rabin, who wrote to Littman on November 5, 1992, “I am writing on behalf of the Prime Minister,
Mr. Yitzhak Rabin, to thank you for your fax dated September 25 and your warm wishes for the New
Year. As you know, peace negotiations are currently taking place, and we are hopeful that an
agreement will be reached to the satisfaction of all citizens of this region, which will enable Jews and
Arabs to live in peace and security. We also have for acknowledgment copy of yourrelease dated 25
August.” (The moving conclusion of Prime Minister Rabin’s historic speech on the White House
lawn is from the same passage in Ecclesiastes 3:1 as in the title published in the Al-Fajr weekly of
May 31, 1993: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”) On
August 17, 1993—a month before the White House ceremony—Israeli foreign minister Shimon
Peres wrote to Littman personally: “Thanks for your fax dated June 30. I have read with great interest
the proposal and article which you sent me earlier. I appreciate your words of support and your offer
of assistance on behalf of your organization, regarding relevant documentation. Best wishes.
Sincerely, Shimon Peres.”
 49.
YASIR’S TERRORIST 49. JESUS
David G. Littman

In the past two thousand years there have been numerous descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth, but
the image of an Arab Jesus—”the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword”—as depicted by
Yasir Arafat at a sideshow of the United Nations in 1983—during a conference on Palestine—was
prob-ably the most grotesque. Present at his first press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva
on September 2, 1983, I heard the words from the UN simultaneous English interpretation of his
spoken Arabic:

We were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to
Rome. He not only occupied Rome, but also won the hearts of the people. We know how to
resist imperialism and occupation. Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian militant fedayin who
carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their Cross.1

There was a full house, but no one expressed either shock or disbelief, nor was there any later
protestation from representatives of the Holy See or the World Council of Churches, even after my
letter quoting his words was published in three Swiss newspapers.2 Yet few could ignore the historic
fact that it was in 135—one hundred years after the death of Jesus—that the Roman emperor Hadrian
reconquered Judea, changing its official name from Judea to Palestina. (“Now when Jesus was born
in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod…” Matthew 2:1.)
It was neither the first nor the last time that Arafat, and others, would steal the symbol of
Jesus, transforming the Jews of Judea into “Arab Pales-tinians,” inhabitants of ancient “Palestine.”
According to Greek Catholic Archbishop Francois Abu Mokh, when Arafat was received by Pope
John Paul II two weeks later, on September 15, 1983, he told the pope that he felt at home in the
Vatican, seat of the successors to St. Peter, “the first Pales-tinian exile.”3 And Arafat repeated his
“Jesus” / “Super-fedayiri” story to columnist Flora Lewis six months later in Paris.4

This article was posted by FrontPage magazine on November 15, 2004 (frontpagemag.com), and is reproduced here with the deletion of about seven lines and an additional
note.

This theme of Jesus and “Palestine” became a constant in the framework of Palestinolatry. …
In 1974—after a formal complaint—Geneva’s authori-ties banned the entry and display of Arafat-
Fatah posters representing Jesus nailed to a Star of David, with the caption “Palestine.”
Two more recent crude examples, from dozens, illustrate this “religious” tactic. In 1997, at Har
Homa, a stony hillside in the Judean desert over-looking East Jerusalem, three Arabs had themselves
bound to crosses at Easter to protest the building of houses on land owned by a Jew. The only protest
about this sacrilegious utilization of the Cross seems to have come from two foreign Christian
residents of Jerusalem, who wrote to express their indignation:

The continued and blasphemous abuse of the symbols of our faith by the followers of
another… . Not only did it denigrate our Lord, it was also an unsubtle attempt to resurrect, in
the minds of viewers worldwide, the libel of deicide which prompted centuries of Jewish
suffering.5

Probably the most heinous insult /”defamation” to both Judaism and Christianity occurred on
December 11, 2000, two weeks before the Christmas Jubilee, ten weeks after the second intifada
began with the savage fedayin attacks on Israeli civilians. A new Palestinian daily, intifada, dis-
played on one-half of its front page a provocative caricature, showing a cru-cified young woman
called “Palestine”—with blood flowing from her pierced hands and feet. A long spear transfixes her
body to the cross, its pro-truding point embossed with a star of David and an American flag at the
shaft end. Blood spurts from her martyred body down upon a trio of huddled, car-icatured Oriental
Jews, who are looking up and grimacing at the crucified young woman, clearly meant to symbolize
Jesus and “Palestine.” On December 14, Intifada went a step further. Alongside a battered cross
appeared a pious prayer to: “My Lord the Betrayed … betrayed by the con-temptible treasonable
kiss,” and ending: “O Son of the Virgin, they cannot overcome you twice.”6
There was no official Church reaction before or after Christmas to this gross defamation of
Christianity—and of hate propaganda against Jews and Judaism—at the close of the Jubilee Year
2000, after the earlier memorable visit of Pope John Paul II to Jerusalem. However, in Geneva, an
ecumenical letter of protest was sent on December 17, 2000, to the Association for World Education
(AWE) by Abbe Alain-Rene Arbez and the Reverend Bernard Buunk. It asked that their
“Appeal”(“Abuse of a Religious Symbol: A Parody of a Prayer, and Crucifixion in Palestine”) be
submitted as a formal com-plaint to the appropriate UN bodies. This was done before Christmas by
AWE, which forwarded the joint letter and the caricatures to the UN special rapporteurs on Religious
Intolerance (Abdelfattah Amor) and on Racism (Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo), asking them to act
under Commission on Human Rights Resolution “Defamation of Religions” and record and con-
demn this blatant travesty. Nothing came of it.7
In October 2002, two years after he approved the bloody second Aqsa intifada, Arafat gave an
interview to a correspondent from the London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat. On Jerusalem, he
was explicit: “They [the Israelis] found not a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was
there, because historically the Temple was not in Palestine.”8
In 1983 at the UN—when he called Jesus “the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword
along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their Cross”—and in 2002—when he reiterated
a refusal to admit that the Temple of Solomon had ever existed in Jerusalem (“in Palestine”)—Arafat
demonstrated a classic example of the pillage of Jewish history in the Land of Israel, and a
denigration of Christianity—both of which he strove to sup-plant in order to assume an Arab-
Palestinian legitimacy. He would have been more convincing if, in building his “Palestine” as a part
of the “Arab Nation, he had researched Arab history, rather than Arabizing and Palestinianizing the
history of the Jewish people. If one is obliged to fabricate a history, and a legitimacy by endeavoring
to pillage others, it demonstrates a historical dearth.
In an Islamic context, isa—the Muslim name of Jesus—is considered to have preached Islam.
He was the awaited Messiah, but did not die on the Cross. In two hadiths, it is alleged that he will
return at the end of time, kill the Evil One (the one-eyed Dajjal), break the cross, and kill pigs (thus
ending Christianity). He will abolish the jizya (poll tax for non-Muslims), and the booty will be
abundant, for there will be no religions except Islam, which will reign supreme.9
Yasir Arafat would certainly have known these hadiths, including the favorite one of Hamas
(his allies since 2000), which concludes article 7 of their genocidal 1988 Constitution—still not
condemned at the United Nations!: “The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the
Jews, killing them, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O
Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’“ And as an epitaph, the slogan of Hamas
(article 8)—which has become the slogan of all the Islamikazes—fits Arafat like a glove: “Allah is its
target, the Prophet is its model, the Qur’an its Constitution; Jihad its path and death for the sake of
Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”10
PART 6.

THE MYTH IN CONTEMPORARY ACADEMIC AND

PDRLIC DISCOURSE

Introduction

David G. Littman and Robert Spencer

Today, despite the mountain of evidence provided by the historical record, A the myth of
Islamic tolerance reigns supreme in the academic and public spheres. Ibn Warraq’s seminal
debunking of the pretensions of Edward Said is particularly important, for Said is a myth in himself.
The influence of his Orientalism is so great today that any questioning of the myth of Islamic tol-
erance brings charges of racism—but as Ibn Warraq demonstrates, once again the reality is quite
different.
This section also includes a number of brief pieces that attempt to cut through the fog of
misinformation and disinformation that currently consti-tutes the public debate about Islam. The
aggressive nature of this disinfor-mation campaign and its bland acceptance by politicians and
opinion makers indicate that patient and thorough spadework must be done today on a large scale in
order to restore truth and sanity to the non-Muslim world’s dialogue and interaction with the House
of Islam. Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, Daniel Pipes, and Mark Durie do some of the necessary work in the
documents included here.
Only when the historical record is acknowledged, along with the current teachings of learned
Islamic jurists about jihad and dhimmitude, can true Islamic reform become possible. Only then
might we see the birth of a gen-uine form of Islamic tolerance.
 50.
EDWARD SAID AND THE SAIDISTS
Or, Third World Intellectual Terrorism
Ibn Warraq

Consider the following observations on the state of affairs in the contem-Vporary Arab world:
The history of the modern Arab world—with all its political failures, its human rights
abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing production, the fact that alone of all
modern peoples, we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development
—is disfigured by a whole series of outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that
the Jews never suffered and that the holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the
Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much—far too much—currency. .. . [T]o support
Roger Garaudy, the French writer con-victed earlier this year on charges of holocaust denial,
in the name of “freedom of opinion” is a silly ruse that discredits us more than we already are
discredited in the world’s eyes for our incompetence, our failure to fight a decent battle, our
radical misunderstanding of history and the world we live in. Why don’t we fight harder for
freedom of opinions in our own soci-eties, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely
exists?1

It takes considerable courage for an Arab to write self-criticism of this kind; indeed, without
the personal pronoun we how many would have guessed that an Arab, let alone Edward Said himself,
had written it? And yet, ironically, what makes self-examination for Arabs and Muslims, and partic-
ularly criticism of Islam in the West, very difficult is the totally pernicious influence of Edward
Said’s Orientalism.2 This work taught an entire genera-tion of Arabs the art of self-pity—”were it not
for the wicked imperialists, racists, and Zionists, we would be great once more”—encouraged the
Islamic fundamentalist generation of the 1980s, and bludgeoned into silence any crit-icism of Islam,
even stopping dead the research of eminent Islamologists who felt their findings might offend
Muslim sensibilities and who dared not risk being labeled “Orientalists.” The aggressive tone of
Orientalism is what I have called “intellectual terrorism,” since it does not seek to convince by
arguments or historical analysis but by spraying charges of racism, imperi-alism, Eurocentrism, from
a moral high ground; anyone who disagrees with Said has insult heaped upon him. The moral high
ground is an essential ele-ment in Said’s tactics; since he believes his position is morally unimpeach-
able, Said obviously thinks it justifies him in using any means possible to defend it, including the
distortion of the views of eminent scholars, inter-preting intellectual and political history in a highly
tendentious way—in short, twisting the truth. But in any case, he does not believe in the “truth.”
 Reprinted with permission from www.seeularislam.org/artieles/debunking.htm.

Said attacks not only the entire discipline of Orientalism, which is devoted to the academic
study of the Orient but which Said accuses of per-petuating negative racial stereotypes, anti-Arab and
anti-Islamic prejudice, and the myth of an unchanging, essential “Orient”; he also accuses Oriental-
ists as a group of complicity with imperial power and holds them responsible for creating the
distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferi-ority, which they achieve by suppressing
the voice of the “Oriental” and by their antihuman tendency to make huge but vague generalizations
about entire populations, which in reality consist of millions of individuals. In other words, much of
what was written about the Orient in general, and Islam and Islamic civilization in particular, was
false. The Orientalists also stand accused of creating the “Other”—the non-European, always
characterized in a negative way—as for example, passive, weak, and in need of civilizing (Western
strength versus Eastern weakness).
But “Orientalism” is also more generally “a style of thought based upon an ontological and
epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident” (p. 2).
Thus European writers of fic-tion, epic, travel, social description, customs, and people are all accused
of “orientalism.” In short, Orientalism is seen “as a Western style for domi-nating, restructuring, and
having authority over the Orient.” Said makes much of the notion of a discourse derived from
Foucault, who argued that supposedly objective and natural structures in society—which, for
example, privilege some and punish others for nonconformity—are in fact “discourses of power.”
The putative “objectivity” of a discipline covered up its real nature; disciplines such as Orientalism
participated in such discourses. Said continues, “(W]ithout examining Orientalism as a discourse one
cannot pos-sibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was
able to manage—even produce—the Orient politically, sociolog-ically, militarily, ideologically,
scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period” (p. 3).

FROM PRETENTIOUSNESS TO MEANINGLESSNESS

There are, as I shall show, several contradictory theses buried in Said’s impenetrable prose,
decked with postmodern jargon (“a universe of repre-sentative discourse,” “Orientalist discourse” [p.
71]) and pretentious lan-guage that often conceals some banal observation, as when Said talks of
“tex-tual attitude “ (pp. 92-93), when all he means is “bookish” or “bookishness.” Tautologies
abound, as in “the freedom of licentious sex” (p. 190). (And some kind editor really ought to explain
to Said the meaning of literally [see pp. 19, 87, 93, 138, 179, 218, 307] and the difference between
scatological and eschatological [see p. 68]).
Or take the comments here:

Thus out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of textual children,
from Chateaubriand’s Itineraire to Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient to Flaubert’s Salammbo, and
in the same tradition. Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians and Richard
Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah. What binds them
together is not only their common background in Oriental legend and experience but also their
learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth. If
paradoxically these creations turned out to be highly stylized simulacra, elaborately wrought
imitations of what a live Orient might be thought to look like, that by no means detracts from
their strength of their imaginative conception or from the strength of European mastery of the
Orient, whose prototypes respectively were Cagliostro. the great European impersonator of the
Orient, and Napoleon, its first modern conqueror, (pp. 89-88)
 What does Said mean by “out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of
textual children” except that these five very varied works were written after 1798? The pretentious
language of “textual children” issuing from the Napeolonic expedition covers up this crushingly
obvious fact. Perhaps there is a profound thesis hidden in the jargon, that these works were somehow
influenced by the Napoleonic expedition, inspired by it, and could not have been written without it.
But no such thesis is offered. This arbitrary group consists of three Frenchmen, two Englishmen, one
work of romantic historical fiction, three travel books, and one detailed study of modern Egyptians.
Francois-Rene Chateaubriand’s Itineraire (1811) describes superbly his visit to the Near East; Voyage
en Orient (1835) is Alphonse de Lamartine’s impressions of Palestine, Syria, and Greece; Salammbo
(1862) is Gustave Flaubert’s novel of ancient Carthage; Edward William Lane’s Manners and
Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) is a fascinating firsthand account of life in Egypt,
particularly Cairo and Luxor, written after several years of residence there (1825-1828; and 1833-
1835); Richard Francis Burton’s account of his audacious visit to Mecca was first published in three
volumes between 1855 and 1856. Lane and Burton both had perfect command of Arabic, classical
and colloquial, while the others did not, and Lane and Burton can be said to have made contributions
to Islamic studies, particularly Lane, but not the three Frenchmen.
What on earth do they have in common? Said tells us that what binds them together is “their
common background in Oriental legend and experi-ence but also their learned reliance on the Orient
as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth.” What is the background of Oriental legend
that inspired Burton or Lane? Was Flaubert’s vivid imagination stimulated by “Oriental legend,” and
was this the same legendary material that inspired Burton, Lane, and Lamartine? “Learned reliance
on the Orient as a kind of womb” is yet another example of Said’s pretentious way of saying the
obvious, namely that they were writing about the Orient about which they had some experience and
intellectual knowledge.
Why are all these disparate works “imitations”? Take Lane and Burton’s works; they are both
highly accurate accounts based on personal, firsthand experience. They are not imitations of
anything. James Aldridge, in his study Cairo (1969), called Lane’s account “the most truthful and
detailed account in English of how Egyptians lived and behaved.”3 Burton’s accurate obser-vations
are still quoted for their scientific value, as in F. E. Peters’s The Hajj.4 Said also says of Lane, “For
Lane’s legacy as a scholar mattered not to the Orient, of course, but to the institutions and agencies of
his European society” (p. 164). There is no “of course” about it—Lane’s Arabic Lexicon (5 vols.,
1863-74) is still one of the first lexicons consulted by any Muslim scholars wishing to translate the
Qur’an into English; scholars like Maulana Muhammad Ali, who began his English translation in
1909 and who con-stantly refers to Lane in his copious footnotes, as does A. Yusuf Ali in his 1934
translation. What is more, the only place where one can still buy a rea-sonably priced copy of Lane’s
indispensable work of reference is Beirut, where it is published by the Librairie du Liban.
What profound mysteries are unraveled by Said’s final tortuous sentence in the passage above?
Count Alessandro Cagliostro (1743-1795) was a Sicilian charlatan who traveled in Greece, Egypt,
Arabia, Persia, Rhodes, and Malta. During his travels he is said to have acquired considerable
knowledge of the esoteric sciences, alchemy in particular. On his return to Europe, Cagliostro was
involved in many swindles and seems to have been respon-sible for many forgeries of one kind or
another, but he found time to estab-lish many masonic lodges and secret societies. He died in prison
in 1795. He did not contribute anything whatsoever to the scientific study of the Near or Middle East,
neither of its languages nor of its history or culture. He was not a distinguished Orientalist in the way
Lane was. Indeed, apart from “Letter to the French People” (1786), I do not think Cagliostro ever
wrote anything worthy to be called scientific. Cagliostro, according to Said, was the proto-type of
“their [the above five authors’] imaginative conception.” Is he sug-gesting that they, too, forged or
made up their entire knowledge of the Egypt, Near East, and Arabia? If that is what Said means, it is
false for reasons that 1 have already indicated above.
 For Said, Napoleon was the prototype of the “strength of European mas-tery of the Orient,”
since he was the Orient’s first modern conqueror. This would be Fine as a rather contrived metaphor
—Lane and Burton mastered Arabic in the way Napoleon mastered Egypt—but unfortunately, in the
rest of his book, Said seems to suggest something far more literal and sinister in the complicity of
Orientalists with the imperial powers.
Orientalism is peppered with meaningless sentences. Take, for example, “Truth, in short,
becomes a function of learned judgment, not of the material itself, which in time seems to owe its
existence to the Orientalist” (p. 67). Said seems to be saying that “truth” is created by the experts or
Orientalists and does not correspond to reality, to what is actually out there. So far, so good. But then
“what is out there” is also said to owe its existence to the Ori-entalist. If that is the case, then the first
part of Said’s sentence makes no sense, and if the first part is true, then the second part makes no
sense. Is Said relying on that weasel word seems to get him out of the mess? That ruse will not work
either; for what would it mean to say that an external reality inde-pendent of the Orientalist’s
judgment also seems to be a creation of the Ori-entalist? That would be a simple contradiction.
Here is another example: “The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being
true” (p. 160). Throughout his book, Said is at pains to point out that there is no such thing as “the
Orient,” which for him is merely a meaningless abstraction concocted by Orientalists in the service of
imperi-alists and racists. In this case, what on earth could “the Orient cannot imitate the Orientalist”
possibly mean? If we replace “the Orient” by the individual countries, say between Egypt and India,
do we get anything more coherent? No, obviously not: “India, Egypt, and Iran cannot imitate the
Orientalists like Renan, Bernard Lewis, Burton, et al.” We get nonsense whichever way we try to
gloss Said’s sentence.

CONTRADICTIONS

At times, Said seems to allow that the Orientalists did achieve genuine positive knowledge of
the Orient, its history, culture, and languages, as when he calls Lane’s work Manners and Customs of
the Modern Egyptians “a classic of his-torical and anthropological observation because of its style,
its enormously intelligent and brilliant details” (p. 15); or when he talks of “a growing system-atic
knowledge in Europe about the Orient” (p. 34), since Said does not have sarcastic quotation marks
around the word “knowledge,” I presume he means there was a growth in genuine knowledge.
Further on, Said talks of Orientalism producing “a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the
Orient” (p. 52). Again, I take it Said is not being ironic when he talks of “philological discov-eries in
comparative grammar made by Jones” (p. 98). To give one final example, Said mentions
Orientalism’s “objective discoveries” (p. 203).
Yet these acknowledgements of the real discoveries made by Orientalists is contradicted by
Said’s insistence that there is no such thing as “truth “ (p. 272) or when he characterizes Orientalism
as “a form of paranoia, knowledge of another kind, say, from ordinary historical knowledge “ (p. 73).
Or again, “It is finally Western ignorance which becomes more refined and complex, not some body
of positive Western knowledge which increases in size and accuracy” (p. 62). At one point Said
seems to deny that the Orientalist had acquired any objective knowledge at all (p. 122), and a little
later he also writes, “The advances made by a ‘science’ like Orientalism in its academic form are less
objectively true than we often like to think” (p. 202). It is true that the last phrase does leave open the
possibility that some of the science may be true, though less than we had hitherto thought. Said also
of course wholeheartedly endorses Abdel Malek’s strictures against Orientalism and its putatively
false “knowledge” of the Orient (pp. 96-97).
In his 1994 afterword, Said insists that he has “no interest in, much less capacity for, showing
what the true Orient and Islam really are” (p. 331). And yet he contradicts this outburst of
uncharacteristic humility and modesty when he claims that “[the Orientalist’s] Orient is not the
Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has been Orientalized” (p. 104), for such a formulation assumes
Said knows what the real Orient is. Such an assumption is also apparent in his statement that “the
present crisis dramatizes the disparity between texts and reality” (p. 109). In order to be able to tell
the difference between the two, Said must know what the reality is. This is equally true when Said
complains, “To look into Orientalism for a lively sense of an Ori-ental’s human or even social reality
… is to look in vain” (p. 176).

HISTORICAL AND OTHER HOWLERS

For a work that purports to be a serious work of intellectual history, Orien-talism is full of
historical howlers.5 According to Said, at the end of the sev-enteenth century, Britain and France
dominated the eastern Mediterranean, when in fact the Levant was still controlled for the next
hundred years by the Ottomans. British and French merchants needed the permission of the sultan to
land. Egypt is repeatedly described as a British colony when, in fact, Egypt was never more than a
protectorate; it was never annexed, as Said claims (p. 35). Real colonies, like Australia or Algeria,
were settled by large numbers of Europeans, and this manifestly was not the case with Egypt.6
The most egregious error surely is where Said claims Muslim armies conquered Turkey before
they overran North Africa (p. 59). In reality, of course, the Arabs invaded North Africa in the seventh
century, and what is now Turkey remained part of the Eastern Roman Empire and was a Christian
country until conquered by the Seljuk Turks in the late eleventh century.7 Said also writes,
“Macdonald and Massignon were widely sought after as experts on Islamic matters by colonial
administrators from North Africa to Pakistan” (p. 210). But Pakistan was never a colony; it was
created in 1947 when the British left India. Said also talks rather oddly about the “unchal-lenged
Western dominance” of the Portuguese in the East Indies, China, and Japan until the nineteenth
century (p. 73). But Portugal only dominated the trade, especially in the sixteenth century, and was
never, as historian J. M. Roberts points out, “interested in the subjugation or settlement of large
areas.”8 In China, Portugal only had the tiniest of footholds in Macao. The first decades of the
seventeenth century witnessed the collapse of much of the Portuguese empire in the East, to be
replaced by the Dutch. In the early eigh-teenth century there was a Dutch supremacy in the Indian
Ocean and Indonesia; however, the Dutch, like the Portuguese, did not subjugate “the Orient” but
worked through diplomacy with native rulers and through a net-work of trading stations.9
Said thinks that Carlyle and Newman were “liberal cultural heroes”! It would be more correct
to characterize Carlyle’s works as the intellectual ancestry of fascism.10 Nor was Newman a liberal,
rather a High Church Anglican who converted to Catholicism. Said also seems to think that Goldz-
iher was German (p. 18); Goldziher was, of course, Hungarian. (One hopes that it is simply a
typographical error in his 1994 afterword that was respon-sible for the misspelling of Claude Cahen’s
name.)11 Said thinks Muslims designates a race (p. 99).

INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY AND TENDENTIOUS REINTERPRETATIONS

The above errors can be put down to ignorance; Said is no historian, but it does put into doubt
his competence for writing such a book. On the other hand, we can only qualify as intellectual
dishonesty the way he deliberately misinterprets a distinguished scholar’s work and conclusions. Said
quotes with approval and admiration some of the conclusions of R. W. Southern’s Western Views of
Islam in the Middle Ages:
 Most conspicuous to us is the inability of any of these systems of thought [European
Christian] to provide a fully satisfying explanation of the phe-nomenon they had set out to
explain [Islam]—still less to influence the course of practical events in a decisive way. At a
practical level, events never turned out either so well or so ill as the most intelligent observers
pre-dicted; and it is perhaps worth noticing that they never turned out better than when the best
judges confidently expected a happy ending. Was there any progress [in Christian knowledge
of Islam]? I must express my convic-tion that there was. Even if the solution of the problem
remained obstinately hidden from sight, the statement of the problem became more complex,
more rational, and more related to experience… . The scholars who labored at the problem of
Islam in the Middle Ages failed to find the solu-tion they sought and desired; but they
developed habits of mind and powers of comprehension which, in other men and in other
fields, may yet deserve success.12
Now here is Said’s extraordinary misinterpretation of the above quote from Southern: “The
best part of Southern’s analysis … is his demonstration that it is finally Western ignorance which
becomes more refined and com-plex, not some body of positive Western knowledge which increases
in size and accuracy” (p. 62). According to Said, Southern says that positive Western knowledge of
the Orient did not increase. This is not what Southern is saying. Southern explicitly asks a question
and replies, “Was there any progress [in Christian knowledge of Islam]? I must express my
conviction that there was.” Yes, I am firmly convinced that Western knowledge did progress—that is
what Southern states. Then Southern goes on to say that medieval scholars’ methodology became
more and more sophisticated; they were more mature intellectually since they developed habits of
mind and powers of compre-hension that would pay dividends later. How Said can claim, with his
usual pretentious vocabulary of “Western ignorance which becomes more refined,” otherwise is a
mystery, but all in keeping with his intellectual dishonesty and his overriding concern to paint the
West in as negative a fashion as possible? Incidentally, and ironically, the very same passage from
Southern contradicts one of Said’s principal theses about Oriental Studies being a cause of impe-
rialism. All this thinking about the Orient failed, Southern says, “to influence the course of practical
events in a decisive way.”
Said also seems to reproach Friedrich Schlegel for holding views that are in fact correct:
“[Although by] 1808 Schlegel had practically renounced his Orientalism, he still held that Sanskrit
and Persian on the one hand and Greek and German on the other had more affinities with each other
than with Semitic, Chinese, American, or African languages” (p. 98). One can only conclude that
Said does not know that what Schlegel held is indeed the case: Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, and German
all belong to the same family, the Indo-European, and have more in common with each other by
definition, than with any other language in any other family, like Semitic.
Said quotes Sir William Jones’s famous encomium on Sanskrit and its affinities to Greek and
Latin as though it were of some sinister significance, by prefacing the quote with remarks that can
only be described as plain silly:

[Jones’s] most famous pronouncement indicates the extent to which modern Orientalism,
even in its philosophical beginnings, was a comparative disci-pline having for its principal
goal the grounding of the European languages in a distant, and harmless. Oriental source: “The
Sanscrit language, what-ever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the
Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitively refined than either, yet bearing to
both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than
could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could
examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source.”
(pp. 78-79)13
 What does Said mean by saying modern Orientalism had as its goal “the grounding of the
European languages in a distant, and harmless, Oriental source”? It is pretentious nonsense. Jones
was not the first one to see that there were remarkable similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and
Latin— as early as the sixteenth century Filippo Sassetti, and in 1767 P. Coeurdoux, had noticed
them—but Jones’s independent reflections led him to conclude that there was a similarity, and this
was a discovery, a very exciting scientific discovery that has since been amply confirmed. To say that
Orientalists wanted to ground the European languages in Oriental sources is absurd; they discovered
that they were related in some way—they did not concoct some theory to fit their desire to “ground
European languages in Oriental sources.” What on earth does a “harmless, Oriental source” mean, in
any case? Greek and Latin do not have their “sources” in Sanskrit; they simply belong to the same
genetic family, possibly descended from some common ancestral proto-Indo-European language.
As Prof. K. Paddaya of Pune, India, said in his appreciation of Sir William Jones, “[I]t was
genuine curiosity and admiration which made some of these officers [of the East India Company like
Jones] voluntarily take up the study of [India’s] past conditions.”14 Jones’s eulogy on Sanskrit is still
quoted with pride by many Indian scholars, who honored Jones’s memory by holding conferences in
Calcutta and Pune in April 1994 to mark the bicente-nary of his death. The bicentenary of the
establishment of the Asiatic Society, which Jones founded, was celebrated in 1984 in New Delhi and
Calcutta.
Said also does not come across as a careful reader of Dante and his mas-terpiece. The Divine
Comedy. In his trawl through Western literature for filth to besmirch Western civilization, Said comes
across Dante’s description of Muhammad in hell and concludes, “Dante’s verse at this point spares
the reader none of the eschatological [sic] detail that so vivid a punishment entails: Muhammad’s
entrails and his excrement are described with unflinching accuracy” (p. 68). First, Said does not
know the difference between scatological and eschatological, and second, we may ask how he knows
that Dante’s description is unflinchingly accurate. He simply means, I presume, that it was highly
graphic.
Said then makes much of the fact that earlier in the Inferno, three Mus-lims turn up in the
company of virtuous heathens like Plato and Aristotle.

Said continues, “[B]ut the special anachronisms and anomalies of putting pre-Christian
luminaries in the same category of ‘heathen’ damnation with post-Christian Muslims does not trouble
Dante. Even though the Qur’an specifies Jesus as a prophet, Dante chooses to consider the great
Muslim philosophers [Avicenna and Averroes] and king [Saladin | as having been fun-damentally
ignorant of Christianity.” This fatuous comment betrays Said’s fundamental ignorance of Christian
doctrine, even though he himself is a Christian. Although these people of much worth—gente di
molto vtdore— had not sinned, according to Christian doctrine, they could not be saved out-side the
Church, that is, without baptism, which is the first sacrament and thus the “gateway to the faith.” The
three Muslims were in the outer circle of hell not because they were ignorant of Christianity but
because they had died unbaptized. Since these regions of hell are timeless and its inhabitants are
there forever, the question of anachronism does not arise, especially as these historical figures have
an allegorical significance. Said was surely aware that Virgil, who died in 19 BCE, was Dante’s
guide and fulfills an allegorical function; Virgil’s voice is that of reason or philosophical wisdom.
Allegory is central to any understanding of the Divine Comedy: literra gesta docet, quid credos,
allegoria—the literal sense teaches the facts; the allegory what you should believe.
Furthermore, these illustrious Muslims were included precisely because of Dante’s profound
reverence for all that was best in the non-Christian world, and their exclusion from salvation,
inevitable under Christian doc-trine, saddened him and put a great strain on his mind—gran duol mi
prese al cor quando lo ‘nlesi—”great grief seized me at heart when I heard this.” Dante was even
much influenced by the Averroistic concept of the “possible intellect.” The same generous impulse
that made him revere non-Christians like Avicenna and their nobleness made Dante relegate
Muhammad to eternal punishment in the eighth circle of hell, namely, Dante’s strong sense of the
unity of humanity and of all its spiritual values—universalis civilitas humani generis—the universal
community of the human race. He and his contempo-raries in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
century had only the vaguest of ideas about the history and theology of Islam and its founder. Dante
believed that Muhammad and Ali were the initiators of the great schism between Christianity and
Islam. Dante, like his contemporaries, thought Muhammad was originally a Christian and a cardinal
who wanted to become pope. Hence Muhammad was a divider of humanity, whereas Dante stood for
the unity—the essential organic unity—of humankind. What Said does not see is that Dante perfectly
exemplifies Western culture’s strong tendency toward universalism.15

SELF-PITY, POSTIMPERIALIST VICTIMHOOD, AND IMPERIALISM

In order to achieve his goal of painting the West in general, and the discipline of Orientalism in
particular, in as negative a way as possible, Said has recourse to several tactics. One of his preferred
moves is to depict the Orient as a perpetual victim of Western imperialism, dominance, and
aggression. The Orient is never seen as an actor, an agent with free will, or designs or ideas of its
own. It is to this propensity that we owe that immature and unat-tractive quality of much
contemporary Middle Eastern culture, self-pity, and the belief that all its ills are the result of Western-
Zionist conspiracies.16 Here is an example of Said’s own belief in the usual conspiracies, taken from
“The Question of Palestine”: It was perfectly apparent to Western supporters of Zionism like Arthur
James Balfour that the colonization of Palestine was made a goal for the Western powers from the
very beginning of Zionist plan-ning: Herzl used the idea, Weizmann used it, every leading Israeli
since has used it. Israel was a device for holding Islam—later the Soviet Union, or communism—at
bay.17 So Israel was created to hold Islam at bay!
As for the politics of victimhood, Said has “milked it himself to an inde-cent degree.”18 Said
wrote, “My own experiences of these matters are in part what made me write this book. The life of
Arab Palestinians in the West, par-ticularly in America, is disheartening. There exists here an almost
unanimous consensus that politically he does not exist, and when it is allowed that he does, it is
either as a nuisance or as an Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism,
dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web
which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny” (p. 27).
Such wallowing in self-pity from a tenured and much-feted professor at Columbia University,
where he enjoys privileges that we lesser mortals only dream of and a decent salary, all the while
spewing forth hatred of the country that took him in and heaped honors on him, is nauseating. As Ian
Buruma concluded in his review of Said’s memoir, Out of Place, “The more he dwells on his
suffering and his exile status, the more his admirers admire him. On me, however, it has the opposite
effect. Of all the attitudes that shape a memoir, self-pity is the least attractive.”19
The putative conquest of Egypt by Napoleon plays an important sym-bolic role in Said’s
scheme of showing all that is evil in Orientalism. For Said, Napoleon conquered, dominated,
engulfed, possessed, and oppressed Egypt (pp. 83-88). Egypt is described as the passive victim of
Western rapacity. In reality, the French were defeated and had to retreat hastily after less than four
years; Napoleon arrived in July 1798, and left it for good just over a year later, and the French forces
stayed until September 1801. But during this brief interlude, the French fleet was destroyed at the
Battle of the Nile, and the French failed to capture Murad Bey. Riots also broke out when a house act
was introduced in Cairo, and the French general dupuy, lieutenant governor of Cairo, was killed.
Further riots broke out among the Muslims in Cairo when the French left to confront the Turks at
Mataria, but the chief vic-tims were Christians, many of whom were slaughtered by the Muslims.
Jean-Baptiste Kleber, the French general, was also assassinated. Far from seeing the Egyptians as the
“Other,” and far from denigrating Islam, right from 1798, the French were highly sensitive to Muslim
opinion, with Napoleon showing an initimate knowledge of the Qur’an. Perhaps the ultimate irony
was that after the assassination of Kleber, the command of the French army passed to Gen. J. F.
Baron de Menou, who had converted to Islam and who set about enacting various measures to
conciliate the Muslims.
Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist, once said it is thanks to
Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt that his country has emerged out of centuries of obscurantism. Egypt
owes all her modernity to Napoleon!20 So much for the evils of the “conquest of Egypt.”
Had he bothered to pursue the subsequent history of Egypt, Said would have put all Western
imperialism in perspective, since he would have come across the history of Muhammad Ali, often
considered the founder of modern Egypt. It was never in the interest or even the intention of the
Western powers to see the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, which time and time again sought
and received European support for the preservation of its imperial pos-sessions. After the humiliating
retreat of the French, the Ottomans’ greatest challenger was a Muslim, the able but ambitious
governor of Egypt Muhammad Ali Pasha, “who aspired to nothing less than the substitution of his
own empire for that of the Ottomans.”21 Inspired by Napoleon, Muhammad Ali modernized many of
Egypt’s archaic institutions. In his impe-rial dreams, Ali was thwarted by the Ottomans with the help,
once again, of the great powers, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which did not wish to use the
sultan’s plight to expand their imperial possessions. A little later Muhammad Ali’s grandson, Ismail,
also dreamed of transforming Egypt into a modern imperial power. By the mid-1870s “a vast
Egyptian empire had come into being, extending from the Mediterranean in the north to Lake Vic-
toria, and from the Indian Ocean in the east to the Libyan desert.”22
I have dwelled on these historical details to put nineteenth-century impe-rialism in context and
to show that Middle Eastern history was created by Middle Eastern actors who were “not hapless
victims of predatory imperial powers but active participants in the restructuring of their region.”23 But
this, of course, does not serve Said’s purpose at all, which is to show “the Orien-tals” as passive
victims of Western imperialism, unable to control their own destiny. It is Said who is guilty of the
very sins that he accuses the Oriental-ists of, namely, suppressing the voice of the people of Egypt,
the true history of the Near East, which was created by indigenous trends, desires, and actions freely
chosen.
In Orientalism, Said writes, “Both before and during World War I secret diplomacy was bent
on carving up the Near Orient first into spheres of influ-ence, then into mandated (or occupied)
territories” (p. 220). This is totally false; here is how two historians see it:

[T|he chain of events culminating in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the
creation of the modern Middle East was set in motion not by secret diplomacy bent on carving
up the Middle East, but rather by the decision of the Ottoman leadership to throw in its lot
with Germany. This was by far the single most important decision in the history of the modern
Middle East, and it was anything but inevitable. The Ottoman Empire was neither forced into
the war in a last-ditch bid to ensure its survival, nor maneuvered into it by an overbearing
German ally and an indifferent or even hostile British policy. Rather, the [Ottoman] empire’s
willful plunge into the whirlpool reflected a straightforward |Ottoman] imperialist policy of
territorial aggrandizement and status acquisition.24 (emphasis in the original)

Prime Minister Asquith noted in his diary in March 1915, “[Foreign sec-retary Sir Edward
Grey and I[ both think that in the interests of our own future the best thing would be if at the end of
the War we could say that we had taken and gained nothing.” Similarly, the Bunsen Committee of
April-May 1915 had a clear preference for the maintenance of an indepen-dent but decentralized
empire comprising of five major provinces: Anatolia, Armenia, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq-Jezirah.
Nearly a year after the outbreak of World War I, Britain still did not wish to see the destruction of
Turkey in Asia.25 It was an Arab, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who wanted to establish his own empire
on the ruins of that of the Ottomans.
Similarly, when referring to T. E. Lawrence, Said writes, “The great drama of Lawrence’s
work is that it symbolizes the struggle, first, to stimu-late the Orient (lifeless, timeless, forceless) into
movement; second, to impose upon that movement an essentially Western shape” (p. 242). Again, it
is Said who is assuming the Arabs were passive and had decisions taken for and imposed upon them,
as though they were children or imbeciles incapable of having desires and acting freely. Certainly, the
forceful personalities of the sharif of Mecca, Hussein Ibn Ali, and his son Faisal played the most
impor-tant part during World War I and were as responsible for what emerged after it as the Western
powers.
Thus Said’s use of emotive language concerning Western imperialism with all its supposed
evils conceals the real overall historical background of the entire region. Whereas the French
presence lasted less than four years, when they were ignominiously expelled by the British and
Turks, the Ottomans had been the masters of Egypt since 1517, a total of 280 years! Even if we count
the later British and French protectorates, Egypt was under Western control for 67 years, Syria for 21
years, and Iraq for only 15. And, of course, Saudi Arabia was never under Western control. Contrast
this with southern Spain, which was under the Muslim yoke for 781 years, Greece for 381 years, and
the splendid new Christian capital that eclipsed Rome—Con-stantinople—is still in Muslim hands.26
But I do not know of any Spanish or Greek politics of victimhood.

SAID’S ANTI-WESTERNISM

In the rather disingenuous 1994 afterword Said denies that he is anti-Western; he denies that the
phenomenon of Orientalism is a synecdoche of the entire West and claims that he believes there is no
such stable reality as “the Orient” and “the Occident,” that there is no enduring Oriental reality and
even less an enduring Western essence, and that he has no interest in, much less capacity for, showing
what the true Orient and Islam really are (pp. 330-33).
Denials to the contrary, an actual reading of Orientalism is enough to show Said’s anti-
Westernism. While he does occasionally use inverted commas around “the Orient” and “the
Occident,” the entire force of Said’s polemic comes from the polar opposites and contrasts of the East
and the West, the Orient and Europe, Us and the Other, that he himself has rather crudely set up.
Said wrote, “I doubt that it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or
Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries that was never far from their
status in his mind as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all
academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with. violated by, the
gross political fact [of imperialism]—and yet that is what I am saying in this study of Orientalism”
(p. 11; emphasis in original).
Here is Said’s characterization of all Europeans: “It is therefore correct that every European, in
what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally
ethnocentric” (p. 204). In other words, not only is every European a racist, but he must necessarily be
so. Said claims he is explicitly antiessentialist, particularly about “the West.” But here is Said again:
“Consider first the demarcation between Orient and West. It already seems bold by the time of the
Iliad. Two of the most profoundly influential qualities associated with the East appear in Aeschylus’s
The Per-sians, the earliest Athenian play extant, and in The Bacchae of Euripides, the very last one
extant… . The two aspects of the Orient that set it off from the West in this pair of plays will remain
essential motifs of European imagina-tive geography. A line is drawn between two continents.
Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant” (pp. 56-57).
Keith Windschuttle comments on the above passage,
 These same motifs persist in Western culture, [Said] claims, right down to the modem
period. This is a tradition that accommodates perspectives as divergent as those of Aeschylus,
Dante, Victor Hugo, and Karl Marx. How-ever, in describing “the essential motifs” of the
European geographic imag-ination that have persisted since ancient Greece, he is ascribing to
the West a coherent self-identity that has produced a specific set of value judge-ments
—”Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant”— that have remained
constant for the past 2500 years. This is, of course, nothing less than the use of the very notion
of “essentialism” that he else-where condemns so vigorously. In short, it is his own work that
is essen-tialist and ahistorical. He himself commits the very faults he says are so objectionable
in the work of Orientalists.27

Just in case the above were not enough to prove Said’s anti-Western essentialism, here is
another gem: “The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be ‘Oriental’ in all
those ways considered com-monplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it
could be—that is, submitted to being—made Oriental” (p. 6). Here we have Said’s ultimate
reductionistic absurdity: the average nineteenth-century European!
A part of Said’s tactics is to leave out Western writers and scholars who do not conform to
Said’s theoretical framework. Since, for Said, all Euro-peans are a priori racist, he obviously cannot
allow himself to quote writers who are not. Indeed, one could write a parallel work to Orientalism
made up of extracts from Western writers, scholars, and travelers who were attracted by various
aspects of non-European cultures, which they praised and contrasted favorably with their own
decadence, bigotry, intolerance, and bellicosity.
Said makes much of Aeschylus’s Persians and its putative permanent creation of the “Other”
in Western civilization. But Aeschylus can be for-given his moment of triumphalism when he
describes a battle in which he very probably took part in 480 BCE, the battle of Salamis, on which
the very existence of fifth-century Athens depended. The Greeks destroyed or cap-tured two hundred
ships for the loss of forty, which for Aeschylus was sym-bolic of the triumph of liberty over tyranny,
Athenian democracy over Per-sian imperialism, for it must not be forgotten that the Persians were
ruthless imperialists whose rule did not endear them to several generations of Greeks.
Furthemore, had he delved a little deeper into Greek civilization and his-tory, and bothered to
look at Herodotus’s great history. Said would have encountered two features that were also deep
characteristics of Western civ-ilization and that Said is at pains to conceal and refuses to allow: the
seeking after knowledge for its own sake and its profound belief in the unity of mankind—in other
words, its universalis!!!. The Greek word historia, from which we get our history, means “research”
or “inquiry,” and Herodotus believed his work was the outcome of research: what he had seen, heard,
and read but supplemented and verified by inquiry. For Herodotus, “historical facts have intrinsic
value and rational meaning.” He was totally devoid of racial prejudice—indeed, Plutarch later
branded him a philobarbaros, whose nearest modern equivalent would be “nigger lover”—and his
work shows considerable sympathy for Persians and Persian civilization. Herodotus rep-resents
Persians as honest—”they consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else”—brave,
dignified, and loyal to their king. As to the religions of the various peoples he studied, Herodotus
showed his customary intellec-tual curiosity but also his reverence for all of them, because “all men
know equally about divine things.”28
Even in the Middle Ages, we find figures in the Christian Church ready to make, in the words
of Maxime Rodinson, an “outstanding effort … to gain and to transmit an objectively based scientific
knowledge of the Islamic-religion.” Rodinson is talking about the remarkable Peter the Venerable,
Abbot of Cluny (c. 1094-1156). Rodinson is convinced that Peter the Vener-able was not only
motivated for polemical reasons but “was moved by a dis-interested curiosity.”29
A number of thinkers, writers, and scholars in Europe from the sixteenth century onward took
up the theme of the noble savage as a means to criticize their own culture and to encourage tolerance
of others outside the West. Per-haps the real founder of the sixteenth-century doctrine of the noble
savage was Peter Martyr Anglerius (1459-1525). In his De Orbo Novo of 1516, Peter Martyr
criticized the Spanish conquistadors for their greed, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, and cruelty,
contrasting them with the Indians, “who are happier since they are free from money, laws,
treacherous judges, deceiving books, and the anxiety of an uncertain future.” But it was left to
Montaigne, under the influence of Peter Martyr, to develop the first full-length portrait of the noble
savage in his celebrated essay “On Cannibals” (c. 1580), which is also the source of the idea of
cultural relativism. Deriving his rather shaky information from a plain, simple fellow, Montaigne
describes some of the more gruesome customs of the Brazilian Indians and concludes, “I am not so
anxious that we should note the horrible savagery of these acts as concerned that, whilst judging their
faults so correctly, we should be so blind to our own. I consider it more barbarous to eat a man alive
than to eat him dead; to tear by rack and torture a body still full of feeling, to roast it by degrees, and
then give it to be trampled and eaten by dogs and swine—a practice which we have not only read
about but seen within recent memory, not between ancient enemies, but between neighbours and
fellow-citizens and, what is worse, under the cloak of piety and religion—than to roast and eat a man
after he is dead.”
Elsewhere in the essay, Montaigne emphasizes their inevitable sim-plicity, state of purity, and
freedom from corruption. Even their “fighting is entirely noble.” Like Peter Martyr, Montaigne’s
rather dubious, secondhand knowledge of these noble savages does not prevent him from criticizing
and morally condemning his own culture and civilization: “(We] surpass them in every kind of
barbarity.”
The seventeenth century saw some truly sympathetic accounts of Islam, such as those of Jurieu
and Bayle. Let us hear Mr. Jurieu: “It may be truly said that there is no comparison between the
cruelty of the Saracens against the Christians, and that of Popery against the true believers. In the war
against the Vaudois, or in the massacres alone on St. Bartholomew’s Day, there was more blood spilt
upon account of religion, than was spilt by the Saracens in all their persecutions of the Christians. It
is expedient to cure men of this prejudice; that Mahometanism is a cruel sect, which was propa-gated
by putting men to their choice of death, or the abjuration of Chris-tianity. This is in no wise true; and
the conduct of the Saracens was an evan- gelical meekness in comparison to that of Popery, which
exceeded the cru-elty of the cannibals.”
The whole import of Jurieu’s Lettres Pastorales (1686-1689) only becomes clear when we
realise that Jurieu was a Huguenot pastor, the sworn enemy of Bossuet, and he was writing from
Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He is using the tolerance of the Muslims to
criticize Roman Catholicism—for him the Saracens’ “evangelical meekness” is a way of contrasting
Catholicism’s own barbarity as on St. Bartholomew’s Day.
Pierre Bayle was much influenced by Jurieu and continued to sing the praises of Islamic
tolerance. He contrasts the tolerance of the Turks to the persecutions of brahmins in India by the
Portuguese, and the barbarities exer-cised by the Spaniards in America: “[The Muslims) have always
had more humanity for other religions than the Christians.” Bayle was a champion of toleration—was
he not himself the victim of intolerance and forced to flee to Holland?
For Jurieu and Bayle in the seventeenth century, Turk was synonymous with Muslim; thus
Turkish tolerance turned into Muslim tolerance in general. Later Letters Written by a Turkish Spy,
published at the end of the seven-teenth century, inaugurated the eighteenth-century vogue for the
pseudo-foreign letter, such as Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (1721); Madame de Grafigny’s Lettres
d’une peruvienne (c. 1747); D’Argen’s Lettres chinoises (1750); Voltaire’s “Asiatic” in the
Philosophical Dictionary (1752); Horace Walpole’s Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese philosopher in
London, to his friend Lien-Chi, at Peking (1757); and Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (1762), in
which Lien Chi Altangi passes philosophical and satirical comments on the manners of the English.
Count Henri de Boulainvilliers’ (1658-1722) apologetic biography of Muhammad appeared
posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book in
shaping Europe’s view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much influenced Voltaire
and Gibbon. Boulainvilliers was able to use Muhammad and the origins of Islam as “a vehicle of his
own theological prejudices” and as a weapon against Christianity, in general, and the clergy, in
particular. He found Islam reason-able; it did not require one to believe in impossibilities—no
mysteries, no miracles. Muhammad, though not divine, was an incomparable statesman and a greater
legislator than anyone produced by Ancient Greece.
George Sale’s translation of the Qur’an (1734) is the first accurate one in English. Like
Boulainvilliers, whose biography of Muhammad he had care-fully read, Sale firmly believed that the
Arabs “seem to have been raised up on purpose by God, to be a scourge to the Christian church, for
not living answerably to that most holy religion which they had received.”
The attitude of Voltaire can be seen as typical of the entire century. Voltaire seems to have
regretted what he had written of Muhammad in his scurrilous, and to a Muslim blasphemous, play
Mahomet (1742), where the Prophet is presented as an impostor who enslaved men’s souls:
“Assuredly, I have made him out to be more evil than he was.” But Voltaire, in his Essai sur les
Moeurs (1756) and various entries in the Philosophical Dictionary, shows himself to be prejudiced in
Islam’s favor at the expense of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular.
In his Sermon of the Fifty (1762), Voltaire attacks Christian mysteries like transubstantiation as
absurd. Christian miracles as incredible, and the Bible as full of contradictions. The God of
Christianity was a cruel and hateful tyrant. By contrast, Voltaire finds the dogmas of Islam to be sim-
plicity itself: there is but one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet. For all deists, the supposed
rationality of Islam was appealing: no priests, no mira-cles, no mysteries. To this was added other
beliefs such as the absolute toler-ance in Islam of other religions, in contrast to Christian intolerance.
Gibbon, like Voltaire, painted Islam in as favorable a light as possible in order to better
contrast it with Christianity. He emphasized Muhammad’s humanity as a means of indirectly
criticizing the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ. His anticlericalism led Gibbon to underline
Islam’s sup-posed freedom from that accursed class, the priesthood. Gibbon’s deistic view of Islam as
a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise and tolerant lawgiver, enormously
influenced the way all Europeans per-ceived a sister religion for years to come.
But the work that exemplifies the Enlightenment’s openness to the Other and its universalism
and tolerance is surely Gotthold Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, written in 1778/1779. The two themes
—”it suffices to be a man” and “be my friend”—run through the play and give it its humanity.
Preaching friendship among the three monotheist religions (Saladin [1137-1193], the great Muslim
leader who defeated the Christian Crusaders, is one of the three main characters), Lessing recounts
the allegory of the father (God) who gives each of his three sons (representing Islam, Christianity and
Judaism) a ring (representing religion):

If each of you
Has had a ring presented by his father,
Let each believe his own the real ring.
Tis possible the father chose no longer
To tolerate the one ring’s tyranny;
And certainly, as he much loved you all,
And loved you all alike, it could not please him
By favouring one to be of two the oppressor.
Let each feel honoured by this free affection.
Unwarped of prejudice; let each endeavour
To vie with both his brothers in displaying
The virtue of his ring; assist its might
With gentleness, benevolence, forbearance,
With inward resignation to the godhead.30
 I could multiply examples of Said’s quite deliberate omissions, writers sympathetic to the
Arabs, Turks, and Islam, writers like W. S. Blunt (1840-1922), whose travels in Egypt and Arabia
“produced in him a violent reaction against British Imperialism, and the second half of his life was
spent in publishing a stream of poems, books and pamphlets championing the nationalist cause in
Egypt, India, Arabia and Ireland.”31 Writers like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who
wrote, “Sir, these people [the Turks] are not so unpolish’d as we represent them. Tis true their
magnifi-cence is of a different taste from our, and perhaps of a better. I am allmost of opinion they
have a right notion of Life, while they consume it in Music, Gardens, Wine, and delicate eating,
while we are tormenting our brains with some Scheme of Politics or studying some Science to which
we can never attain.”32 Or writers like Marmaduke Pickthall, who eventually converted to Islam,
translated the Qur’an, wrote novels of Egypt, and edited the journal Islamic Culture. Or E. G.
Browne (1862-1926) who wrote the monumental Literary History of Persia (1902-1924) and who
also took up the cause of Iranian nationalism.
The important thing to emphasize here is the deliberately biased nature of Said’s apparently
learned and definitive selection; I could just as easily go through Western literature and illustrate the
opposite point to the one he is making. Furthermore, my selection is not of some peripheral figures
culled from the margins of Western culture, but the very makers of that culture, fig-ures like
Montaigne, Bayle, Voltaire, Gibbon, Lessing, and some I have not quoted, like Montesquieu (Persian
Letters, 1721) and Diderot (Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, 1772), the latter two
exemplifying the European Enlightenment’s appeal to reason, objective truth, and universalist values.
Most of the time we have the impression that Said is simply resentful at how thorough and
scholarly—in short, scientific and successful—the Orien-talists were; Said is particularly jealous of
their mastery of the various lan-guages. For example, Said grudgingly admits that D’Herbelot read
Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and then seems to resent the fact that D’Herbelot arranged his
Bibliotheque orientate alphabetically (p. 65)! Said talks of “spe-cific Orientalist techniques—
lexicography, grammar, translation, cultural decoding” (p. 121) as though they were instruments of
torture, used to vio-late, subjugate, and dominate the Orient. The same resentment is expressed of
“regulatory codes, classifications, specimen cases, periodical reviews, dic-tionaries, grammars,
commentaries, editions, translations,” (p. 166) which can only be seen as Said’s hatred of science.
Western intellectual energy and curiosity, that is, “activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge” is
dimissed as “all aggression” (p. 204).

MISUNDERSTANDING OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The golden thread running through Western civilization is rationalism. As Aristotle said, Man
by nature strives to know. This striving for knowledge results in science, which is but the application
of reason. Intellectual inquis-itiveness is one of the hallmarks of Western civilization. As J. M.
Roberts put it, “The massive indifference of some civilisations and their lack of curiosity about other
worlds is a vast subject. Why, until very recently, did Islamic scholars show no wish to translate Latin
or western European texts into Arabic? Why when the English poet Dryden could confidently write a
play focused on the succession in Delhi after the death of the Mogul emperor Aurungzebe, is it a safe
guess that no Indian writer ever thought of a play about the equally dramatic politics of the English
seventeenth-century court? It is clear that an explanation of European inquisitiveness and
adventurous-ness must lie deeper than economics, important though they may have been. It was not
just greed which made Europeans feel they could go out and take the world. The love of gain is
confined to no particular people or culture. It was shared in the fifteenth century by many an Arab,
Gujarati, or Chinese merchant. Some Europeans wanted more. They wanted to explore.”33
 Vulgar Marxists, Freudians, and anti-imperialists, who crudely reduce all human activities to
money, sex, and power, respectively, have difficulties in understanding the very notion of
disinterested intellectual inquiry—knowl-edge for knowledge’s sake. European man by nature strives
to know. Science undoubtedly owed some of its impetus to finding ways of changing base metal into
gold, to attempts to solve practical problems, but surely owes as much to the desire to know, to get at
the truth, and is the reason why philoso-phers like Karl Popper have called it a spiritual achievement.
Hence the des-perate attempts by Said to smear every single Orientalist with the lowest of motives
are not only reprehensible but fail to give due weight to this golden thread running through Western
civilization.
One should remind Said that it was this desire for knowledge on the part of Europeans that led
to the people of the Near East recovering and discov-ering their own past and their own identity. In
the nineteenth and early twen-tieth centuries archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia, Ancient
Syria, Ancient Palestine, and Iran were carried out entirely by Europeans and later Americans—the
disciplines of Egyptology, Assyriology, and Iranology, which restored to mankind a large part of its
heritage, were the exclusive cre-ations of inquisitive Europeans and Americans. Whereas, for
doctrinal rea-sons, Islam deliberately refused to look at its pre-Islamic past, which was considered a
period of ignorance.34
It is also worth pointing out that often the motives, desires, and preju-dices of a scholar have
no bearing upon the scientific worth of a scholar’s contribution. Again, vulgar Marxists, for example,
dimiss an opponent’s arguments not on any scientific or rational grounds but merely because of the
social origins of the scholar concerned. Theodor Noldeke’s bigotry was well known, indeed a source
of acute embarrassment to his colleagues, but no modern scholar of Islam can ignore his Geschichte
des Qorans; similarly, Henri Lammens’s hatred for the prophet Muhammad is notorious, but as Pro-
fessor F. E. Peters once said, Lammens has never been refuted. Conversely, a scholar who manifests
sympathy for all aspects of Islam is not necessarily a good scholar. Said, for instance, quotes with
approval Norman Daniel, but as Maxime Rodinson pointed out, Daniel was not an objective historian
but an apologist of Islam: “In this way the anti-colonialist left, whether Christian or not, often goes so
far as to sanctify Islam and the contemporary ideologies of the Muslim world. … An historian like
Norman Daniel has gone so far as to number among the conceptions permeated with medievalism or
imperi-alism, any criticisms of the Prophet’s moral attitudes, and to accuse of like tendencies any
exposition of Islam and its characteristics by means of the normal mechanisms of human history.
Understanding has given way to apologetics pure and simple.”35
Rather surprisingly. Said also singles out Louis Massignon for lavish praise for his
sympathetic understanding of Islam. Massignon’s scholarship is not in doubt; his biography of Al-
Hallaj, for example, is considered a mas-terpiece. But Massignon also exemplifies the very qualities
that Said himself dismisses in others.The Frenchman is responsible for perpetuating the myth of the
spiritual East as against the materialist West. Said praises him for “identifying with the ‘vital forces’
informing ‘Eastern culture’“ (p. 265), and yet earlier Said informs us that “the Orient was overvalued
for its pantheism, its spirituality, its stability, its longevity, its primitivity, and so forth” (p. 150).
Massignon also displays other unattractive traits that Said does not mention, namely, his
antisemitism, in the sense of virulent anti-Jewish sentiments— something even Massignon’s
biographers acknowledge.36 Finally, Mas-signon was far from the paragon of Christian spirituality
that he becomes in Said’s eyes since one of Massignon’s interest in the East was to search its cities
for male prostitutes, something he dared not do in the “decadent West”! As Mircea Eliade recounts in
his journal, “This evening I dine with Mas-signon. We talk for several hours. Terribly voluble! He is,
besides, obsessed with pederasty; again and again he brings the conversation around to ‘young male
prostitutes’ and so on.”37 Massignon was quite ready to exploit the East when it suited him.
Maxime Rodinson has also criticized Massignon and others for taking too far the idea of
seeing the Qur’an on its own terms, though their perspec-tive represented
 a necessary reaction against an understanding of a text in terms that were too often
foreign to the text, and a tendency to isolate themes from the reli-gious context to which they
belong—tendencies which were characteristic of the nineteenth century. However, the
historian must occasionally ask himself if the reaction has not gone too far. Some of the
methods of this school of thought [Massignon and others] must be a matter of concern to
historians. To study the internal logic of a faith and to show respect are very legitimate
objectives. The scholar has a perfect right to attempt to reex-perience within himself the “fire”
and the exigencies of the religious con-sciousness under study. However, the elements that
comprise a coherent system could indeed have derived from a variety of very different sources
and might well have played an entirely different role in other systems. Respect for the faith of
sincere believers cannot be allowed either to block or deflect the investigation of the historian.
The result derived from exam-ining a particular faith on a personal “mental testing bench”
ought to be made the object of a very severe critical examination. One must defend the rights
of elementary historical methodology.38

SAID’S ORIENTALISM

Orientalism reveals at times Said’s own contempt for the non-European, neg-ative attitudes
toward the Orient far greater than that of some imperialists he constantly condemns. Said speaks of
“books and journals in Arabic (and doubtless in Japanese, various Indian dialects, and other Oriental
languages)” (p. 322). As Lewis says, this is indeed a contemptuous, sneering, listing with its
“assumption that what Indians speak and write are not languages but dialects”; even earlier, Said
talks of “innumerable Indian dialects “(p. 52), despite the fact that there are, in India, more than
fifteen languages each of which is spoken by more than forty million people, and each with a long
and rich literary tradition. Where Said, the anti-Orientalist taketh away, the Ori-entalist restoreth, for,
ironically, it was during the British period in India that Sir George A. Grierson carried out The
Linguistic Survey of India (between 1866 and 1927), which resulted in his monumental study in
several thousand pages where he identified and studied 179 Indian languages. All later research is
indebted to this magnificent work of scholarship, which, for Gri-erson, was a token of his love for
India, and what is more, far from being neglected or reviled as Said would no doubt have liked, this
Orientalist classic is still in print in India, nearly eighty years after its publication in 1927. This work
illustrates perfectly the fact that much Orientalist research gave back to, for instance, Indians, their
own rich and varied heritage of which they themselves were not aware.
Said also claims, “No Arab or Islamic scholar can afford to ignore what goes on in scholarly
journals, institutes, and universities in the United States and Europe; the converse is not true. For
example, there is no major journal of Arab Studies published in the Arab world today” (p. 323). Said
simply chooses to ignore such distinguished journals as Majallat al-Ahfad (Omdurman), Alif:
Journal of Comparative Poetics (Cairo), Al-Majalla al-’Arabiya li-l-’Ulum al-Insaniya (Kuwait), Al-
Tawasul al-Lisani (Fez), Review of the Arab Academy (Damascus), al-Abhath (Beirut), the Review of
Maghribi History (Tunis), and the Bulletins of the faculties of Arts and of Social Sciences of Cairo,
Alexandria, and Baghdad, to name a few.

SAID, SEX, AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

If Said can be said to have a bete-noir, it must surely be Bernard Lewis. In a recent review of
Lewis’s book What Went Wrong? in Harper’s?39 Said gave vent to his loathing for Lewis, who is
characterized as repetitious, having a veneer of English sophistication, and whose book is unrelieved
rubbish, an intellectual and moral disaster, the terribly faded rasp of a pretentious acad-emic voice.
“One can almost hear him [Lewis] saying,” continues Said, “over a gin and tonic, ‘You know, old
chap, those wogs never really got it right, did they?’“ Then there is Said’s ultimate argument against
Lewis: “His jowly presence seems to delight his interlocutors and editors”!
But what struck me most was Said’s sentence where he accuses Lewis of persisting “in such
‘philological’ tricks as deriving an aspect of the predilec-tion in contemporary Arab Islam for
revolutionary violence from Bedouin descriptions of a camel rising.” Said, twenty-five years later,
still has not for-gotten his battle with Lewis on the issue of a camel rising, to which I will now turn.
In Orientalism, Said quotes from Lewis’s essay “Islamic Concepts of Revolution”:

In the Arabic-speaking countries a different word was used for [revolution] thawra. The
root th-w-r in Classical Arabic meant to rise up (e.g., of a camel), to be stirred or excited, and
hence, especially in Maghribi usage, to rebel. It is often used in the context of establishing a
petty, independent sov-ereignty; thus, for example, the so-called party kings who ruled in
eleventh-century Spain after the breakup of the Caliphate of Cordova are called thuwwar (sing,
tha’ir). The noun thawra at first means excitement, as in the phrase, cited in the Sihah. a
standard medieval Arabic dictionary, intazir hatta taskun hadhihi ‘Ithawra, wait till this
excitement dies down—very apt recommendation. The verb is used by al-Iji, in the form of
thawaran or itharat fitna, stirring up sedition, as one of the dangers which should dis-courage
a man from practising the duty of resistance to bad government. Thawra is the term used by
Arabic writers in the nineteenth century for the French Revolution, and by their successors for
the approved revolutions, domestic and foreign, of our own time.

Among Said’s conclusions is:

Lewis’s association of thawra with a camel rising and generally with excite-ment (and not with
a struggle on behalf of values) hints much more broadly than is usual for him that the Arab is
scarcely more than a neurotic sexual being. Each of the words or phrases he uses to describe
revolution is tinged with sexuality: stirred, excited, rising up. But for the most part it is a “bad”
sexuality he ascribes to the Arab. In the end, since Arabs are really not equipped for serious action,
their sexual excitement is no more noble than a camel’s rising up. Instead of revolution there is
sedition, setting up a petty sovereignty, and more excitement, which is as much as saying that instead
of copulation the Arab can only achieve foreplay. masturbation, coitus inter-rupts. These, I think, are
Lewis’s implications.40

Can any rational person have drawn any conclusion which even remotely resembled that of
Edward Said’s from Lewis’s scholarly discus-sion of classical Arabic etymology? Were I to indulge
in some prurient psy-chobiography, much in fashion, I would be tempted to ask, “What guilty sexual
anguish is Said trying to cover up? Just what did they do to him at his Cairo English prep school?”
Lewis’s concise and elegant reply to Said’s conclusions is to quote the Duke of Wellington: “If you
believe that, you can believe anything.”
But that is not all. In Orientalism, Said seems to be obssessed with sexual imagery. He finds
D. G. Hogarth’s account of the exploration of Arabia “aptly titled The Penetration of Arabia (1904)”
(p. 224). And yet. Said himself wrote, “[Sir Richard Burton] was able to penetrate to the heart of
Islam and disguised as an Indian Muslim doctor accomplish the pil-grimage to Mecca” (p. 195); and
also, “For Lamartine a pilgrimage to the Orient has involved not only the penetration of the Orient by
an imperious consciousness” (p. 179). Or again, “The point here is that the space of weaker or
underdeveloped regions like the Orient was viewed as something inviting French interest,
penetration, insemination—in short, colonization… . French scholars, administrators, geographers,
and commercial agents poured out their exuberant activity onto the fairly supine, feminine Orient.”
And yet again: “Before Napoleon only two efforts (both by scholars) had been made to invade the
Orient by stripping it of its veils” (p. 76). Just what did they do to Said at prep school?

ORIENTALISTS’ COMPLICITY IN IMPERIALISM

One of Said’s major theses is that Orientalism was not a disinterested activity but a political one,
with Orientalists preparing the ground for and colluding with imperialists: “To say simply that
Orientalism was a rationalization of colonial rule is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was
justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact” (p. 39). The Orientalist provides the
knowledge that keeps the Oriental under control: “Once again, knowledge of subject races or
Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge gives power, more power
requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and
control” (p. 36).
This is combined with Said’s thesis derived from the Coptic socialist thinker Anwar Abdel
Malek that the Orient is always seen by the Orientalists as unchanging, uniform, and peculiar (p. 98),
and Orientals have been reduced to racist stereotypes, and are seen as ahistorical “objects” of study
“stamped with an otherness … of an essentialist character” (p. 97). The Ori-entalists have provided a
false picture of Islam: “Islam has been fundamen-tally misrepresented in the West” (p. 272). Said
adds Foucault to the heady mix;42 the French guru convinced Said that Orientalist scholarship took
place within the ideological framework he called “discourse” and that “the real issue is whether
indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because
they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and
polit-ical ambience of the representer. If the latter alternative is the correct one (as I believe it is),
then we must be prepared to accept the fact that a representa-tionis eo ipso implicated, intertwined,
embedded, interwoven with a great many other things besides the ‘truth,’ which is itself a
representation” (p. 272).
It takes little thought to see that there is a contradiction in Said’s major thesis.43 If Orientalists
have produced a false picture of the Orient, Orientals. Islam, Arabs, and Arabic society—and, in any
case, for Said, there is no such thing as “the truth”—then how could this false or pseudoknowledge
have helped European imperialists to dominate three-quarters of the globe? “Infor-mation and
control,” wrote Said, but what of “false information and control”?
To argue his case, Said very conveniently leaves out German Orientalist scholarship, for their
inclusion would destroy—and their exclusion does indeed totally destroy—the central thesis of
Orientalism, that all Orientalists produced knowledge which generated power, and that they colluded
and helped imperialists found empires. As we shall see, German Orientalists were the greatest of all
scholars of the Orient, but, of course, Germany was never an imperial power in any of the Oriental
countries of North Africa or the Middle East. Bernard Lewis wrote, “[A]t no time before or after the
imperial age did [the British and French] contribution, in range, depth, or standard, match the
achievement of the great centers of Oriental studies in Germany and neighbouring countries. Indeed,
any history or theory of Arabic studies in Europe without the Germans makes as much sense as
would a history or theory of European music or philosophy with the same omission.”44
Those omitted are not peripheral figures but the actual creators of the field of Middle Eastern,
Islamic, and Arabic Studies; scholars of the standing of Paul Kahle (1875-1964), Georg
Kampffmeyer (1864-1936), Rudolf Geyer (1861-1929), F. Giese (1870-1944), Jacob Barth (1851-
1914), August Fischer (1865-1949), Emil Gratzl (1877-1957), Hubert Grimme (1864-1942),
Friedrich Schulthess (1868-1922), Friedrich Schwally (1863-1919), Anton Baumstark (1872-1948),
and Gotthelf Bergstrasser (1886-1933); others not discussed include G. Wustenfeld, Von Kremer, J.
Horovitz, A. Sprenger, and Karl Vollers. Though Noldeke (1836-1930), Fuck, G. Weil, Becker, E.
Sachau, and Carl Brockelmann are mentioned, their work and significance are not discussed in any
detail; Noldeke, whose Geschichte des Qordns (1860) was to become the foundation of all later
studies, is considered one of the pioneers, along with Goldziher, of Islamic Studies in the West.
But of course German scholars are not the only ones omitted; Russians (e.g., Belayev and
Tolstov), Italians (Caetani), and many Jewish scholars who studied Islam with sympathy, considering
it a sister religion (e.g., Abraham Geiger and Paul Kraus), do not rate a mention.
Furthermore, to argue that the French and British Orientalists somehow prepared the ground
for the imperialists is to seriously distort history. The first chair of Arabic in France was founded in
1538 at the College de France, and yet the first French venture into an Arab country was Napoleon’s
in 1798. In England, the first chair of Arabic was founded in 1633, at Cam-bridge, and yet the first
British incursion into Arab territory was not until the nineteenth century. Where is the complicity
between Orientalists and imperi-alists here? When the first two chairs of Arabic were founded in the
West, it was the Muslims who dominated the Mediterranean, the Balkans were under Turkish rule,
and the Turkish Siege of Vienna was still to come.45
Said quotes at length speeches and essays by British statesmen like Lord Cromer, Arthur
Balfour, and Lord Curzon, which do mention the work of some Orientalists. But, as Keith
Windschuttle points out, “these quotations come from works written between 1908 and 1912, that is,
more than twenty-five years after the peak of Britain’s imperial expansion. Rather than expressing
the aims and objectives of potential imperial conquests, these speeches are ex post facto
justifications, sanctioned by hindsight.” Said quotes Curzon as saying, “our familiarity, not merely
with the languages of the people of the East but with their customs, their feelings, their traditions,
their history and religion … is the sole basis upon which we are likely to be able to maintain in the
future the position we have won” (p. 214). But here Curzon is speaking to the House of Lords in
1909 to support the funding of a new London school of Oriental Studies, and, unsurprisingly, “was
painting its prospects in the best light he could.”46

SACY DE SILVESTRE, ERNEST RENAN, AND IGNAZ GOLDZIHER

Lawrence Conrad, in a remarkable book edited by Martin Kramer, has shown with his usual
superb scholarship, clarity, and analytical brilliance, how Said’s account is not just flawed but
fundamentally wrong:

[I]t is difficult to credit the curious linearity that Said postulates for the development of
orientalism from Silvestre de Sacy. As is amply attested by the vast Oriental collections of
such centers of Orientalist learning as Leiden and Berlin, where there were no imperial
considerations to stimulate interest in the Orient, or at least (in the case of the Netherlands) not
in the Middle East, it is a gross error to characterize European Orientalist schol-arship as
dependent upon “imperial Britain and France” for access to texts. The Orientalist tradition in
the Netherlands and Germany was already well-established by the eighteenth century. In
Leiden the decisive impetus (if one is to think in terms of contributions of individuals) had
been provided by Jacob Golius (1596-1667), and the treasures of the Warnerian Library pro-
vided materials for study by an expanding circle of scholars; in Germany a founding father
figure may be identified at Leipzig in Johann Jacob Reiske (1716-74), who had been trained at
Leiden.”47

As Conrad points out in a footnote, “The Islamic holdings at the Leiden University Library
roughly equal those of the British Library (ca. 23,000), and those of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in
Berlin and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris are again about the same (ca. 12,000).”48
Said first exaggerates de Sacy’s influence on Renan, and then com-pounds his error by further
overestimating the importance of both in the his-tory of Orientalism. Renan himself felt he was
continuing the work of Bopp, and only makes “a few passing references to Silvestre de Sacy and
assigns him no particular importance for his own intellectual or professional devel-opment.” Renan
had little esteem for de Sacy’s kind of scholarship, com-piling, editing, or translating.49 As Conrad
concludes, “All this speaks deci-sively against Said’s claim (on p. 177) that Orientalists after
Silvestre de Sacy simply copied and rewrote him.”50 The reception of Renan’s Langues semitiques in
the nineteenth century also tells decisively against Said’s essen-tialist argument that Orientalism
became a static system of ideas that did not generate any new ways of conceptualizing the subject of
its study and analysis.51 Or as Said himself put it, after Silvestre de Sacy and Renan “[all that]
German Oriental scholarship did was to refine and elaborate techniques whose application was to
texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and
France.”
But Renan’s theories were attacked by Semiticists, philologists, and Ori-entalists in general.52
Scholarly criticism of Orientalist scholarship is going on all the time; academic integrity demands
constant criticism of the research and results of colleagues, individual scholars, or whole groups of
scholars, ensuring that their discipline is not a static archive of knowledge never to be disturbed.53
One of the most searching critiques of Renan was provided by Ignaz Goldziher, who was
recognized as early as 1889 as the founder of a new field of scholarship—Arabic and Islamic studies.
Goldziher, the most important Orientalist of all, is dismissed by Said in three lines, though Henry
Kissinger merits three pages.
It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Goldziher and the new paths he opened up in
the study of Islam, Islamic history, Islamic theology, the study of Hadith, and so on. As Conrad says,
Goldziher’s Muhammedanische Studien (1888-89) “encompassed the entire vast range of Arab-
Islamic lit-erary culture—historical texts, poetry, adab, proverb collections, Qur’anic exegesis,
doctrinal works, fiqh, hadith, biographical dictionaries, and so forth—and from them laid out an
incredibly rich vista of historical experience that not only had not been known before, but even had
not been sought. It would be no exaggeration to say that Goldziher’s colleagues were stunned by his
work.”54
Goldziher was not at all influenced by Silvestre de Sacy, or Renan, or French Orientalism but
rather by Abraham Geiger of the Jewish Enlighten-ment, the Tubingen school led by Bauer, and by
Moses Mendelssohn, and Immanuel Kant. Here is Conrad’s summary of Goldziher’s criticism of
Renan:

[Renan’s research on matters “Semitic “] systematically demeaned and dep-recated the

object of its study, robbed it of historical worth, defined it almost wholly in terms of negative
attributes, denied its relevance as any-thing more than an artifact, and even then insisted that it
be judged against the standard of values and norms of another people and another time a priori
privileged and protected from the same harsh scrutiny directed at other peo-ples. Renaniana
was a slippery sphere: one could hold it or drop it, but not work with it. Having demonstrated,
along with other scholars, how Hawed it was in both conception and execution, Goldziher
wisely decided to drop it and urged others to do the same.55

Goldziher was to remain an objective but always sympathetic observer of the Islamic world.56
He constantly criticized Westernization and Western influence in the Near East, he particularly
despised Christian missionaries, and had no sympathy for Zionism. Goldziher subscribed to the
Enlighten-ment values and felt that his insights into Islam were equally relevant to Jews since his
conclusions about a kindred faith had a universal dimension to them. His spiritual empathy for Islam
and Muslims resulted in this extraor-dianry conclusion: “I became inwardly convinced that I myself
was a Muslim. [In Cairo, i]n the midst of the thousands of the pious, I rubbed my forehead against
the floor of the mosque. Never in my life was I more devout, more truly devout, than on that exalted
Friday.”57
Since Said spends more time on Renan than other Orientalists despite the fact that Renan is not
as important a figure as Said imagines, it is worth pointing out that Renan himself also changed his
views. Those who would see Renan as a racist would do well to read his celebrated lecture of 1882,
“Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” where he implicitly repudiates his earlier views on racial inequality put
forward in the Dialogues, and he explicitly rejects the attempt to rest the concept of nationhood on
race, language, economics, geog-raphy, and religion. Shmuel Almog has argued that Renan was not
consciously antisemitic, and points to Renan’s explicit denunciation of antisemitism, his protest
against Tisza-Eszlar blood libel in 1882, his efforts with Victor Hugo to organize relief committees
for the Jews of Russia, and so on.58
Basing himself on Muslim sources, Renan drew an exceedingly favor-able portrait of the
Prophet,59 while recognizing his moral failings: “On the whole, Muhammad seems to us like a gentle
man, sensitive, faithful, free from rancour and hatred. His affections were sincere, his character in
general was inclined to kindness… . Neither ambition nor religious rapture had dried up the personal
feelings in him. Not at all akin to this ambitious, heart-less, and machiavellian fanatic [depicted by
Voltaire in his drama Mahomet}.” Renan is at pains to defend Muhammad from possible criti-cisms:
“As to the features of the life of Muhammad which, to our eyes, would be unpardonable blots on his
morality, it would be unjust to criticize them too harshly. … It would also be unjust to judge severely
and with our own con-sidered ideas, the acts of Muhammad, which in our days would be called
swindles.” The Prophet was no imposter. “It would be to totally lack a his-torical sense to suppose
that a revolution as profound as Islam could be accomplished merely by some clever scheming, and
Muhammad is no more explicable by imposture and trickery than by illuminism and religious fer-
vour.” Being a religious humanist, Renan valued Islam, and religion in gen-eral, “because it
manifested what was divine in human nature”60 and seemed to answer the deepest instincts of human
nature, and in particular it answered the needs of seventh-century Arabia, an idea taken up in modern
times by Montgomery Watt.
Second, Renan concludes his essay with the following observation:

It is superfluous to add that if ever a reformist movement manifests itself in Islam, Europe
should only participate in it by the influence of a most gen-eral kind. It would be ungracious of
her to wish to settle the faith of others. All the while actively pursuing the propagation of her
dogma which is civil-isation, she ought to leave to the peoples themselves the infinitely
delicate task of adjusting their own religious traditions to their new needs; and to respect that
most inalienable right of nations as much as of individuals, the right to preside oneself, in the
most perfect freedom, over the revolutions of one’s conscience.

These are hardly the words of a cultural imperialist. Nor does Renan believe that Islam is
unchanging or essentially incapable of changing:

Symptoms of a more serious nature are appearing, I know, in Egypt and Turkey. There
contact with European science and customs has produced freethought sometimes scarcely
disguised. Sincere believers who are aware of the danger do not hide their disquiet, and
denounce the books of Euro-pean science as containing deadly errors, and subversive of all
religious faith. I nevertheless persist in believing that if the East can surmount its apathy and
go beyond the limits that up to now it was unable to as far as rational speculation was
concerned, Islam will not pose a serious obstacle to the progress of the modern mind. The lack
of theological centralisation has always left a certain degree of religious liberty to Muslim
nations.61
ORIENTALISTS FIGHT BACK

For a number of years now, Islamologists have been aware of the disastrous effect of Said’s
Orientalism on their discipline. Prof. Herbert Berg has com-plained that the latter’s influence has
resulted in “a fear of asking and answering potentially embarrassing questions—ones which might
upset Muslim sensibilities.”62
Prof. Montgomery Watt, now in his nineties, one of the most respected Western Islamologists
alive, takes Said to task for asserting that Sir Hamilton Gibb was wrong in saying that the master
science of Islam was law and not theology. This, says Watt, “shows Said’s ignorance of Islam.” But
Watt, rather unfairly, adds, “since he is from a Christian Arab background.”63 Said is indeed ignorant
of Islam, but surely not because he is a Christian, since Watt and Gibb themselves were devout
Christians. Watt also decries Said’s tendency to ascribe dubious motives to various writers, scholars,
and stateman such as Gibb and Lane, with Said committing doctrinal blunders such as not realising
that non-Muslims could not marry Muslim women.64
R. Stephen Humphreys found Said’s book important in some ways because it showed how
some Orientalists were indeed “trapped within a vision that portrayed Islam and the Middle East as in
some way essentially different from ‘the West.’“ Nonetheless, “Edward Said’s analysis of Orien-
talism is overdrawn and misleading in many ways, and purely as [a] piece of intellectual history,
Orientalism is a seriously flawed book.” Even more damning, Said’s book actually discouraged,
argues Humphreys, the very idea of modernization of Middle Eastern societies. “In an ironic way, it
also emboldened the Islamic activists and militants who were then just begin-ning to enter the
political arena. These could use Said to attack their oppo-nents in the Middle East as slavish
‘Westernists,’ who were out of touch with the authentic culture and values of their own countries.
Said’s book has had less impact on the study of medieval Islamic history—partly because
medievalists know how distorted his account of classical Western Orientalism really is.”65
Even scholars praised by Said in Orientalism do not particularly like his analysis, arguments,
or conclusions. Maxime Rodinson thinks “as usual, [Said’s] militant stand leads him repeatedly to
make excessive statements,” due, no doubt, to the fact that Said was “inadequately versed in the
practical work of the Orientalists.”66 Rodinson also calls Said’s polemic and style “Stalinist.”67 While
P. J.Vatikiotis wrote, “Said introduced McCarthyism into Middle Eastern Studies,”68 Jacques Berque,
also praised by Said, wrote that the latter had “done quite a disservice to his countrymen in allowing
them to believe in a Western intelligence coalition against them.”69
For Clive Dewey, Said’s book “was, technically, so bad; in every respect, in its use of sources,
in its deductions, it lacked rigour and balance. The out-come was a caricature of Western knowledge
of the Orient, driven by an overtly political agenda. Yet it clearly touched a deep vein of vulgar preju-
dice running through American academe.”70
The most famous modern scholar who not only replied to but who mopped the floor with Said
was, of course, Bernard Lewis. Lewis points to many serious errors of history, interpretation,
analysis, and omission. Lewis has never been answered, let alone refuted.
Lewis points out that even among British and French scholars on whom Said concentrates, he
does not mention at all Claude Cahen, Evariste Levi-Provencal, Henri Corbin, Marius Canard,
Charles Pellat, William and George Marcais, or William Wright, and, he only mentioned in passing,
usually in a long list of names, scholars like R. A. Nicholson, Guy Le Strange, Sir Thomas Arnold,
and E. G. Browne. “Even for those whom he does cite, Mr. Said makes a remarkably arbitrary choice
of works. His common practice indeed is to omit their major contributions to scholarship and instead
fasten on minor or occasional writings.” Said even fabricates lies about eminent scholars: “Thus in
speaking of the late-eighteenth-/early-nineteenth-century French Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy, Mr.
Said remarks that ‘he ransacked the Oriental archives… . What texts he isolated, he then brought
back; he doc-tored them .”‘71 If these words bear any meaning at all, it is that Sacy was somehow at
fault in his access to these documents and then committed the crime of tampering with them. This
outrageous libel on a great scholar is without a shred of truth.72
Another false accusation that Said flings out is that Orientalists never properly discussed the
Orientals’ economic activities until Rodinson’s Islam and Capitalism (1966). This shows Said’s total
ignorance of the works of Adam Mez, J. H. Kramers, W. Bjorkman, V. Barthold, and Thomas
Armold, all of whom dealt with the economic activities of Muslims. As Rodinson himself points out
elsewhere, one of the three scholars who was a pioneer in this field was Bernard Lewis.73
Said also talks of Islamic Orientalism being cut off from developments in other fields in the
humanities, particularly the economic and social (p. 261). But this again only reveals Said’s
ignorance of the works of real Ori-entalists rather than those of his imagination. As Rodinson says,
the soci-ology of Islam is an ancient subject, citing the work of R. Levy. Rodinson then points out
that Emile Durkheim’s celebrated journal L’Annee soci-ologique listed every year starting from the
first decades of the twentieth cen-tury a certain number of works on Islam.74

NEGATIVE ARAB AND ASIAN REACTION TO SAID’S ORIENTALISM

It must have been particularly galling for Said to see the hostile reviews of his Orientalism from
Arab, Iranian, or Asian intellectuals, some of whom he admired and singled out for praise in many of
his works. For example, Nikki Keddie, praised in Covering Islam, talked of the disastrous influence
of Ori-entalism, even though she herself admired parts of it:

I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word
“orientalism” as a generalized swear-word essentially referring to people who take the
“wrong” position on the Arab-Israeli dispute or to people who are judged too “conservative.”
It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines. So
“orientalism” for may people is a word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dis-
miss certain scholars and their works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what
Edward Said meant at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan.75

Keddie also noted that the book “could also be used in a dangerous way because it can
encourage people to say, ‘You Westerners, you can’t do our history right, you can’t study it right, you
really shouldn’t be studying it. we are the only ones who can study our own history properly.’“76
Albert Hourani, who is much admired by Said, made a similar point, “I think all this talk after
Edward’s book also has a certain danger. There is a certain counterattack of Muslims, who say
nobody understands Islam except themselves.”77
Hourani went further in his criticism of Said’s Orientalism: “Orientalism has now become a
dirty word. Nevertheless it should be used for a perfectly respected discipline. … I think [Said]
carries it too far when he says that the Orientalists delivered the Orient bound to the imperial
powers… . Edward totally ignores the German tradition and philosophy of history which was the
central tradition of the Orientalists. … I think Edward’s other books are admirable.”78 Similarly, Aijaz
Ahmed thought Orientalism was a “deeply flawed book,” and would be forgotten when the dust
settled, whereas Said’s books on Palestine would be remembered.79
Kanan Makiya, the eminent Iraqi scholar, chronicled Said’s disastrous influence particularly in
the Arab world:

Orientalism as an intellectual project influenced a whole generation of young Arab

scholars, and it shaped the discipline of modem Middle East studies in the 1980s. The original
book was never intended as a critique of contemporary Arab politics, yet it fed into a deeply
 rooted populist politics of resentment against the West. The distortions it analyzed came from
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but these were marshaled by young Arab and “pro-
Arab” scholars into an intellectual-political agenda that was out of kilter with the real needs of
Arabs who were living in a world char-acterized by rapidly escalating cruelty, not ever-
increasing imperial domi-nation. The trajectory from Said’s Orientalism to his Covering Islam
… is premised on the morally wrong idea that the West is to be blamed in the here-and-now
for its long nefarious history of association with the Middle East. Thus it unwittingly deflected
from the real problems of the Middle East at the same time as it contributed more bitterness to
the armory of young impressionable Arabs when there was already far too much of that
around.80

Orientalism, continues Makiya, “makes Arabs feel contented with the way they are, instead of
making them rethink fundamental assumptions which so clearly haven’t worked… . They desperately
need to unlearn ideas such as that ‘every European’ in what he or she has to say about the world is or
was a ‘racist.’ … The ironical fact is that the book was given the attention it received in the ‘almost
totally ethnocentric’ West largely because its author was a Palestinian.”81
Though he finds much to admire in Said’s Orientalism, the Syrian philosopher Sadiq al-Azm
finds that “the stylist and polemicist in Edward Said very often runs away with the systematic
thinker.”82 Al-Azm also finds Said guilty of the very essentialism that Said ostensibly sets out to
criticize, perpetuating the distinction between East and West. Said further renders a great disservice
to those who wish to examine the difficult question of how one can study other cultures from a
libertarian perspective. Al-Azm recog-nizes Said’s antiscientific bent, and defends certain Orientalist
theses from Said’s criticism; for example, al-Azm says:

I cannot agree with Said that their “Orientalist mentality” blinded them to the realities of
Muslim societies and definitively distorted their views of the East in general. For instance:
isn’t it true, on the whole, that the inhabitants of Damascus and Cairo today feel the presence
of the transcendental in their lives more palpably and more actively than Parisians and
Londoners? Isn’t it tue that religion means everything to the contemporary Moroccan,
Algerian, and Iranian peasant in a manner it cannot mean for the American farmer or the
member of a Russian kolkhoz? And isn’t it a fact that the belief in the laws of nature is more
deeply rooted in the minds of university students in Moscow and New York than among the
students of al-Azhar and of Teheran University.83

Al-Azm also criticizes Said’s accounts of Karl Marx and his contradictory appraisal of Louis
Massignon. What Said finds insufferable is the nineteenth-century European’s feeling of superiority,
but Sadiq al-Azm says that indeed “nineteenth-century Europe was superior to Asia and much of the
rest of the world in terms of productive capacities, social organisation, historical ascen-dancy,
military might, and scientific and technological development.”84
Nadim al-Bitar, a Lebanese Muslim, finds Said’s generalizations about all Orientalists hard to
accept, and is very skeptical about Said having read more than a handful of Orientalist works. Al-
Bitar also accuses Said of essen-tialism: “[Said] does to [Western] Orientalism what he accuses the
latter of doing to the Orient. He dichotomizes it and essentializes it. East is East and West is West and
each has its own intrinsic and permanent nature.”85 Al-Saghir, an Iraqi scholar, also takes Said to task
for dismissing all Orientalists a priori. For example, al-Saghir looks at Orientalist work on the
Qur’an, and finds it, on the whole, very valuable, “carefully researched and intellectually honest,”
their “overrall characteristic is purely scholarly.”86
The most pernicious legacy of Said’s Orientalism is its support for reli-gious fundamentalism,
and its insistence that “all the ills |of the Arab world] emanate from Orientalism and have nothing to
do with the socioeconomic, political, and ideological makeup of the Arab lands or with the cultural
his-torical backwardness which stands behind it.”87
Thus ironically, Said, a Christian agnostic becomes a de facto apologist and protector of Islam,
the least Christian and certainly the religion least given to self-doubt. Despite his claims that he does
not know anything about Islam, and despite the fact he has never written a single scholarly work
devoted to Islam, Said has always accepted the role in the West of an Islamic expert, and has never
flinched from telling us what the real Islam is. One’s reaction is “stop telling us what Islam is, let the
Muslims do that, stop talking for the Muslims.” As a secularist defending Islam, one wonders how he
will be able argue for a nontheocratic state once Palestine becomes a reality. If Islam is such a
wonderful religion, why not convert to it, and why not accept it as the basis for any new constitution?
At some stage, Said will have to do what he has been avoiding all his adult life, criticize Islam, or at
least indi-rectly the idea of a theocracy.
Said has much to answer for. Orientalism, despite the fact that it is worthless as intellectual
history, has left Western scholars in fear of asking questions—in other words, has inhibited their
research. Said’s work, with its strident anti-Westernism, has made the goal of modernization of the
Middle Eastern societies that much more difficult. His work, wherein all the ills of Middle Eastern
societies are blamed on the wicked West, has made much-needed self-criticism nearly impossible.
His work has encouraged Islamic fundamentalists whose impact on world affairs needs no
underlining.
 51.
JIHAD AND THE 51. PROFESSORS
Daniel Pipes

Last spring, the faculty of Harvard College selected a graduating senior named Zayed Yasin to
deliver a speech at the university’s commencement exercises in June. When the title of the speech
—”My American Jihad”—was announced, it quite naturally aroused questions. Why, it was asked,
should Harvard wish to promote the concept of jihad—or “holy war”—just months after thousands of
Americans had lost their lives to a jihad carried out by nineteen suicide hijackers acting in the name
of Islam? Yasin, a past presi-dent of the Harvard Islamic Society, had a ready answer. To connect
jihad to warfare, he said, was to misunderstand it. Rather, “in the Muslim tradition, jihad represents a
struggle to do the right thing.” His own purpose, Yasin added, was to “reclaim the word for its true
meaning, which is inner struggle.”
In the speech itself, Yasin would elaborate on this point:

Jihad, in its truest and purest form, the form to which all Muslims aspire, is the
determination to do right, to do justice even against your own interests. It is an individual
struggle for personal moral behavior. Especially today, it is a struggle that exists on many
levels: self-purification and awareness, public service and social justice. On a global scale, it is
a struggle involving people of all ages, colors, and creeds, for control of the Big Decisions: not
only who controls what piece of land, but more importantly who gets med-icine, who can eat.

Reprinted from Commentary. April 2002. by permission; all rights reserved.

Could this be right? To be sure, Yasin was not a scholar of Islam, and nei-ther was the Harvard
dean, Michael Shinagel, who enthusiastically endorsed his “thoughtful oration” and declared in his
own name that jihad is a personal struggle “to promote justice and understanding in ourselves and in
our society.” But they both did accurately reflect the consensus of Islamic spe-cialists at their
institution. Thus, David Little, a Harvard professor of religion and international affairs, had stated
after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that jihad “is not a license to kill,” while to David Mitten, a
professor of clas-sical art and archaeology as well as faculty adviser to the Harvard Islamic Society,
true jihad is “the constant struggle of Muslims to conquer their inner base instincts, to follow the path
to God, and to do good in society.” In a sim-ilar vein, history professor Roy Mottahedeh asserted that
“a majority of learned Muslim thinkers, drawing on impeccable scholarship, insist that jihad must be
understood as a struggle without arms.”
Nor are Harvard’s scholars exceptional in this regard. The truth is that anyone seeking
guidance on the all-important Islamic concept of jihad would get almost identical instruction from
members of the professoriate across the United States. As I discovered through an examination of
media statements by such university-based specialists, they tend to portray the phenomenon of jihad
in a remarkably similar fashion—only, the portrait happens to be false.

Several interlocking themes emerge from the more than two dozen experts I surveyed.1 Only
four of them admit that jihad has any military component whatsoever, and even they, with but a
single exception, insist that this com-ponent is purely defensive in nature. Valerie Hoffman of the
University of Illi-nois is unique in saying (as paraphrased by a journalist) that “no Muslim she knew
would have endorsed such terrorism [as the attacks of September 11 ], as it goes against Islamic rules
of engagement.” No other scholar would go so far as even this implicit hint that jihad includes an
offensive component.
Thus, John Esposito of Georgetown, perhaps the most visible academic scholar of Islam, holds
that “in the struggle to be a good Muslim, there may be times where one will be called upon to
defend one’s faith and community. Then [jihad] can take on the meaning of armed struggle.” Another
specialist holding this view is Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim of Emory, who explains that “war is
forbidden by the Sharia [Islamic law] except in two cases: self-defense and the propagation of the
Islamic faith.” According to Blake Burleson of Baylor, what this means is that, in Islam, an act of
aggression like September 11 “would not be considered a holy war.”
To another half-dozen scholars in my survey, jihad may likewise include militarily defensive
engagements, but this meaning is itself secondary to lofty notions of moral self-improvement.
Charles Kimball, chairman of the department of religion at Wake Forest, puts it succinctly: jihad
“means strug-gling or striving on behalf of God. The great jihad for most is a struggle against
oneself. The lesser jihad is the outward, defensive jihad.” Pro-nouncing similarly are such authorities
as Mohammad Siddiqi of Western Illinois; John Iskander of Georgia State; Mark Woodard of
Arizona State; Taha Jabir al-Alwani of the graduate school of Islamic and social sciences in
Leesburg, Virginia, and Barbara Stowasser of Georgetown.
But an even larger contingent—nine of those surveyed—deny that jihad has any military
meaning whatsoever. For Joe Elder, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, the idea
that jihad means holy war is “a gross misinterpretation.” Rather, he says, jihad is a “religious
struggle, which more closely reflects the inner, personal struggles of the religion.” For Dell DeChant,
a professor of world religions at the University of South Florida, the word as “usually understood”
means “a struggle to be true to the will of God and not holy war.”
Concurring views have been voiced by, among others, John Kelsay of John Carroll University,
Zahid Bukhari of Georgetown, and James Johnson of Rutgers. Roxanne Euben of Wellesley College,
the author of The Road to Kandahar: A Genealogy of Jihad in Modern Islamist Political Thought,
asserts that “[f]or many Muslims, jihad means to resist temptation and become a better person.” John
Parcels, a professor of philosophy and reli-gious studies at Georgia Southern University, defines jihad
as a struggle “over the appetites and your own will.” For Ned Rinalducci, a professor of sociology at
Armstrong Atlantic State University, the goals of jihad are: “Internally, to be a good Muslim.
Externally, to create a just society.” And Farid Eseck, professor of Islamic studies at Auburn
Seminary in New York City, memorably describes jihad as “resisting apartheid or working for
women’s rights.”
Finally, there are those academics who focus on the concept of jihad in the sense of “self-
purification” and then proceed to universalize it, applying it to non-Muslims as well as Muslims.
Thus, to Bruce Lawrence, a prominent professor of Islamic studies at Duke, not only is jihad itself a
highly elastic term (“being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to
control one’s anger”), but non-Muslims should also “cultivate … a civil virtue known as jihad”:

Jihad? Yes, jihad … a jihad that would be a genuine struggle against our own myopia and
neglect as much as it is against outside others who condemn or hate us for what we do, not for
what we are…. For us Americans, the greater jihad would mean that we must review US
 domestic and foreign policies in a world that currently exhibits little signs of promoting justice
for all.

Here we find ourselves returned to the sentiments expressed by the Harvard commencement
speaker, who sought to convince his audience that jihad is something all Americans should admire.

The trouble with this accumulated wisdom of the scholars is simple to state. It suggests that
Osama bin Laden had no idea what he was saying when he declared jihad on the United States
several years ago and then repeatedly murdered Americans in Somalia, at the US embassies in East
Africa, in the port of Aden, and then on September 11, 2001. It implies that organizations with the
word jihad in their titles, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and bin Laden’s own “International
Islamic Front for the Jihad against Jews and Cru-sade[rs],” are grossly misnamed. And what about all
the Muslims waging violent and aggressive jihads, under that very name and at this very moment, in
Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Ambon, and other places around the world?
Have they not heard that jihad is a matter of con-trolling one’s anger?
But of course it is bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, and the jihadists worldwide who define the term,
not a covey of academic apologists. More importantly, the way the jihadists understand the term is in
keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history.
In premodern times, jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Mus-lims, then as now the
Islamic majority.2 It meant the legal, compulsory, com-munal effort to expand the territories ruled by
Muslims (known in Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar
al-Harb). In this prevailing conception, the purpose of jihad is political, not reli-gious. It aims not so
much to spread the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often
followed the latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to
achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world.
By winning territory and diminishing the size of areas ruled by non-Mus-lims, jihad
accomplishes two goals: it manifests Islam’s claim to replace other faiths, and it brings about the
benefit of a just world order. In the words of Majid Khadduri of Johns Hopkins University, writing in
1955 (before political correctness conquered the universities), jihad is “an instrument for both the
universalization of |Islamic] religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.”
As for the conditions under which jihad might be undertaken—when, by whom, against
whom, with what sort of declaration of war, ending how, with what division of spoils, and so on—
these are matters that religious scholars worked out in excruciating detail over the centuries. But
about the basic meaning of jihad—warfare against unbelievers to extend Muslim domains—there
was perfect consensus. For example, the most important collection of Hadith (reports about the
sayings and actions of Muhammad), called Sahih Bukhari, contains 199 references to jihad, and
every one of them refers to it in the sense of armed warfare against non-Muslims. To quote the 1885
Dictionary of Islam, jihad is “an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur’an and in the
traditions [Hadith] as a divine institu-tion, and enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam
and of repelling evil from Muslims.”

Jihad was no abstract obligation through the centuries, but a key aspect of Muslim life.
According to one calculation, Muhammad himself engaged in seventy-eight battles, of which just one
(the battle of the Ditch) was defen-sive. Within a century after the Prophet’s death in 632, Muslim
armies had reached as far as India in the east and Spain in the west. Though such a dra-matic single
expansion was never again to be repeated, important victories in subsequent centuries included the
seventeen Indian campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 998-1030), the battle of Manzikert opening
Anatolia (1071), the conquest of Constantinople (1453), and the triumphs of Uthman dan Fodio in
West Africa (1804—1817). In brief, jihad was part of the warp and woof not only of premodern
Muslim doctrine but of premodern Muslim life.
 That said, jihad also had two variant meanings over the ages, one of them more radical than
the standard meaning and one quite pacific. The first, mainly associated with the thinker Ibn
Taymiyya (1268-1328), holds that born Muslims who fail to live up to the requirements of their faith
are them-selves to be considered unbelievers, and so legitimate targets of jihad. This tended to come
in handy when (as was often the case) one Muslim ruler made war against another; only by
portraying the enemy as not properly Muslim could the war be dignified as a jihad.
The second variant, usually associated with Sufis, or Muslim mystics, was the doctrine
customarily translated as “greater jihad” but perhaps more usefully termed “higher jihad.” This Sufi
variant invokes allegorical modes of interpretation to turn jihad’s literal meaning of armed conflict
upside down, calling instead for a withdrawal from the world to struggle against one’s baser instincts
in pursuit of numinous awareness and spiritual depth.

But as Rudolph Peters notes in his authoritative Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (1995),
this interpretation was “hardly touched upon” in pre-modern legal writings on jihad.

In the vast majority of premodern cases, then, jihad signified one thing only: armed action
versus non-Muslims. In modern times, things have of course become somewhat more complicated, as
Islam has undergone contradictory changes resulting from its contact with Western influences.
Muslims having to cope with the West have tended to adopt one of three broad approaches: Islamist,
reformist, or secularist. For the purposes of this discussion, we may put aside the secularists (such as
Kemal Atatiirk), for they reject jihad in its entirety, and instead focus on the Islamists and reformists.
Both have fas-tened on the variant meanings of jihad to develop their own interpretations.
Islamists, besides adhering to the primary conception of jihad as armed warfare against
infidels, have also adopted as their own Ibn Taymiyya’s call to target impious Muslims. This
approach acquired increased salience through the twentieth century as Islamist thinkers like Hassan
el-Banna (1906-1949), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), Sayyid Abuul Ala Maududi (1903-1979), and
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1903-1989) promoted jihad against putatively Muslim rulers who
failed to live up to or apply the laws of Islam. The revolutionaries who overthrew the shah of Iran in
1979 and the assassins who gunned down President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt two years later overtly
held to this doctrine. So does Osama bin Laden.
Reformists, by contrast, reinterpret Islam to make it compatible with Western ways. It is they
—principally through the writings of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, a nineteenth-century reformist leader
in India—who have worked to transform the idea of jihad into a purely defensive undertaking com-
patible with the premises of international law. This approach, characterized in 1965 by the definitive
Encyclopedia of Islam as “wholly apologetic,” owes far more to Western than to Islamic thinking. In
our own day, it has devolved fur-ther into what Martin Kramer has dubbed “a kind of Oriental
Quakerism,” and it, together with a revival of the Sufi notion of “greater jihad,” is what has
emboldened some to deny that jihad has any martial component whatsoever, instead redefining the
idea into a purely spiritual or social activity.
For most Muslims in the world today, these moves away from the old sense of jihad are rather
remote. They neither see their own rulers as targets deserving of jihad nor are they ready to become
Quakers. Instead, the classic notion of jihad continues to resonate with vast numbers of them, as
Alfred Morabia, a foremost French scholar of the topic, noted in 1993:

Offensive, bellicose jihad, the one codified by the specialists and theolo-gians, has not
ceased to awaken an echo in the Muslim consciousness, both individual and collective…. To
be sure, contemporary apologists present a picture of this religious obligation that conforms
well to the contemporary norms of human rights,… but the people are not convinced by this.
… The overwhelming majority of Muslims remain under the spiritual sway of a law … whose
 key requirement is the demand, not to speak of the hope, to make the Word of God triumph
everywhere in the world.

In brief, jihad in the raw remains a powerful force in the Muslim world, and this goes far to
explain the immense appeal of a figure like Osama bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of
September 11, 2001.
Contrary to the graduating Harvard senior who assured his audience that “jihad is not
something that should make someone feel uncomfortable,” this concept has caused and continues to
cause not merely discomfort but untold human suffering: in the words of the Swiss specialist Bat
Ye’or, “war, dis-possession, dhimmitude [subordination], slavery, and death.” As Bat Ye’or points
out, Muslims “have the right as Muslims to say that jihad is just and spiritual” if they so wish; but by
the same token, any truly honest accounting would have to give voice to the countless “infidels who
were and are the vic-tims of jihad” and who, no less than the victims of Nazism or communism, have
“their own opinion of the jihad that targets them.”

Islamists seeking to advance their agenda within Western, non-Muslim envi-ronments—for

example, as lobbyists in Washington, DC—cannot frankly divulge their views and still remain
players in the political game. So as not to arouse fears and so as not to isolate themselves, these
individuals and orga-nizations usually cloak their true outlook in moderate language, at least when
addressing the non-Muslim public. When referring to jihad, they adopt the terminology of reformists,
presenting warfare as decidedly secondary to the goal of inner struggle and social betterment. Thus,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the most aggressive and prominent Islamist
group in the United States, insists that jihad “does not mean ‘holy war’“ but rather is a “broad
Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the
quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense (e.g., having a standing army for
national defense), or fighting against tyranny or oppression.”
This sort of talk is pure disinformation, reminiscent of the language of Soviet front groups in
decades past. A dramatic example of it was on offer at the trial of John Walker Lindh, the Marin
County teenager who went off to wage jihad on behalf of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. At his
sentencing in early October, Lindh told the court that, in common with “mainstream Muslims around
the world,” he himself understood jihad as a variety of activ-ities ranging “from striving to overcome
one’s own personal faults, to speaking out for the truth in adverse circumstances, to military action in
defense of justice.”
That a jihadist caught in the act of offensive armed warfare should unashamedly proffer so
mealymouthed a definition of his actions may seem extraordinary. But it is perfectly in tune with the
explaining away of jihad promoted by academic specialists, as well as by Islamist organizations
engaging in public relations. For usage of the term in its plain meaning, we have to turn to Islamists
not so engaged. Such Islamists speak openly of jihad in its proper, martial sense. Here is Osama bin
Laden: Allah “orders us to carry out the holy struggle, jihad, to raise the word of Allah above the
words of the unbelievers.” And here is Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former head of the Taliban
regime, exhorting Muslim youth: “Head for jihad and have your guns ready.”

It is an intellectual scandal that, since September 11, 2001, scholars at Amer-ican universities
have repeatedly and all but unanimously issued public state-ments that avoid or whitewash the
primary meaning of jihad in Islamic law and Muslim history. It is quite as if historians of medieval
Europe were to deny that the word crusade ever had martial overtones, instead pointing to such terms
as “crusade on hunger” or “crusade against drugs” to demonstrate that the term signifies an effort to
improve society.
Among today’s academic specialists who have undertaken to sanitize this key Islamic concept,
many are no doubt acting out of the impulses of political correctness and the multiculturalist urge to
protect a non-Western civilization from criticism by making it appear just like our own. As for
Islamists among those academics, at least some have a different purpose: like CAIR and other,
similar organizations, they are endeavoring to camouflage a threatening concept by rendering it in
terms acceptable within university dis-course. Non-Muslim colleagues who play along with this
deception may be seen as having effectively assumed the role of dhimmi, the Islamic term for a
Christian or Jew living under Muslim rule who is tolerated so long as he bends the knee and accepts
Islam’s superiority.
As I can attest, one who dares to dissent and utter the truth on the matter of jihad falls under
enormous censure—and not just in universities. In June of this year, in a debate with an Islamist on
ABC’s Nightline, I stated: “The fact is, historically speaking—I speak as a historian—jihad has
meant expanding the realm of Islam through armed warfare.” More recently, on a PBS Newshour
with Jim Lehrer program about alleged discrimination against Muslims in the United States, a clip
was shown of a role-playing seminar, conducted by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, in which
Muslim “activists” were practicing how to deal with “hostile” critics. As part of this exercise, my
image was shown to the seminar as I spoke my sentence from the Nightline debate. The comment on
this scene by the show’s PBS narrator ran as follows: “Muslim activists have been troubled by critics
who have publicly condemned Islam as a violent and evil religion.” We have thus reached a point
where merely to state a well-known fact about Islam earns one the status of a hostile bigot on a
prestigious and publicly funded televi-sion show.

Americans struggling to make sense of the war declared on them in the name of jihad, whether
they are policymakers, journalists, or citizens, have every reason to be deeply confused as to who
their enemy is and what his goals are. Even people who think they know that jihad means holy war
are susceptible to the combined efforts of scholars and Islamists brandishing notions like “resisting
apartheid or working for women’s rights.” The result is to becloud reality, obstructing the possibility
of achieving a clear, honest understanding of what and whom we are fighting, and why.
It is for this reason that the nearly universal falsification of jihad on the part of American
academic scholars is an issue of far-reaching consequence. It should be a matter of urgent concern
not only to anyone connected with or directly affected by university life—other faculty members,
administrators, alumni, state and federal representatives, parents of students, and students themselves
—but to us all.
 52.
THE ISLAMIC DISINFORMATION LOBRY
American Muslim Groups’ Politically Motivated
Distortions of Islam
Robert Spencer

Islam has an image problem, and American Muslim organizations know it.
If you ask them, this problem comes from people lying about Islam. Irre-sponsible, hate-filled
Christian preachers and others decry Islam as a violent religion, Muslim spokesmen claim, and this
bigotry gives rise to acts of vio-lence against Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) and other Muslim groups have dedicated themselves to heading off such attacks by setting
the record straight. On its Web site CAIR says that it was established in order to “promote a positive
image of Islam and Muslims in America,” and declares that “we believe misrepresentations of Islam
are most often the result of ignorance on the part of non-Muslims and reluctance on the part of
Muslims to articulate their case.”1
Laudable—but the cure offered by American Muslim groups may be worse than the disease.
Instead of taking the post-September 11 interest in Islam as an opportunity for a thorough and
searching examination of the root causes of Islamic terrorism and the hatred that fomented the
terrorist attacks, all too often these groups have constructed a “positive image of Islam” out of smoke
and mirrors. Instead of dealing forthrightly and constructively with the concerns and questions that
non-Muslims have had since the attacks, CAIR, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (HIT),
and others seem interested in what one former Muslim termed “throwing sand in our eyes.”
Sand in hand, the HIT recently sponsored general mailing of a flyer titled “Q & A on Islam
and Arab Americans.” Virtually everything about this little flyer is misleading, starting with the title
itself: although it purports to be about “Arab Americans,” in fact it is solely about Islam. Several
times the author of the flyer does what American Muslim groups in other contexts scold non-
Muslims for doing: equating Muslims and Arabs. In one place it states that American Muslims come
“from a wide variety of ethnic back-grounds and national origins,” yet in the very next column it
poses the ques-tion “What is an appropriate way to greet an Arab American?” and explains in the
answer that “some Muslims feel it is inappropriate for unrelated men and women to shake hands.”2
While it acknowledges that “most Arab Amer-icans grew up in the USA and do not require special
greetings,” it makes no mention of the main reason why for most American Arabs, it’s completely
irrelevant what Muslims feel about shaking hands or anything else: the vast majority of Arab
Americans are Christians.

Reprinted with permission from the Free Congress Foundation.

 This confusion is common: it even appears at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC). This organization lists boxer Muhammad Ali as a member of its advisory board.
Ali is a famous American convert to Islam, but does that make him an Arab? The ADC does
acknowledge that most Arab Americans aren’t Muslims, but the boxer’s inclusion raises an intriguing
question about the group’s overall agenda: it “welcomes people of all backgrounds, faiths, and
ethnicities as members,” but is it welcoming them into an Arab group or a Muslim group? Perhaps
the blurring of the dis-tinction between a racial group (Arabs) and a religious group (Muslims) is in
the service of efforts to portray Muslims as a racial group subject to discrim-ination in the United
States, and thus entitled to privileged victim status.
In any case, the distortions and inaccuracies of this flyer are indicative of the half-truths and
untruths that American Muslim groups are propagating today.

1. Islam means peace. The flyer notes that “the Arabic word for ‘Islam’ means ‘submission,’
and it derives from a word meaning ‘peace.’“ Indeed, in Arabic, Islam and salaam (“peace”) share
the same linguistic root, but this in itself is virtually meaningless. All sorts of words share the same
roots and can still have quite divergent meanings—such as the English word love and the related
Sanskrit word htbh (lust). Noting the derivation of the word Islam in this brief informational flyer can
only be an attempt to lend credibility to the currently fashionable idea that Islam is a religion of
peace.
But that idea glosses over some troubling facts.
2. “Jihad does not mean ‘holy war,’“ says the HIT flyer, which origi-nally ran in USA Today.
“Literally, jihad in Arabic means to strive, struggle, and exert effort. It is a central and broad Islamic
concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality
of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense or fighting against tyranny or
oppression.”
This is the prevailing notion in academic circles today. Articulating the currently accepted
orthodoxy, Duke University professor of Islamic studies Bruce Lawrence agreed that jihad doesn’t
mean “holy war”: he defines this all-important Islamic concept as “being a better student, a better
colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one’s anger.” To its credit, the flyer’s
explanation goes further than Lawrence by mentioning the battlefield, and in this it is more accurate
than the professor’s preposterously innocuous farrago. Islamic theology distinguishes between the
“greater jihad,” which involves “struggle against evil inclinations within oneself,” and the “lesser
jihad,” which is hinted at here as “struggle in the battlefield for self-defense or fighting against
tyranny or oppression.”
Still, left unmentioned is the fact that throughout history, Muslims have not stopped at self-
defense or fighting against tyranny. “In premodern times,” observes the noted scholar of Islam Daniel
Pipes, “jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Muslims, then as now the Islamic majority. It
meant the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Mus-lims (known in
Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar al-Harh). In this
prevailing conception, the purpose of jihad is political, not religious. It aims not so much to spread
the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often followed the
latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to achieve Muslim
dominion over the entire world.”
Pipes adds: “Jihad was no abstract obligation through the centuries, but a key aspect of
Muslim life… . Within a century after the Prophet’s death in 632, Muslim armies had reached as far
as India in the east and Spain in the west. Though such a dramatic single expansion was never again
to be repeated, important victories in subsequent centuries included the seventeen Indian campaigns
of Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 998-1030), the battle of Manzikert opening Anatolia (1071), the conquest
of Constantinople (1453), and the triumphs of Uthman dan Fodio in West Africa (1804-1817). In
brief, jihad was part of the warp and woof not only of premodern Muslim doctrine but of premodern
Muslim life.”
Has this changed? Certainly it’s quite different from the idea of jihad purveyed by Muslim
groups and the major media today. But this older idea of jihad is alive and well in the Islamic world.
One manual of Islamic law— said to conform “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni
community”3 by Al-Azhar University of Cairo, Egypt, the oldest and most prestigious uni-versity in
the Islamic world—calls jihad “a communal obligation” to “war against non-Muslims… . The caliph
makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians … until they become Muslim or else pay the non-
Muslim poll tax… . The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim.”4
Some Muslims assert that because there is no caliph today (the caliphate was abolished by the
secular state of Turkey in 1924), there can be no jihad. That’s one reason why some radical Muslims
urge that the caliphate must be restored. Says Britain’s Sheikh Omar Bakri: “The Muslim Ummah
[world-wide Muslim community] has never before been in a position where we are divided into over
55 nations each with its own oppressive kufr [infidel] regime ruling above us. There is no doubt
therefore that the vital issue for the Muslims today is to establish the Khilafah [caliphate].”5
Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden isn’t waiting for this restoration to declare jihad, and he is by
no means isolated in this perspective in the Islamic world—witness the many terrorist groups around
the world that rally under the name of jihad. Pipes asks, “And what about all the Muslims waging
vio-lent and aggressive jihads, under that very name and at this very moment, in Algeria, Egypt,
Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Ambon, and other places around the world? Have they not
heard that jihad is a matter of con-trolling one’s anger?”6

3. Islam condemns terrorism. The “Q & A” asserts that “Islam does not support terrorism
under any circumstances. Terrorism goes against every prin-ciple in Islam. If a Muslim engages in
terrorism, he is not following Islam. He may be wrongly using the name of Islam for political or
financial gain.”
This assertion is closely allied to the differing explanations of the meaning of jihad. There is
no necessary connection between jihad and ter-rorism, and indeed, many moderate Muslims declare
that their extremist brethren who justify terrorism on Islamic grounds only do so by distorting the
concept of jihad. “Jihad is misused,” says an expert in PBS’s documen-tary Muhammad: Legacy of a
Prophet. “There is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies … the claim of Osama bin Laden, al
Qaeda, or other similar groups to kill innocent civilians. That is unequivocally a crime under Islamic
law. Acts of terror violence that have occurred in the name of Islam are not only wrong, they are
contrary to Islam.”
Once again, this is not as much of an open-and-shut case as these author-ities would like us to
believe. After all, no less an authority than George W. Bush’s “imam of peace,” Sheikh Muhammad
Sayyed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University, disagrees. Bush quoted him in late 2001 at the United
Nations as saying that “terrorism is a disease, and that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians.” But
evidently his definition of terrorism would differ from that of the average American: according to the
Middle East Media Research Insti-tute (MEMRI), last spring Tantawi called suicide bombing “the
highest form of jihad operations,” and added that “every martyrdom operation against any Israeli,
including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and
an Islamic commandment.”7
Tantawi is no isolated crank. He holds his position at Al-Azhar by the grace of the Egyptian
government, and he uses that position to wield enor-mous influence in the Islamic world: the New
York Times called Al-Azhar the “revered mosque, the distinguished university, the leading voice of
the Sunni Muslim establishment. … It has sought to advise Muslims around the world that those who
kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics. It has sought to guide, to reassure
Westerners against any clash of civilizations.”8
 Nor is Tantawi singular in his opinions. Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected mastermind of the 2002
terrorist bombings in Bali as well as bombings of churches in 2000, declared that “martyrs’ bombs
are a noble thing, a jihad of high value if you are forced to do it. For instance, in Palestine there is no
other way to defend yourself and defend Islam. All Ulamas [Muslim leaders] agree with martyrs’
bombs because we are forced to do it. There is no other way to defend ourselves and to defend
Islam… . We are obliged to defend ourselves and attack people who attack Islam. In Islam there is no
word for hands up, there is no word for surrender, there are only two things, win or die … if infidels
do want to attack Islam, fight Islam, so we are instructed to fight them.”9
Instructed by whom? Does Abu Bakar Bashir read the same Qur’an that moderate Muslims
say condemns terrorism?
After a shooting at a church in Pakistan, police detained another Muslim cleric, Mohammed
Afzal, who is alleged to have told his people that “it is the duty of every good Muslim to kill
Christians… . You should attack Chris-tians and not even have food until you have seen their dead
bodies.”10
Presumably Afzal would not consider Christians “innocent civilians.” Osama and other
Muslim extremists have maintained that the people killed in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon were not innocent, but complicit in what they imagine to be the American government’s
worldwide oppres-sion of Muslims. Consequently, they argue that they were fitting victims of jihad
—even envisioned only as a struggle against “tyranny or oppression.”
Disquieting evidence indicates that such ideas are not restricted to obscure covens of ranting
radicals, shunned by decent Muslims everywhere. According to MEMRI, “Mahmoud al-Zahhar, a
Hamas leader in Gaza, told the Israeli Arab weekly Kul Al-Arah, “Two days ago, in Alexandria,
enrol-ment began for volunteers for martyrdom [operations]. Two thousand stu-dents from the
University of Alexandria signed up to die a martyr’s death. This is the real Egyptian people.’“11
Two thousand students from one university? Didn’t these two thousand students know that
“those who kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics”? Didn’t they know that
“terrorism goes against every principle in Islam”?
The point is not that the moderates who wrote the flyer are wrong and that these radicals are
right. The point is that these radical Muslims use the Qur’an and other core Islamic sources to justify
their actions, and their exe-gesis is compelling enough to win over large numbers of Muslims.
Moderate Muslims have thus far not been remotely successful in reading the radicals out of Islam.
Certainly terrorism is not universally accepted in the Islamic world, but with terrorist groups rallying
under the banner of jihad in all cor-ners of the globe today, the HIT might have performed a valuable
service by explaining how this violation of “every principle in Islam” came to be so widely accepted
in the Muslim world.

4. “Islam is a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness. “ This assertion is made but left
unsupported in the HIT flyer; elsewhere it is often buttressed with quotations from the Qur’an. One
verse in particular is often invoked to make the claim that Islam teaches peace and mercy: “That was
why We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as a pun-ishment for
murder or other villainy in the land, shall be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind; and
that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as though he had saved all mankind” (sura 5:32).
There are exceptions in this verse, however—”murder or other villainy in the land”‘—and
these are particularly troubling in light of other teachings of the sacred book of Islam:

Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but
merciful to one another.” (sura 48:29) Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites
and deal rigor-ously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.” (sura 9:73)
 The true believers fight for the cause of Allah, but the infidels fight for the devil. Fight
then against the friends of Satan.” (sura 4:76)

When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and. when you
have laid them low, bind your captives firmly, (sura 47:4)

Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah
does not love the aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places
from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage, (sura 2:190-91; the part of this
passage that forbids striking first explains why Osama and other terrorists couch their self-
justi-fications in the terminology of self-defense)

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them,
besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and
render the alms levy [i.e., the jizya, the spe-cial tax on non-Muslims|, allow them to go their
way. Allah is forgiving and merciful, (sura 9:5)

Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given [i.e., Jews and Christians]
as believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day. who do not forbid what Allah and His Apostle
have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are
utterly subdued.” (sura 9:29)

Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought
against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is able to give them (believers)
victory, (sura 22:39)

Muslim apologists today condemn virtually any quotation of such verses as quoting “out of
context.” One Islamic information Web site cautions against this and notes that “it should be
emphasized that so many revelations in the Holy Qur’an came down to provide guidance to prophet
Muhammad and the Muslims based on what they were confronting at that time. There-fore, it is
important to understand and know the historic context of the reve-lations for a proper understanding
of these verses.”12 Muslims have declared that the violent verses above were revealed to Muhammad
at a time when the infant Islamic community was in danger of being exterminated altogether by
powerful external enemies, and that these verses have no force unless Mus-lims find themselves in
similar circumstances.
However, in November 2002, Dr. Sheikh Bakr Abed al-Razzaq al-Sama-raai said in a
Ramadan sermon at Mother of All Battles Mosque in Iraq that “jihad has become an obligation of
every individual Muslim. Anyone who does not comply, will find himself lost in [hell], side by side
with Haman, Pharaoh, and their soldiers. These are not just words of a sermon delivered from the
pulpit of a mosque with enthusiasm, they are religious law. Ask the jurisprudents, if you don’t know
that.”13
How could the good doctor issue such a challenge if he knew that Islam was a religion of
peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and that anyone who inves-tigated his claim would find that out?
Also speaking of fighting during Ramadan was Dr. Fuad Mukheimar, whom MEMRI
identifies as “an Al-Azhar University lecturer and secre-tary-general of the Egyptian Sharia
Association.” According to Mukheimar, throughout history Muslims have waged “a number of
honorable battles during the month of Ramadan—to the point where this month came to be called
‘the Month of Jihad.’ The nation of Islam came to be called ‘the jihad-fighting nation,’ and its moral
values came to be called ‘the values of warfare.’“
 Was this cleric referring merely to self-control and the like, as explained in Bruce Lawrence’s
concept of jihad? Unfortunately, no. He assumes that jihad involves fighting for Islamic society:
“Fasting is a continuous com-mandment, until Judgment Day … and the same is true for jihad,
because Muslim society needs it to defend [its] faith, honor, and homeland.”14
Similarly, the November 2002 letter purporting to be from Osama bin Laden and offering a
sweeping justification for terrorism invoked several of the verses quoted above as well as many other
Quranic texts. After issuing a series of demands to America and the West, the letter warns: “If you
fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. .. . The Nation
which is addressed by its Qur’an with the words: ‘Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you
should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands
and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And
remove the anger of their (believers’) hearts. Allah accepts the repen-tance of whom He wills. Allah
is All-Knowing, All-Wise’ (sura 9:13—15).”15
Muslim terrorists either blithely ignore the context that moderate Mus-lims use to hedge the
Qur’an’s violent verses, or claim that the believers today face the same sort of challenge that they did
at the time the verses were revealed, and so the verses are applicable to the present situation.
Again: this is not to say that the extremists are right and the moderates are wrong, but only that
the extremist view is based on ample Quranic sup-port that moderate elements have not yet
effectively refuted.
What’s more, the Islamic theory of abrogation (naskh) also cuts against the idea of Islam as a
religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness. This is the doctrine that Allah cancels certain verses of the
Qur’an and replaces them with other ones. Curious as it may seem, the doctrine of abrogation is
founded upon the Qur’an itself: “None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten,
but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all
things?” (sura 2:106).
Devised by Muslim divines in order to explain away contradictions in the Qur’an, this theory
holds that the canceled verses remain in the Quranic text, but without any binding force for believers.
The scholars who have advanced this doctrine, which is generally accepted in the Islamic world,
work from simple chronology: verses that were revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career
cancel contradictory verses from earlier.
There is no universally accepted chronology of the revelations of the Qur’an, but the broad
outlines of the Prophet’s life make it clear that the bel-licose verses were revealed later than the
peaceful ones. His more concilia-tory revelations come from his early prophetic career in Mecca,
when he still had high hopes of winning over Arabian Jews and Christians. Later, however, when it
became abundantly clear that Jews and Christians would not accept him as a prophet, Allah’s
messenger became bellicose: revelations from the latter part of his career in Medina are considerably
more hard-edged. Hence, according to the idea of naskh, the peaceful verses are abrogated but the
vio-lent ones are still in effect. Muslim extremists are fully aware of this. It is another reason why
they feel free to quote the Qur’an in support of their vio-lent actions today: they clearly believe that
when they do so, they are using the book properly and “in context.”
No refutation of such ideas is included in the IIIT’s informational flyer or from virtually any
American Islamic source. Unfortunately, this is the sort of reading of the Qur’an that they decline
even to discuss.

5. Islam is tolerant of other beliefs. Moderate Muslims like to quote sura 2:256, “There is no
compulsion in religion,” in support of the idea that Islam is a broadly tolerant faith. It has become a
commonplace of discussions about Islam today that the great Islamic empires of old were tolerant of
Jews and Christians to an extent that non-Christians were never tolerated in medieval Christendom.
“It is a function of Islamic law,” says the HIT flyer, “to protect the privileged status of minorities.
Islamic law also permits non-Muslims to set up their own courts, which implement family laws
drawn up by minori-ties themselves.”
Once again, there is some truth to this, but it is neither wholly true nor the whole truth. It is
true that Islamic law, the Sharia, allows Jews and Chris-tians to practice their religious beliefs in an
Islamic state; however, other reli-gions are not accorded the same privilege: while Islamic states can,
according to the Sharia, make “a formal agreement of protection” with Jews, Christians, and
Zoroastrians, “such an agreement may not be effected with those who are idol worshippers,” that is,
Hindus, Buddhists, and others.16
Also, the “tolerance” granted to Jews and Christians is severely circum-scribed. Jews and
Christians are termed “People of the Book” in the Qur’an—that is, communities that have received a
genuine revelation from Allah. That’s why they’re offered this “protection” in an Islamic state. How-
ever, the Qur’an also teaches that both Jews and Christians have incurred the curse of Allah (cf. sura
5:60 and many others) for their refusal to receive Muhammad as a legitimate prophet and his Qur’an
as a book from Allah. Consequently, the tolerance they enjoy is nothing like that of a modern-day
secular state, although Muslim apologists often succeed in equating the two in the face of the general
Western ignorance of Islamic history and theology.
In fact, the Sharia dictates that such a “protection” agreement between Muslim rulers and
Jewish and Christian subjects “is only valid when the sub-ject peoples: follow the rules of Islam …
(those involving public behavior and dress, though in acts of worship and their private lives, the
subject com-munities have their own laws, judges, and courts, enforcing the rules of their own
religion among themselves); and pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya).”17
The jizya is a special levy on non-Muslims, whose higher tax rates con-tributed much to the
magnificent Islamic empires of old. It is not the Sharia’s only restriction on non-Muslims: according
to classic Islamic law, non-Mus-lims in an Islamic state “are distinguished from Muslims in dress,
wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with “as-Salamu ‘alaykum” [the standard Muslim
greeting, “Peace be with you”]; must keep to the side of the street; may not build higher than or as
high as the Muslims’ buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to
openly display wine or pork, … recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their
funerals and feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches.”18
There is indeed no “compulsion” in any of this: Jews and Christians are not forced to become
Muslims. But there is also precious little dignity and respect.
Such humiliating laws are rarely enforced today even where the Sharia is the law of the land,
although they have not disappeared entirely from the Islamic world. Nor have they been renounced or
rejected by Islamic clerics of any sect. There is no mufti or imam in the world today apologizing for
the abject status of the dhimmis, the Jews and Christians under Islamic rule, as the pope and many
Protestant groups have apologized for the Crusades and other perceived enormities of Christendom.
These laws could be revived by any Muslim ruler who wants to restore the pure observance of Islam
—and such reformers have not been rare in Islamic history.
Even if this never happens, however, such laws should be borne in mind by anyone who wants
a true and accurate picture of Islamic “tolerance.”

6. Islam respects Christianity. The HIT flyer correctly informs readers that “Islam teaches that
Christians and Muslims are both ‘people of the book.’ By that it means that the two religions share
the same basic beliefs articulated through the Bible and the Koran. The main difference between
Christians and Muslims is that Muslims do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God.”
It is debatable whether or not much is left of the “basic beliefs articulated through the Bible,”
or at least of the New Testament, once the idea of Jesus’ divine Sonship is removed. Although the
Qur’an states that “nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say, ‘We arc
Chris-tians’“ (sura 5:82), it also claims that Christians are under Allah’s curse: “The Jews call ‘Uzair
(Ezra] a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their
mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them:
how they are deluded away from the Truth!” (sura 9:30).
Once again, this is no dead letter. Anti-Christian Muslims point to the fact that the Qur’an
even undercuts its own assertion that Christians will be “nearest in love” to Muslims: “O ye who
believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and
protec-tors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily
Allah guideth not a people unjust” (sura 5:51).
In a recent Friday khutba (sermon) at a mosque in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abd al-Muhsin al-
Qadhi, in a decidedly unecumenical mood, called Chris-tianity “one of the distorted religions,” and
“a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness.” He also labeled it a “false faith” and a
“distorted and deformed religion.” The sheikh decried the present-day situation, in which “many
Muslims … know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting
life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans… . After all this, we still find people who
promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and
could be eliminated by arranging all those [interreligous] conferences, whose goal is political.”19
Another Saudi imam. Sheikh Muhammad Saleh sl-Munajjid, preached in a similar vein:
“Muslims must… educate their children to jihad. This is the greatest benefit of the situation:
educating the children to jihad and to hatred of the Jews, the Christians, and the infidels.”20
Of course, these Wahhabi sheikhs are no more representative of Islam as a whole than are the
moderates who claim that Islam respects Christianity. But they have read the Qur’an as well as the
moderates, and their conclusions about Islam and Christianity are quite different. The irenic vision of
the HIT flyer is anything but a full or adequate description of the real Muslim per-spective on
Christianity.

7. Islam respects Judaism. In its treatment of Judaism, the HIT flyer replicates its language
regarding Christianity: “Islam teaches that Jews and Muslims are both ‘people of the book.’ By that it
means that the two reli-gions share the same basic beliefs articulated through the Torah and the
Qur’an. The main difference between Jews and Muslims is that Jews do not believe in prophets after
the Jewish prophets, including Muhammad and his teachings.”
Jews and Muslims may share basic beliefs, but we have already seen that the Qur’an places
Jews under Allah’s curse. This idea recurs in the Qur’an, which also says that Allah turned the Jews
into detested beasts: “Say: ‘O people of the Book! Do ye disapprove of us for no other reason than
that we believe in Allah, and the revelation that hath come to us and that which came before (us), and
(perhaps) that most of you are rebellious and disobedient?’ Say: ‘Shall I point out to you something
much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the
curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who
worshipped evil; these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!’“
(sura 5:60).
Muslim radicals today routinely echo this language. Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi of the Palestinian
Authority declared recently that Jews are “the ene-mies of Allah, the nation accursed in Allah’s book.
Allah described [them] as apes and pigs.”21
Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi was clearly referring to the Qur’an. Is it then remiss to trace at least
some of the impetus for the antisemitism that is ram-pant in the House of Islam today to the core
beliefs of Muslims’? But again, the HIT flyer gives readers no inkling that this problem even exists.

8. Muhammad was a man of peace. “This is his message,” says the American convert to Islam
Hamza Yusuf in PBS’s documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet: “spread peace, feed people
food, and do some devo-tional practice and you will enter paradise without any trouble.”
Spread peace’? Perhaps, but radical Muslims might add that this must be done by the force of
arms. After all, this is the example of the Prophet him-self. “According to one calculation,” notes
Daniel Pipes, “Muhammad him-self engaged in seventy-eight battles, of which just one (the battle of
the Ditch) was defensive.”22
The Prophet was a man of principle: he not only engaged in these bat-tles, but his teachings
were consistent with them. Says a Muslim tradition about Muhammad: “A man came to Allah’s
Messenger and said, ‘Guide me to such a deed as equals jihad (in reward).’ He replied, i do not find
such a deed.’“23
How would Hamza Yusuf explain this ? There’s no way to tell—evidently he would prefer to
ignore it.

As the American people learn more and more about Islam, Islam’s image problem is getting
worse, not better. One principal reason for this may be the dissonance between the loud and repeated
claims of Islamic spokesmen in the United States and the facts that Americans are learning about
Islam. If the International Institute of Islamic Thought and other Muslim groups really want to
educate the American people about Islam, they would acknowledge and deal squarely with the
questions that are really in people’s minds: Does Islam provide a justification for terrorism’? Have
the dozens of groups that preach and perpetrate violence in the name of Islam all around the world
really “hijacked” the religion? If they are using the Qur’an to justify their actions, what are moderate
Muslims doing to forestall this kind of interpre-tation of the sacred book of Islam?
It isn’t enough to say, as Muslim spokesmen never tire of repeating, that there are kooks of
every creed and that every creed can be used to justify vio-lence. This still leaves unanswered the
question of why there are so many more terrorist groups worldwide invoking Islam than there are
terrorist Christian groups.
By ignoring such questions, Muslim advocacy groups in the United States have only made
matters worse, giving non-Muslims good reason to suspect their intentions and honesty. The next
time American Muslim spokesmen decry Islam’s image problem, in all fairness they should point
fingers not at Christian fundamentalist preachers or at scholars who raise uncomfortable questions,
but at themselves.
 53.
‘ISA, THE MUSLIM JESUS
Mark Durie

The word Christian is not a valid w ord, for there is no religion of Christianity according to
Islam.

— www.answering-christianity.com

Today we increasingly hear and read that Christianity and Islam “share” Jesus, that he belongs
to both religions. So also with Abraham: there is talk of the West’s “Abrahamic civilization” where
once people spoke of “Judeo-Christian civilization.” This shift of thinking reflects the growing
influence of Islam.
These notes offer some information and reflections on the “Muslim Jesus,” to help put this
trend in its proper context.
References in brackets are to the Qur’an. Numbering systems for the Quranic verses are not
standardized: be prepared to search through nearby verses for the right one.

ISLAM THE PRIMORDIAL FAITH

Islam regards itself, not as a subsequent faith to Judaism and Christianity, but as the primordial
religion, the faith from which Judaism and Christianity are subsequent developments. In the Qur’an
we read that Abraham “was not a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a monotheist, a Muslim” (Al-Imran
3:66). So it is Muslims, and not Christians or Jews, who are the true representatives of the faith of
Abraham to the world today (Al-Baqarah 2:135).

First published in 2002 as “‘Isa, the Muslim Jesus,” on the Answering Islam Web site at http:// answering-islam.org/Intro/islamicjesus.html.

The Biblical Prophets Were All Muslims

Many prophets of the past received the one religion of Islam (Ash-Shura 42:13). Who were
these previous prophets? According to Al-Anam 6:85-87 they include Ibrahim (Abraham), ishaq
(Issac), Yaqub (Jacob), Nuh (Noah), Dawud (David), Sulaiman (Solomon), Ayyub (Job), Yusuf
(Joseph). Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Zakariyya (Zachariah), Yahya (John the Baptist), ‘Isa
(Jesus), Ilyas, Ishmael, al-Yash’a (Elisha), Yunus (Jonah), and Lut (Lot).

THE MUSLIM ‘ISA (JESUS)

There are two main sources for ‘Isa, the Muslim Jesus. The Qur’an gives a history of his life,
while the Hadith collections—recollections of Muhammad’s words and deeds—establish his place in
the Muslim understanding of the future.

THE QUR’AN

‘Isa Was a Prophet of Islam

Jesus’ true name, according to the Qur’an, was ‘Isa. His message was pure Islam, surrender to
Allah (Al-Imran 3:84). Like all the Muslim prophets before him, and like Muhammad after him, ‘Isa
was a lawgiver, and Christians should submit to his law (Al-Imran 3:50; Al-Maidah 5:48). ‘Isa’s
original disciples were also true Muslims, for they said, “We believe. Bear witness that we have
surrendered. We are Muslims” (Al-Maidah 5:111).

“The Books”

Like other messengers of Islam before him, ‘Isa received his revelation of Islam in the form of a
book (Al-Anam 6:90). ‘Isa’s book is called the Injil or “gospel” (Al-Maidah 5:46). The Torah was
Moses’ book, and the Zabur (Psalms) were David’s book. So Jews and Christians are “People of the
Book.” The one religion revealed in these books was Islam (Al-Imran 3:18).
As with previous prophets, ‘Isa’s revelation verified previous prophets’ revelations (Al-Imran
3:49,84; Al-Maidah 5:46; As-Saff 61:6). Muhammad himself verified all previous revelations,
including the revelation to ‘Isa (An-Nisa 4:47), and so Muslims must believe in the revelation that
‘Isa received (Al-Baqarah 2:136). However, after ‘Isa the Injil was lost in its original form. Today the
Qur’an is the only sure guide to ‘Isa’s teaching.

The Biography of ‘Isa

According to the Qur’an, ‘Isa was the Messiah. He was supported by the “Holy Spirit” (Al-
Baqarah 2:87; Al-Maidah 5:110). He is also referred to as the “Word of Allah” (An-Nisa’ 4:171).
Tsa’s mother Mariam was the daughter of ‘Imran (Al-Imran 3:34,35)— compare the Amram
of Exodus 6:20—and the sister of Aaron (and Moses) (Maryam 19:28). She was fostered by
Zachariah (father of John the Baptist) (Al-Imran 3:36). While still a virgin (Al-Anam 6:12; Maryam
19:19-21). Mariam gave birth to ‘Isa alone in a desolate place under a date palm tree (Maryam
19:22ff; not in Bethlehem).
Tsa spoke while still a baby in his cradle (Al-Imran 3:46; Al-Maidah 5:110; Maryam 19:30).
He performed various other miracles, including breathing life into clay birds, healing the blind and
lepers, and raising the dead (Al-Imran 3:49; Al-Maidah 5:111). He also foretold the coming of
Muhammad (As-Saff 61:6).
Tsa Did Not Die on a Cross

Christians and Jews have corrupted their scriptures (Al-Imran 3:74-77, 113). Although
Christians believe isa died on a cross, and Jews claim they killed him, in reality he was not killed or
crucified, and those who said he was crucified lied (An-Nisa 4:157). isa did not die, but ascended to
Allah (An-Nisa 4:158). On the day of Resurrection isa himself will be a witness against Jews and
Christians for believing in his death (An-Nisa 4:159).

Christians Should Accept Islam, and All True Christians Will

Christians (and Jews) could not be freed from their ignorance until Muhammad came bringing
the Qur’an as clear evidence (Al-Bayyinah 98:1). Muhammad was Allah’s gift to Christians to
correct misunderstandings. They should accept Muhammad as Allah’s Messenger and the Qur’an as
his final revelation (Al-Maidah 5:15; Al-Hadid 57:28; An-Nisa 4:47).
Some Christians and Jews are faithful and believe truly (Al-Imran 3:113, 114). Any such true
believers will submit to Allah by accepting Muhammad as the prophet of Islam—that is, they will
become Muslims (Al-Imran 3:198).
Although Jews and pagans will have the greatest enmity against Muslims, it is the Christians
who will be “nearest in love to the believers,” that is, to Muslims (Al-Maidah 5:82). True Christians
will not love Muhammad’s enemies (Al-Mujadilah 58:22). In other words, anyone who opposes
Muhammad is not a true Christian.

Christians Who Accept Islam or Refuse It

Some Jews and Christians are true believers, accepting Islam: most are trans-gressors (Al-Imran
3:109).
Many monks and rabbis are greedy for wealth and prevent people from coming to Allah (At-
Taubah 9:34,35).
Christians and Jews who disbelieve in Muhammad will go to hell (Al-Bayyinah 98:6).
Muslims should not take Christians or Jews for friends (Al-Maidah 5:51). They must fight
against Christians and Jews who refuse Islam until they surrender, pay the poll tax, and are
humiliated (At-Taubah 9:29). To this may be added hundreds of Quranic verses on the subject of
jihad in the path of Allah, as well as the “Book of Jihad” found in all Hadith collections.

Christian Beliefs

Christians are commanded not to believe that isa is the son of God: “It is far removed from his
transcendent majesty that he should have a son” (An-Nisa 4:171; Al-Furqan 25:2). isa was simply a
created human being and a slave of Allah (An-Nisa 4:172; Al-Imran 3:59).
Christians are claimed by the Qur’an to believe in a family of gods— Father God, mother
Mary, and isa the son—but isa rejected this teaching (Al-Maidah 5:116). The doctrine of the Trinity
is disbelief and a painful doom awaits those who believe it (Al-Maidah 5:73).

‘ISA (JESUS) IN THE HADITH

Tsa the Destroyer of Christianity

 The prophet isa will have an important role in the end times, establishing Islam and making war
until he destroys all religions save Islam. He shall kill the Evil One (Dajjal), an apocalyptic anti-
Christ figure.
In one tradition of Muhammad we read that no further prophets will come to earth until isa
returns as “a man of medium height, or reddish complexion, wearing two light garments, looking as
if drops were falling down from his head although it will not be wet. He will fight for the cause of
Islam. He will break the cross, kill pigs, and abolish the poll tax. Allah will destroy all religions
except Islam. He (isa) will destroy the Evil One and will live on the earth for forty years and then he
will die” (Sunan Abu Dawud, 37:4310). The Sahih Muslim has a variant of this tradition: “The son of
Mary . . . will soon descend among you as a just judge. He will . . . abolish the poll tax, and the
wealth will pour forth to such an extent that no one will accept charitable gifts” (Sahih Muslim 287).
What do these sayings mean? The cross is a symbol of Christianity. Breaking crosses means
abolishing Christianity. Pigs are associated with Christians. Killing them is another way of speaking
of the destruction of Christianity. Under Islamic law the poll tax buys the protection of the lives and
property of conquered “People of the Book” (At-Taubah 9:29). The abolition of the poll tax means
jihad is restarted against Christians (and Jews) living under Islam, who should convert to Islam or
else be killed or enslaved. The abundance of wealth refers to booty flowing to the Muslims from this
conquest. This is what the Muslim isa will do when he returns in the last days.
Muslim jurists confirm these interpretations: consider, for example, the ruling of Ahmad ibn
Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368),

[T]he time and the place for [the poll tax| is before the final descent of Jesus (upon whom
be peace). After his final coming, nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the
poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent (upon him and our Prophet be peace).1

Ibn Naqib goes on to state that when Jesus returns, he will rule “as a follower” of Muhammad.

CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE MUSLIM ‘ISA (JESUS)

‘Isa Not a Historical Figure

The Qur’an’s isa is not a historical figure. His identity and role as a prophet of Islam is based
solely on supposed revelations to Muhammad over half a millennium after the Jesus of history lived
and died.

Jesus’ Name Was Never ‘Isa

Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic. In his own lifetime he was called Yeshua in Aramaic, and
Jesu in Greek. This is like calling the same person John when speaking English and Jean when
speaking French: Jesu, pronounced “Yesoo,” is the Greek form of Aramaic Yeshua. (The final-.s in
Jesu-s is a Greek grammatical ending.) Yeshua is itself a form of Hebrew Yehoshua’, which means
“the Lord is salvation.” However Yehoshua’ is normally given in English as Joshua. So Joshua and
Jesus are variants of the same name.
It is interesting that Jesus’ name Yehoshua’ contains within it the proper Hebrew name for
God, the first syllable Yeh- being short for YHWH “the LORD.”
Yeshua of Nazareth was never called ‘Isa, the name the Qur’an gives to him. Arab-speaking
Christians refer to Jesus as Yasou’ (from Yeshua) not ‘Isa.
Jesus Did Not Receive a “Book”

According to the Qur’an, the “book” revealed to isa was the Injil. The word Injil is a corrupted
form of the Greek euanggelion “good news” or gospel. What was this euanggelion? This was just
how Jesus referred to his message: as good news. The expression euanggelion did not refer to a fixed
revealed text, and there is absolutely no evidence that Jesus received a “book” of revelation from
God.

The “Gospels” of the Bible Are Biographies

The term euanggelion later came to be used as a title for the four biographies of Jesus written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the “gospels.” This was a secondary development of meaning.
Apparently this is where Muhammad got his mistaken idea of the Injil being a “book.”

Most So-Called Prophets of Islam Received No Book

Virtually all of the so-called prophets of Islam, whose names are taken from the Hebrew
scriptures, received no “book” or law code. For example, the Psalms are not a book revealing Islam,
as the Qur’an claims, but a collection of songs of worship, only some of which are David’s. There is
not a shred of evidence in the biblical history of David that he received a book of laws for the
Israelites. They already had the Torah of Moses to follow. So David was not a prophet in the
Qur’an’s sense of this word. Likewise, most of the prophets claimed by Islam were neither lawgivers
nor rulers.

Biblical Prophecy and Islamic Prophecy

Are Not the Same Thing

The biblical understanding of prophecy is quite different from Muhammad’s. A biblical

prophecy is not regarded as a passage from a heavenly eternally preexistent text like the Qur’an, but
a message from God for a specific time and place. A biblical prophet is someone to whom God
reveals hidden things, and who then acts as God’s verbal agent. When a Samaritan woman called
Jesus a prophet (John 4:19) it was because he had spoken about things in her life that he could only
have known supernaturally. Christianity teaches that Jesus was a prophet, but he brought no “book”:
he himself was the living “Word of God,” a title used of isa in the Qur’an.
All prophecies referred to in the Bible became part of the biblical text. The Bible consists of a
wide variety of materials originally written for many different purposes, including letters, songs, love
poetry, historical narratives, legal texts, proverbial wisdom, as well as prophetic passages. These are
regarded as inspired by God, but not dictated from a timeless heavenly book.

As Prophetic History, the Qur’an Contains

Many Errors and Anachronisms

The claim that Jesus was not executed by crucifixion is without any historical support. One of
the things that all the early sources agree on is Jesus’ crucifixion.
Mariam the mother of isa is called a sister of Aaron, and also the daughter of Aaron’s father,
imran (Hebr. Amram). Clearly Muhammad has confused Mary (Hebr. Miriam) with Miriam of the
Exodus. The two lived more than a thousand years apart!
 In the Bible Haman is the minister of Ahasuerus in Media and Persia (Esther 3:1-2). Yet the
Qur’an places him over a thousand years earlier, as a minister of Pharoah in Egypt.
The claim that Christians believe in three Gods—Father, son Jesus, and mother Mary—is
mistaken. The Qur’an is also mistaken to claim that Jews say Ezra was a son of God (At-Taubah
9:30). The charge of polytheism against Christianity and Judaism is ill informed and false (Deut. 6:4,
James 2:19a).
The story of the “two-horned one” (Al-Kahf 18:82; cf also Dan. 8:3, 20-21) is derived from
the Romance of Alexander. Certainly Alexander the Great was no Muslim.
The problem with the name isa has already been discussed. Other biblical names are also
misunderstood in the Qur’an, and their meanings lost. For example, Elisha, which means “God is
salvation,” is given in the Qur’an as al-Yash ‘a, turning El “God” into al- “the.” (Islamic tradition did
the same to Alexander the Great, calling him al-lskandar “the Iskander.”) Abraham “Father of many”
(cf. Gen. 17:5) might have been better represented as something like Aburahim “father of mercy”
instead of Ibrahim, which has no meaning in Arabic at all.
The Qur’an has a Samaritan making the golden calf, which was wor-shipped by the Israelites
in the wilderness (Ta Ha 20:85) during the Exodus. In fact, it was Aaron (Exod. 34:1-6). The
Samaritans did not exist until several centuries later. They were descendants of the northern Israelites
centuries after the Exodus.
Many Quranic stories can be traced to Jewish and Christian folktales and other apocryphal
literature. For example, a story of Abraham destroying idols (As-Saffat 37) is found in a Jewish
folktale, the Midrash Rabbah. The Quranic story of Zachariah, father of John the Baptist, is based
upon a second-century Christian fable. The story of Jesus being born under a palm tree is also based
on a late fable, as is the story of Jesus making clay birds come alive. Everything the Qur’an says
about the life of Jesus that is not found in the Bible can be traced to fables composed more than a
hundred years after Jesus’ death.
Jesus’ titles of Messiah and Word of God, which the Qur’an uses, find no explanation in the
Qur’an. Yet in the Bible, from which they are taken, these titles are well integrated in a whole
theological system.
The Qur’an mentions the Holy Spirit in connection with Jesus, using phrases that come from
the gospels. Ibn Ishaq (Life of Muhammad) reports Muhammad as saying that this “Spirit” was the
angel Gabriel (cf. also An-Nahl 16:102, Al-Baqarah 2:97). However, the biblical phrase “Spirit of
God” (Ruach Elohim) or “Holy Spirit” can only be understood in light of the Hebrew scriptures. It
certainly does not refer to an angel.
Jesus’ alleged foretelling of Muhammad’s coming (As-Saff 61:6) appears to be based on a
garbled reading of John 14:26, a passage which in fact refers to the Spirit.
The Hebrew scriptures were Jesus’ Bible. He affirmed their authority and reliability and
preached from them. From these same scriptures he knew God as Adonai Elohim, the Lord God of
Israel. He did not call God Allah, which appears to have been the name or title of a pagan Arabian
deity worshipped in Mecca before Muhammad. Muhammad’s pagan father, who died before
Muhammad was born, already bore the name ‘Abd Allah, “slave of Allah,” and his uncle was called
Obeid Allah.
We read that An-Najm 53:19-23 seeks to refute the pagan Arab belief that Allah had daughters
named al-Uzza, al-Ilat, and Manat. (See also An-Nahl 16:57 and Al-Anam 6:100.)
The biblical narratives are rich with historical details, many confirmed by archaeology. They
cover more than a thousand years and reveal a long process of technological and cultural
development. In contrast, the Qur’an’s sacred history is devoid of archaeological support. Its
fragmentary and disjointed stories offer no authentic reflection of historical cultures. No place name
from ancient Israel is mentioned, not even Jerusalem. Many of the supposed historical events
reported in the Qur’an have no independent verification. For example, we are told that Abraham and
Ishmael built the Kaaba in Mecca (Al-Baqarah 2:127), but this is totally without support. The biblical
account, more than a thousand years older, does not place Abraham anywhere near Arabia.

The Qur’an Is Not a Credible Source for Biblical History

The Qur’an, written in the seventh century CE, cannot be regarded as having any authority
whatsoever to inform us about Jesus of Nazareth. It offers no evidence for its claims about biblical
history. Its numerous historical errors reflect a garbled understanding of the Bible.

ISLAM APPROPRIATES THE HISTORY OF JUDAISM AND

CHRISTIANITY TO ITSELF

When Muhammad linked the name of Allah to the religious histories of Judaism and
Christianity, this was a way to claim them for Islam. In the light of later events, the claim that Islam
was the original religion, and that all preceding prophets were Muslims, can be regarded as an
attempt to appropriate the histories of other religions for Islam. The effect is to rob Christianity and
Judaism of their own histories.
Consider that many biblical sites, such as the tombs of the Hebrew patriarchs and the Temple
Mount, are claimed by Islam as Muslim sites, not Jewish or Christian ones. After all, the Qur’an tells
us that Abraham “was a Muslim.” Under Islamic rule all Jews and Christians were banned from such
sites.

The Place of the Jewish Scriptures in Christianity Is

Completely Different from the Place of the Bible in Islam

There is a fundamental difference between Christian attitudes toward the Jewish scriptures and
Islamic attitudes toward the Bible. Christians accept the Hebrew scriptures. They were the scriptures
of Jesus and the apostles. They were the scriptures of the early church. The whole of Christian belief
and practice rests upon them. Core Christian concepts such as “Messiah” (Greek “Christos”), “Spirit
of God,” “Kingdom of God,” and “Salvation” are deeply rooted in the Hebrew biblical traditions.
We note also that Christian seminaries devote considerable effort to studying the Hebrew
scriptures. This is an integral part of training for Christian ministry. The Hebrew scriptures are read
(in translation) every Sunday in many churches all around the world.
In contrast, Islam’s treatment of the Bible is one of complete disregard. Although it purports to
“verify” all earlier prophetic revelation, the Qur’an is oblivious to the real contents of the Bible. The
claim that Christians and Jews deliberately corrupted their scriptures is made without evidence, and
this only serves to cover up the Qur’an’s historical inadequacies. Muslim scholars rarely have an
informed understanding of the Bible or of biblical theology and so remain ignorant of these realities.

Some Contemporary Muslim Voices on Jesus

Yasir Arafat, addressing a press conference at the United Nations in 1983, called Jesus “the first
Palestinian fedayeen who carried his sword” (i.e., he was a freedom fighter for Islam).
Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, employee of the Palestinian Authority, broadcast live in April 2002 on
Palestinian Authority television: “The Jews await the false Jewish messiah, while we await, with
Allah’s help . . . Jesus, peace be upon him. Jesus’ pure hands will murder the false Jewish messiah.
Where? In the city of Lod, in Palestine.”
 Author Shamim A. Siddiqi of Flushing, New York, put the classical position of Islam toward
Christianity clearly in a recent letter to Daniel Pipes, New York Post columnist:

Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad were all prophets of Islam. Islam is the common
heritage of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim community of America, and establishing the Kingdom
of God is the joint responsibility of all three Abrahamic faiths. Islam was the din (faith, way of
life) of both Jews and Christians, who later lost it through human innovations. Now the
Muslims want to remind their Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters of their original din
[religion]. These are the facts of history.

This historical negationism—appearing to affirm Christianity and Judaism whilst in fact

rejecting and supplanting them—is a linchpin of Muslim apologetics. What is being affirmed is in
fact neither Christianity nor Judaism, but Jesus as a prophet of Islam, Moses as a Muslim, and so on.
This is intended to lead to “reversion” of Christians and Jews to Islam, which is what Siddiqi refers
to when he speaks of “the joint responsibility” of Jews and Christians to establish “the Kingdom of
God.” By this he means that American Christians and Jews should work to establish Sharia law and
the rule of Islam in the United States.

CONCLUSION

isa (Jesus) of the Qur’an is a product of fable, imagination, and ignorance. When Muslims
venerate this isa, they have someone different in mind from the Yeshua or Jesus of the Bible and of
history. The isa of the Qur’an is based on no recognized form of historical evidence, but on fables
current in seventh-century Arabia.
For most faithful Muslims isa is the only Jesus they know. But if one accepts this Muslim
“Jesus,” then one also accepts the Qur’an: one accepts Islam. Belief in this isa is won at the cost of
the libel that Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures, a charge that is without historical
support. Belief in this isa implies that much of Christian and Jewish history is in fact Islamic history.
The Jesus of the gospels is the base upon which Christianity developed. By Islamicizing him,
and making of him a Muslim prophet who preached the Qur’an, Islam destroys Christianity and takes
over all its history. It does the same to Judaism.
In the end times as described by Muhammad, isa becomes a warrior who will return with his
sword and lance. He will destroy the Christian religion and make Islam the only religion in all the
world. Finally, at the last judgment he will condemn Christians to hell for believing in the crucifixion
and the incarnation.
This final act of the Muslim isa reflects Islam’s apologetic strategy in relation to Christianity,
which is to deny the Yeshua of history and replace him with a facsimile of Muhammad, so that
nothing remains but Islam.

The Muslim supersessionist current claims that the whole biblical history of Israel and
Christianity is Islamic history, that all the Prophets, Kings of Israel and Judea, and Jesus were
Muslims. That the People of the Book should dare to challenge this statement is intolerable
arrogance for an Islamic theologian. Jews and Christians are thus deprived of their Holy
Scriptures and of their salvific value.2

APPENDIX: THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS (YESHUA) OF NAZARETH AND

HIS DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION
Non-Christian Sources for Jesus

• Tacitus (55-120 CE), a renowned historical figure of ancient Rome, wrote in the latter half
of the first century that “Christus … was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea
in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out
again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome
also” (Annals 15:44).
• Suetonius writing around 120 CE tells of disturbances of the Jews at the “instigation of
Chrestus,” during the time of the emperor Claudius. This could refer to Jesus, and appears
to relate to the events of Acts 18:2, which took place in 49 CE.
• Thallus, a secular historian writing perhaps around 52 CE, refers to the death of Jesus in a
discussion of the darkness over the land after his death. The original is lost, but Thallus’s
arguments—explaining what happened as a solar eclipse—are referred to by Julius
Africanus in the early third century.
• Mara Bar-Serapion. a Syrian writing after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, mentions
the earlier execution of Jesus, whom he calls a “King.” The Babylonian Talmud refers to
the crucifixion (calling it a hanging) of Jesus the Nazarene on the eve of the Passover. In
the Talmud Jesus is also called the illegitimate son of Mary.
• The Jewish historian Josephus describes Jesus’ crucifixion under Pilate in his Antiquities,
written about 93/94 CE. Josephus also refers to James the brother of Jesus and his
execution during the time of Ananus (or Annas) the high priest.

Paul’s Epistles

Paul’s epistles were written in the interval twenty to thirty years after Jesus’ death. They are
valuable historical documents, not least because they contain credal confessions that
undoubtedly date to the first few decades of the Christian community.
Paul became a believer in Jesus within a few years of Jesus’ cruci-
fixion. He writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “For I delivered to you
first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the
third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas
(Peter), then by the twelve.” This makes clear that belief in the death of
Jesus was there from the beginning of Christianity.
The Four Gospels

The four gospels were written down in the period twenty to sixty years after Jesus’ death,
within living memory of the events they describe.
The events that the gospels describe for the most part took place in the
full light of public scrutiny. Jesus’ teaching was followed by large crowds.
There were very many witnesses to the events of his life. His death was a
public execution.
Manuscript Evidence for the Bible and Its Transmission
 The manuscript evidence for the Greek scriptures is overwhelming, far greater than for all other
ancient texts. Over twenty thousand manuscripts attest to them. Whilst there are copying errors, as
might be expected from the hand of copyists, these are almost all comparatively minor and the basic
integrity of the copying process is richly supported.
Futhermore, when Western Christians studied the Hebrew scriptures during the Renaissance,
they found them to agree remarkably closely with their Greek and Latin translations, which had been
copied again and again over a thousand years. There were copying errors and some other minor
changes, but no significant fabrications of the stupendous scale that would be required to concoct the
story of Jesus’ death.
Likewise when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, they included Hebrew biblical scrolls
dating from before the time of Jesus. These too agreed very closely with the oldest Hebrew Masoretic
manuscripts of more than a thousand years later. Again, no fabrications, but evidence of remarkably
faithful copying.

CONCLUSION: JESUS OF NAZARETH IS A FIGURE OF HISTORY

Clearly there are events recorded in connection with Jesus’ life that many non-Christians will
not accept, such as the miracles, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. However what is beyond
dispute is that Yeshua (“Jesus”) of Nazareth was a figure of history, who lived, attracted a following
in his lifetime among his fellow Jews, and was executed by crucifixion by the Roman authorities,
after which his followers spread rapidly. Both secular and Christian sources of the period agree on
this.
The primary sources for the history of Jesus’ public life are the gospels. These were written
down relatively soon after his death—within living memory—and we have every indication that
these sources were accepted as reliable in the early Christian community, during a period when first-
and secondhand witnesses to Jesus’ life were still available.
We conclude that any statements about isa (Jesus) in the Qur’an, made six centuries after
Jesus’ death, must be judged against the historical evidence from these first-century sources, and not
vice versa.
Some useful discussions of these issues are found at:
http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/theo/islam_christ.html
http://www.debate.org.uk7topics/theo/qur-jes.htm
http://www.answering-islam.org/Intro/replacing.html
Further reading: The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
1995).
 54.
ISLAM AND THE DHIMMIS
Bat Ye’or

In his article “Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter-Myth, History,” Mark Cohen inquires 1

whether, in the Middle Ages, Jews under Islamic rule were “treated better than their brethren in
Europe.” He then posits two opposing theses: the “myth” of Judeo-Islamic harmony and its “counter-
myth,” referring to my recent book2 as “a classic example of this revisionist trend.” Cohen’s article
has the merit of opening a debate on factual comparative history and its validity as a basis for value
judgments. I will endeavor to examine these two aspects, but will first make a few necessary
corrections to some of his statements.
My book is not limited to an exclusively Jewish perspective, but rather encompasses all
aspects of the dhimmi condition. Consequently, Cohen has quoted me out of context in relation to my
expression: “thirteen centuries of sufferings and humiliations,” since it refers to the experiences of
both Jews and Christians.
The association of Jews (and Christians) with the Devil is not uncommon in Islam. Numerous
Quranic verses and hadiths associate the Jews and Christians with both hell and Satan; Ibn Abdun (d.
1134), a Muslim jurist from Spain, quoted from the Qur’an (58:20) to this effect in his legal treatise.3
The decree of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (850) illustrates this association, whereby “wooden images of
devils be nailed to the doors of their homes to distinguish them from the homes of Muslims.”4
Moreover, Jewish and Christian cemeteries were considered a part of hell, to which the dhimmis
were destined.

Article (Rejoinder: “Islam and the Dhimmis”) published in Jerusalem Quarterly 42 (Spring 1987: 83-88. The original text was translated from the French by David G.
Littman. with the author.

The notion of collective guilt is encountered in Muslim legal texts and has led to collective
reprisals. As for forced conversions, it is clear from the account of Joseph ibn Aqnin (d. 1220) and al-
Marrakushi (d. 1224) that Jewish converts to Islam were not only persecuted, but also their children
could be abducted and entrusted to Muslim custodians.5 Jews did become the property of Muslim
rulers in Morocco, in the Saharan regions of North Africa, in Kurdistan, in Bukhara, and elsewhere.
As for the economic function of the Jews that Cohen notices in Christendom but not in Islam,
it seems to me to be at the very root of the dhimmi status, as defined in the Qur’an (9:29) and in the
hadith relating to the Jews of Khaybar and the Jews and Christians of Sawad (Iraq). Moreover, this is
also the origin of the jizya (poll tax), as well as of the higher taxation paid by dhimmis and of the
fiscal oppression to which they were subjected. Numerous legal texts link the dhimmis’ existence to
their economic utility, concerning which history has preserved several examples. The jizya did not
only have an economic function, but the degradation attached to the tax itself was intended to debase
the dhimmis.
 I also disagree with Cohen’s arbitrary periodization (640-1240) because this methodology is
specious, despite the apparent chronological parallel. Different civilizations do not necessarily evolve
along similar lines. Besides, a comparison between Christendom and Islam during any other time
segment (e.g., the Age of Emancipation and Enlightenment) would provide a completely different
picture. But even if one adopts Cohen’s chosen period, the expulsions of Jews from Christian Europe
to which he refers occurred after 1240 (e.g., 1290, 1306. 1394, 1492-97), while under Islam they
occurred during that period (and after). It should also be recalled that the auto-da-fe (public burning)
of the Talmud that took place in Paris under St. Louis (1240) was instigated by Nicholas Donin, a
renegade Jew, and was in fact the indirect result of a Jewish controversy between rabbinical literalists
opposing the rationalists of the school of Maimonides.
The first three centuries of Islam in the East overlapped the Carolingians in Christian Europe
(747-987), a period recognized by Cohen as one when European Jewry “experienced a considerable
degree of security and prosperity.” Rare indeed are the extant documents from the first two centuries
of Arab conquest. Muslim chroniclers later described the ongoing jihad, involving the destruction of
whole towns, the massacre of large numbers of their populations, the enslavement of women and
children, and the expropriation of vast regions. This picture of catastrophe and destruction
corresponds to the period of the gradual erosion of Palestinian Jewry. According to al-Bal adhuri (d.
892), forty thousand Jews lived in Caesarea alone at the Arab conquest, after which all trace of them
is lost. Indeed, this period (640-1240) witnessed the total and definitive destruction of Judaism and
Christianity in the Hijaz and the decline of the once flourishing Christian and Jewish communities in
Palestine (particularly in Galilee for the Jews), Egypt, Syria. Mesopotamia, and Persia. In North
Africa, the Christians had been virtually eliminated by 1240 and the Jews decimated by Almohad
persecutions. It is perfectly true that during much of the earlier Umayyad rule in Spain the situation
of Jews was, on the contrary, prosperous; similarly, in Egypt and beyond, the Shiite Fatimids reigned
with tolerance. However, notwithstanding some brighter intervals, these six centuries witnessed a
dramatic demographic reversal, whereby the Arab-Muslim minority developed into a dominant
majority, resorting to oppression in order to reduce the numerous indigenous populations to tolerated
religious minorities. The emergence of a rich class of merchants should not obfuscate the overall
picture of marked deterioration.
Cohen has chosen northern Europe as his “point of comparison with Islam, so that the contrast
will be sharpened with more meaningful distinctions” (instead of southern Europe, where the Jews
had a long indigenous presence, as in the Islamized lands). In all fairness, he should have compared
this alleged European Christian heartland to its equivalent—the Islamic-heartland—Arabia, North
Africa, the Sahara—rather than to the Islamized Byzantine regions, with their ethnic and religious
pluralism. Jews and Christians were expelled and forbidden to reside in the Hijaz (Arabia).
Christianity was eliminated and Judaism could only survive in degradation on the fringes of the Arab
heartland (Yemen). This is because Islamic legislation distinguishes between Arab land and kharaj
land (i.e., the conquered land of the dhimmis), and accordingly stipulates different regulations
concerning the indigenous non-Muslim peoples. Only within dhimmi lands (i.e., conquered territory),
with its Judeo-Christian cultural heritage, was pluralism tolerated for economic and political reasons.
Pluralism is not indigenous to Islamic culture (a concept which needs to be defined), but an element
incorporated by conquest into Muslim dominions where a Scriptuary (ahl al-kitab/People of the
Book) population resided.
The alleged nonapplication of the Pact of Umar on the basis of its innumerable renewals is a
classic argument whose logic escapes me. On the contrary, I consider its frequent renewal and the
attempts to enforce its strict application as proof of the Muslim authorities’ determination to
reimpose it in every generation. The sources that I have consulted, including British diplomatic
correspondence up to the end of the nineteenth century, confirm this situation.
Another classic argument is that the Jewish dhimmis suffered less since they shared their
status with the Christians. Either it means that Jews allegedly suffered less because Christians were
also oppressed—which is not only untrue but spurious; or it means that Christians suffered more than
Jews—which is true, but this argument is irrelevant to the comparison between the status of the Jews
in Christendom and in Islam. Besides, it does not prove that Jews did not suffer.
Referring to A. L. Udovitch’s point that the stipulations concerning the Jew are “incorporated
subject by subject into the conventional categories of the classical Islamic law codes,” Cohen
concludes: “This stands in sharp contrast to the isolation of Jewry law provisions in the law of
medieval Christian states and is a reflection of the greater degree of integration of the Jew in
medieval Muslim society.” For my part, I find in these approaches merely a difference of method in
the classification of legal matters by Christian and Muslim jurists. This disparity appears in all
aspects of their respective laws and is not restricted to the subject of Jews. It is not the arrangement
of laws in a book, “subject by subject,” which determines the degree of social integration of the
persons involved, but the very substance of the laws themselves and, even more so, the actual
behavior in real life.
Cohen criticizes me for “characterizing every bleak aspect of the Judeo-Islamic experience as
“the dhimmi condition.’“ Having defined the terms dhimma and dhimmi in my book, I shall not
reiterate my analysis here, it being understood that dhimmis designate the Jews and Christians—and
sometimes others—under Muslim rule. Just as the history of Western Jewry is studied against its
Christian background, so, too, the history of the dhimmis should be understood in its Islamic
environment, rather than in a vacuum.
The analytical method of comparison often masks certain snares. Thus, in view of the differing
attitude of Christianity and Islam on the subject of usury, Cohen concludes that the West—but not
Islam—degraded the Jews by forcing them to practice usury, which was repugnant to the Christians.
Yet in Muslim countries the most degrading tasks were set aside for the Jews: executioners, grave-
diggers, head-salters of rebels, cleaners of latrines, and so on. Consequently, it was not the principle
of social degradation that differed from East to West, but the nature of the impositions.
This brings us to the fundamental issues. What scientific value is there in an arbitrary time
division that proposes a value judgment embracing thir teen centuries while considering only a single
period? Surely Jewish emancipation, equal rights, human rights, and secularization are also part of
Christian societies. Human societies not being static, they must be considered as evolving entities of
dynamic interactions, concerning which periodization should exclude generalizations. Besides,
should one’s judgment be on a short- or long-term basis?
Moreover, the historian who wants to express a value judgment must establish preliminary
criteria for evaluations. What is tolerance? Should one judge the dogmas that are subject to diverse
interpretations, or the historical facts based on complex elements of a circumstantial and temporary
nature? Supposing the concept of tolerance can be defined, should one speak of relative tolerance—
that is, toward one people (the Jews), whereas other peoples may be exterminated—or of absolute
tolerance?
Cohen’s analysis emanates from a specific European perspective, ignoring realities that are
exclusively Islamic: for example, the devastating effect of invading nomads, and a bellicose Bedouin
mentality, upon Jewish (and Christian) rural populations with sedentary cultures; the jihad rules, such
as the obligatory billeting of Muslim soldiers on dhimmi peasantries; military slavery; the
peculiarities of Muslim justice and government; and the repercussions for dhimmi communities of
the Muslim doctrine that all children are born Muslim.
Cohen’s article only quotes antisemitic features that are peculiar to Christianity, and this leads
him to conclude that since Muslims did not have Chris-tological reasons for oppressing Jews, the
latter were ipso facto better treated. But reality is not so simple, nor so logical. Why should there not
have been other original forms of oppression in the Islamic world that were absent in European
societies? Cohen has tried to show that the West had a greater motivation to persecute the Jews; he
has not proven that Jews were in fact less oppressed under Islam. These two propositions are not
necessarily linked.
 It would certainly be interesting to pore over the demographic statistics—comparing the
percentages in absolute and proportional terms of Jewish converts and martyrs, respectively, in the
East and West, according to year and country—that one presumes Cohen has used to infer that
European Jewry confronted with persecutions often preferred martyrdom, while Oriental Jewry chose
conversion to Islam.
Many of Cohen’s assertions are subjective opinions and pure hypotheses, since it is impossible
to apprehend thirteen centuries of a history spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa. In fact, the futility and
inadequacy of this sort of comparison are evident. The criteria for comparative studies are inevitably
chosen from among the register of Jewish sufferings in the West, and never the reverse. Thus it can
be asked: what is the Christian equivalent—say, for the fifteenth century—of Jewish (and Christian)
girls being abducted for Muslim harems; the devçgirme system (enslavement and forced conversion
of Christian children); the Turkish collective deportation of Jews and Christians, which followed
similar earlier Arab practices; the legalization of their enslavement (including women and children)
during warfare, revolts, or for economic reasons (impossibility of paying the jizya); the obligation for
a Jew or a Christian to dismount from his donkey on sight of a Muslim; the obligation in some
regions for Jews to walk barefoot outside their quarters; or the prohibition for Jews and Christians of
Persia to remain indoors when it rained for fear of polluting Muslims. And when does one find in
Islam a current similar to the Christian philo-semitic movement after the sixteenth-century Protestant
Reformation? The list of such “disputations” is endless.
My book was not written in order to destroy a flimsy “myth.” The discarding of the
amorphous image of a “golden age,” allegedly spanning thirteen centuries and three continents, was
an indirect consequence of my research on dhimmi history, in which I distinguish historical stages
and the diversity and complexity of its interdependent aspects. I voluntarily refrained from moral
judgments based on fallacious comparisons, for the Christian and Islamic civilizations are coherent
and systemic entities, from which one cannot arbitrarily extract one particular element without taking
into account the whole historical and cultural context that makes it comprehensible. Moreover, these
comparisons serve no other purpose than to prove the superiority of Islam—or of Christianity—
which for a historian is pointless. For my part, I do not consider myself a referee who awards points
and penalties. Students of history know full well that there is nothing more widely shared among
mankind than cruelty and barbarity, but it has not been my task to determine who outdid whom.
 55.
ANSWERING AL-AZHAR
Bat Ye’or

I read with interest Dr. Abdel-Moti Bayoumi’s refutation of my article “Jihad and Human
Rights Today”1 in his “Wrong Zionist Perceptions of Jihad in Islam via the Internet.”2 Regrettably,
Dr. Bayoumi has totally mis-understood my position. I am not engaged in the discussion as to
whether the jihad is justified or not by the Qur’an and the Sunna. This is a matter among Muslim
scholars and I am happy to see that it is being vigorously undertaken by Dr. Bayoumi himself, as the
secretary of the Islamic Center of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He described me as an “American
Jewish writer.” Born in Cairo, I was obliged to leave the country of my birth, stateless, in 1957; I
have been a British citizen since 1959.
Indeed, I wrote that Muslim jurisconsults from the eighth and ninth centuries have based the
doctrine of jihad on their interpretation of Quranic verses and on the hadiths. Dr. Bayoumi’s
contestation of these interpretations in the twenty-first century is very encouraging. However,
Muslim opponents advance other verses and invoke the Quranic principle of abrogation, according to
which some later verses abrogate the earlier ones. As one of the most prominent Islamic scholars in
Cairo, Dr. Bayoumi’s opinions on the correct interpretation of the Qur’an concerns Muslim scholars.
Non-Muslims—and certainly not myself—have no part in this discussion. It is noteworthy that Dr.
Bayoumi has recognised that a war situation between the dar al-lslam (the region of Islam) and the
dar al-Harh (region of war) existed in the past, but he was misled in attributing to me an opinion on
jihad in fact given by the al-Muhajiroun London organization that I quoted clearly in my text.

Rejoinder to Dr. Abdel-Moti Bayoumi, secretary of the Al-Azhar University, Cairo. Submitted to National Review Online after Dr. Bayoumi replied to an initial article by Bat
Ye’or (“Jihad and Human Rights Today,” July I, 2002). Neither Dr. Bayoumi’s text nor Bat Ye’or’s rejoinder was published in NRO. This text, published here for the first time, was
translated from the French by David G. Littman. with the author.

Concerning the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Muslim scholars have
explained their reservations about it by the fact that it is based on secularism and a Judeo-Christian
tradition, a principle which they refute because, according to them, it is opposed to Islam, which does
not separate politics and religion. This argument is repeated countless times by distinguished Muslim
scholars. Hence, the need to have an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights based on Sharia
regulations. Muslims consider such a charter as universal because the universality of the Islamic
mission is enshrined in Islam’s doctrine and in the Qur’an. However, billions of Hindus, Chinese,
Christians, and others who are not Muslims will not accept the Sharia’s regulations and, therefore, in
our pluralistic world it cannot be described as “universal.” The quotation “Reaffirming the
civilization and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given
mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization … and the role that this Ummah should play to
guide a humanity confused by competing trends and ideologies” is in the preamble of the 1990 Cairo
Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Its concluding articles state: “All the rights and freedoms
stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah”;3 “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only
source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration.”4
Dr. Bayoumi has denied slavery in Islam, yet slavery in Islam is very well documented in
Muslim chronicles and all legal treatises that expound the tactics of jihad and the fate of prisoners
from the earliest times. Hence, Abu Yusuf Yaqub, in the eighth century, states that Khalid b. al-Walid
enslaved thousand of inhabitants in Iraq and Syria in the course of his military campaigns (634-637).
Not only distinguished Islamic and Western scholars have written extensively on slavery in Islam,
but also countless his-toric chronicles exist from the countries where slaves were taken: Armenian,
Greek, Serb, Hungarian, French, Italian, Spaniard, and others. Piracy for slaves existed in the
Barbary States until it was ended by the naval battle of Algiers (1816) and at the 1818 Congress of
Aix-La-Chapelle. The living condition of Christian slaves in Algiers was described extensively by
American consul general William Shaler in his Sketches of Algiers.5
In his book on Egypt under Muhammad Ali,6 Mohammed Sabry, an Egyptian scholar,
provided details on the campaign ordered by Muhammad Ali in the Sennar region of Sudan to collect
gold and to bring forty thousand slaves for his army (1820-1822). The exaction of the Egyptian
soldiers provoked an insurrection among the Africans who killed the Egyptian general; this led to a
retaliatory massacre of thirty thousand Africans. Muhammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim, was sent to quell the
Greek insurrection against the Ottoman sultan. In his campaign he enslaved thousand of Greeks,
whom he sent to Cairo and Istanbul. These facts are recorded in the French consular papers because
France backed Muhammad Ali’s policy.
Recently, in a letter to former UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson, dated
March 24, 1999 (circulated then at the UN Commission on Human Rights), the former elected prime
minister of Sudan, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi—referring to slavery in Sudan today—wrote: “The traditional
concept of JIHAD … is based upon a division of the world into two zones: one the zone of Peace, the
other the zone of War. It requires initiating hostilities for religious purposes. … It is true that the
[NIF] regime has not enacted a law to realize slavery in Sudan. But the traditional concept of JIHAD
does allow slavery as a by-product.”7 Prime Minister al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, a pious Muslim, is the great
grandson of al-Mahdi who practiced traditional slavery abundantly in Sudan.
As for the accusation by Dr. Cornelius Hulsman against me,8 it does not deserve an answer.
Hatred is not born from truth, but by defamation.
The comment of a modern Greek historian, writing on the Islamized Christian slaves in the
fourteenth century, is pertinent: “Spiritually reborn into the Islamic world, they became the state’s
most disciplined, zealous, and able soldiers. It was they who dealt the Byzantine Empire its final and
most decisive blows. It was they who were the most merciless persecutors of their fellow countrymen
and former coreligionists. It was they who contributed most signally to the organization, extension,
and consolidation of the Ottoman state.”9
Slavery is not only the bondage of the body but also of the soul.
 56.
ISLAM, TABOO, AND DIALOGUE
Reclaiming Historic
Truths in Seeking Present-Day Solutions
Bat Ye’or

In the current political climate, it is tempting to maintain the taboos on those historical subjects
that could be easily exploited by xenophobes. One such taboo is dhimmitude, which resulted when
Christians and Jews (dhimmis), in addition to other non-Muslim indigenous peoples, were conquered
by jihad wars, and henceforth “tolerated” and “protected” as subjects of Islam. This “tolerance” and
“protection,” however, was afforded only upon submission to Islamic domination by a dhimma, or
pact, that imposed discriminatory and humiliating regulations. The main principles of dhimmitude
are: (1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; (2) the social and
economic discrimination against the dhimmis; and (3) the degradation and vulnerability of the
dhimmis.
Dhimmitude has existed for thirteen centuries in the Muslim empire, established, primarily, on
former Christian lands. Extending over three con-tinents—Africa, Asia, and Europe—this field of
history was the setting for jihad, the Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Balkan and Israeli wars of
independence. Countless populations, swept along in the whirlwind of centuries, were marked in the
crucible from which issued the death of civilizations and the birth of others. Dhimmitude convulsed
the whole nineteenth century, and Europe—as obsessed as it was divided—floundered in endless
debates on the Eastern question: how to put an end to dhimmitude.
World War I effected a 180-degree turn. Colonial imperatives; World War II and the cold war;
oil, economic, geostrategic, and religious interests in the Muslim world—all combined to suppress
this history. Today, a heightened desire for security recommends leaving this cadaver to rot in its
bandages of lies and oblivion. Is amnesia not preferable, particularly during the crisis period we
currently live in? Not at all. A candid discussion of this history of dhimmitude, which embraces the
three-dimensional relationship of the People of the Bible—Jews and Christians—and of the Qur’an,
is essential if current ideological conflicts are to be unraveled and deadlocks broken.

The core of this article first appeared in a French newspaper version in 1997 and then as “Islam and Taboo” in Midstream 44, no. 2 (February-March I99X): 7. This enlarged
text appeared in National Review Online, August 9. 2002, with editing contributions from Dr. Andrew Bostom. The French texts were translated by David G. Littman. with the author.

Let us hope we have not missed the opportunity to talk frankly and initiate that critical
dialogue with the Muslim elites about dogmas and jurisdictions that were so traumatic for the People
of the Book—Jews and Christians, whom Islam joined together in the same dhimmi status
—”protected” and “tolerated,” because subjugated and humiliated. It is imperative for Jews,
Christians, and Muslims to explore together the cruel episodes in this shared history in order to
alleviate, if not eliminate, the cultural conflicts in which religious fanaticism takes root.
Following the cataclysmic events of September 11 there has been a tendency to recall
nebulous “golden ages” of idyllic multireligious societies, invented so effectively that today one feels
defenseless and disoriented when brought face-to-face with the conflicts from another age,
deliberately erased from history. We must forgo this whitewashing and opt instead for a shared,
candid reflection on the past to unite us in a joint effort for peace and mutual respect. The history of
dhimmitude, so long repressed by our collective cowardice, is unfolding around us, before our very
eyes. It is claiming victims in Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Pakistan,
Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere. It even forms part of our daily lives, governed by
antiterrorist measures in the United States, Europe, and now worldwide, and it wreaks havoc among
the Muslim elites, responsible for having concealed it. This forbidden history, banished from
memory, is casting its dark shadow over the world’s future.
Dhimmitude must be discussed in academia, the media, and elsewhere, without apology. This
frank discussion will allow Muslim intellectuals to rethink their whole relationship with the People of
the Book—and non-Muslims in general—without renouncing their faith, and uniting all peoples in
the fight against tyrannical oppression and dehumanization. In the absence of such genuine interfaith
dialogue, I fear the twenty-first century will become a bloodbath in which civilizations will continue
to collide.
 57.
ISRAEL, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM
The Challenge of the Future
Bat Ye’or

Unlike most wars, solving the conflict in the Middle East does not depend only on the cession
of land, since Israel is also the focus of age-old religious hatreds. The bigotries involved are so
appalling that one avoids mentioning them, yet they still underlie the struggle.
From its beginnings, the Arab-Israeli conflict involved not only the region of the Middle East
but also Europe and the Church. It was hardly on account of its wealth and territorial extent that the
Holy Land became a land of hostilities, but rather because it was the place where theological extrem-
isms confronted one another. Only there, in their ancient homeland, could the Jewish people be freed
from the curse with which Christianity had afflicted them. This malediction, which had been
transmitted through Christian channels to Islam, was henceforth combined within the context of jihad
and associated Jews and Christians in the same condemnation. Thus, the principle of a divine curse
against the Jews as a people, first conceived by the early Church Fathers in patristic writings, was
later adopted and reinterpreted through Islamic dogma against both Jews and Christians.
Despite the Islamic persecutions of Christians, Judeophobia—common to both Christianity
and Islam—has sealed the tight alliance between the Church and Islam in favor of the Palestinian
cause. Thus, in the Land of Israel, the Jewish people have been confronted not only by prejudices
arising from Christian ideas but also by those arising from Islamic doctrine. The suppression of these
Muslim prejudices against Jews that are generated by jihad doctrine would also imply the abolition of
these same Muslim prejudices against Christians. The restoration of Israel’s rights in its biblical
homeland is opposed to a concept of allegedly accursed peoples, hated by God and con-demned to
humiliation for eternity until they convert. Peace in the Middle East means equality among religions.
Therefore, their historical zones of confrontation and interaction should be examined in order to
understand their modern expressions.

Article published in Midstream 47, no. 3 (February-March 2001): 2-9. The original text was trans-lated from the French by David G. Littman. with the author.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONFLICT

The Arab-Israeli conflict is only one regional, limited aspect of the traditional, worldwide
struggle engendered by the ideology of jihad. For over a millennium, Muslims had conquered and
held lands populated by Christians and Jews on three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. In East
Asia, they also colonized and Islamized Buddhist and Hindu empires. Caliphs and sultans
administered this multitude of peoples through a legal-political system based on interpretations of the
Qur’an and the hadiths,1 which integrated the pre-Islamic laws and customs of the vanquished
peoples into an Islamic conceptual structure. This system of governing subjected populations, which
I have called dhimmitude,2 determined the demographic, religious, and ethnic changes in the
countries absorbed by jihad. The term dhimmitude encompasses all the aspects and complexities of a
political system, whereas the word tolerance implies a subjective opinion. The system of dhimmitude
includes the notion of tolerance, but this latter term cannot express all the interactions of political,
religious, and legal factors that over the centuries shaped the civilization of dhimmitude.
The jihad ideology requires that the Sharia—the law that governs the Islamic domain—be
applied over all the jihad-conquered lands. In this context, the Jews formed a small minority among
the non-Muslim populations, all to be targeted by the jihad ideology. Islamic law confers an identical
status on Jews and Christians as the People of the Book (the Bible), while Zoroas-trians and others,
considered pagans, were relegated to a far worse situation and subjected to more severe oppression.
In the Muslim-Christian context, the jihad wars of Islamization, unleashed from the seventh
century and sustained for over a millennium, have again—in the last decades—ignited jihad fires in
Lebanon, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Armenia, Sudan, Nigeria, Kashmir, the Philippines, and
Indonesia. The Arab-Israeli conflict is only a recent and small component of the age-old geographic
struggle that emerged from this jihad ideology. From the Islamic point of view, the position of the
Jews, as with the Christians, comprises two aspects: as Jews and as Israelis. The first concerns their
legal situation as a tolerated, dhimmi religious minority in an Islamic country. The second is rooted in
the complex issues involved in a dhimmi people liberating its country from the laws of jihad, a
system that imposes dhimmitude.
This process of liberation was manifested in all the Christian countries, where—from Portugal
to the Caucasus—the laws of dhimmitude imposed by invading jihad armies on indigenous non-
Muslim populations were progres-sively abolished. It is this common ground that imparts to these
east European states, and to Israel, certain similar factors that are superimposed over different
characteristics. In fact, these similarities do not result from any European backing of Israel, but rather
these links emerge from the Islamic doctrine that binds together Jews and Christians.

Common Traits

Without going into historical detail, one may recall that those European Christian lands
Islamized by jihad were liberated only after centuries of bloody struggle. The process of de-
Islamization began in the Middle Ages, first in Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean Islands; it then
continued in the eighteenth century and throughout the whole of the nineteenth century in the
Balkans. In central Europe, Islamized territories had reached up to southern Poland and Hungary; in
the nineteenth century they still encom-passed Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and the
semiautonomous Romanian principalities. These wars of national liberation continued up to World
War I. The recent bloody, unfinished conflicts in the Balkans are a reminder.
From the standpoint of Muslim dogma and law, Israel’s situation today is not very much
different from these nineteenth-century Balkan wars of liberation. Like the Israelis, those peoples
also were threatened with annihilation by a jihad war that challenged their right to separate from the
dar al-lslam. As with Palestine, the Balkan territories conquered by jihad constituted a waqf in
Islamic law—also called a fay land, the booty granted by Allah to the Islamic community collectively
—to be managed by the caliph.
Moreover, the waqf principle is not limited to territories conquered by jihad. According to this
dogma, the whole world constitutes a waqf, promised by Allah to the Muslims; it is a religious duty
to occupy it at an appropriate time and rule it by the Sharia law. It is this duty that imposes upon the
Muslims the obligation of jihad, by which these lands—still illegally held by the infidels—”revert” to
the Muslims. There lies the origin, the justification, and the ideological driving force behind the jihad
wars of conquest. It is incorrect to assert that this injunction to achieve world conquest is a modern
extremist interpretation by Islamist fanatics, as some contemporary political commentators assert.
This interpretation has in fact constituted the basis of jihad since its principles were first elaborated
by Muslim jurists and theologians in the eighth and ninth centuries. In this context, the principle of
waqfland applied to Israel constitutes a tiny part of a universal, geopolitical concept. If Israel—
whatever its size—is viewed as illegally established on “Arab-Muslim lands,” then Spain, Portugal,
the Balkan states, and so on may also be considered as occupying former “Muslim lands.” And,
likewise, all non-Muslim states are “illegal,” since they are situated on potential Muslim waqf land.
The nineteenth-century wars of liberation restored national territorial sovereignty to east
European peoples, in the same way as the Jewish people recovered a part of their Land of Israel
(Palestine) in 1948. This process allowed the free development of their culture and their legal system.
The rebirth of those Christian states led to the dramatic flight to Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine of
millions of Muslims, whose laws had subjected the indigenous non-Muslims to the dehumanizing
system of dhimmitude. It would be an absurdity in the twenty-first century to claim that the
descendants of those populations suffered an “injustice” and had a “right of return” to Spain,
Portugal, Sicily, the Balkans, and elsewhere. It would destabilize the descendants of those peoples
who had suffered over the centuries under the yoke of dhimmitude.
The wars that abolished the system of dhimmitude suppressed an injustice, which any return to
the previous situation would reimpose. As with these European examples, the “right of return” to the
State of Israel for Pales-tinian Arabs—the embodiment of jihad values—would restore those same
conditions leading to dhimmitude for the Jews. It should be stressed that dhimmitude implies the
expropriation of indigenous people, who are relegated to dhimmi status after their land has become a
Muslim waqf for the sole benefit of the Muslim community (umma). Jews and Christians are only
tolerated as dhimmis, provided they submit to restrictive rules that include prohibition on land
ownership in their own country.
To sum up, it may be affirmed that from an Islamic doctrinal viewpoint, Israel’s situation is
identical to that of those European populations from Portugal to the Crimea, passing through Sicily
and the Balkans of the Ottoman Empire, who managed to free themselves from the laws of
dhimmitude—laws imposed as a result of a jihad war and the application of the Sharia. The abolition
of those laws enabled these populations to restore their national independence and their rights. The
clash here is between the liberation of dhimmi people against their subjugation and death in the grip
of dhimmitude.

Contrasting Aspects

Geographically speaking, Israel’s situation differs from that of the Balkan peoples, since Israel
—like Lebanon, Georgia, and Armenia—is wedged into a wholly Muslim region. In other respects,
even though the condition of the Jews and Christians as dhimmis is identical from the Islamic point
of view, there are important differences on the theological and the political levels.
Theological Aspects

On the doctrinal plane, there is convergence and fusion between the Christian idea that alleges a
divine condemnation of the Jews to exile and degradation and the Muslim doctrine that retains the
divine condemnation of the Jews to humiliation but applies it also to the Christians. For Jews, the
Islamic-position represented an improvement compared to Christian theology, which isolated them
from the rest of humanity in a unique, demonized category. For the Christians, to be placed on the
same level as the people who aroused their hate-filled contempt was severely felt as a further
deliberate humiliation imposed on them by Islam. This resentful attitude on the part of the Christians
was one factor contributing for so long to the obfuscation of the history of dhimmitude, which was
the common juridical and theological condition for both Jews and Christians.
Christianity developed from Judaism. The breach of this close symbiosis was accompanied by
a hostile rejection of the mother religion. It is important to stress that the conflict between the early
Byzantine Church and Palestinian Jewry was fought most intensely in the Holy Land itself—where
Judaism had been central since the second millennium BCE. When the Roman Empire was
Christianized in the early fourth century, the patriarchate could then reimpose the emperor Hadrian’s
ban on Jews living in Jerusalem (135 CE), which, it seems, had lapsed. In the fifth century, the
alliance between a Church, strongly influenced by paganism, and the Byzantine state institutionalized
in law and policy the Church Fathers’ anti-Jewish statements. It was in fifthcentury North Africa that
St. Augustine (d. 430), bishop of Hippo—today Bone in Algeria—most clearly formulated the view
that prevailed pertaining to the Jewish people: a “deicide people” condemned to exile and to
wandering in servitude and degradation.
The idea of supersession constituted the foundation of the Church’s policy toward Judaism and
the de-Judaization of Jerusalem. The responsibility for upholding this idea fell upon the Church in the
Holy Land. It was this Church that supervised the exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem, their
humiliation, and the implementation of their persecution. Only a few years before the Arab conquest,
after the brief Persian occupation and at the instigation of the patriarch Sophronius, the emperor
Heraclius decreed the first massacre of Jews in the Byzantine Empire. It was this same patriarch who
later implored the Muslim conquerors to retain one basic principle of Christian praxis: the de-
Judaization of Jerusalem. Thus, it was through local Christian channels that this policy was
transmitted to Islam. Conscious of being the guardians of this idea, the churches in the Holy Land
heaped humiliation and suffering on Palestinian Jewry and upon the few allowed back in Jerusalem
by the Muslim authority.
In this Christian theological context, the Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration of
1917 fed the frenetic antisemitism that provided a fertile ground in Christian Europe for the
Holocaust. The Christian idea that condemned the Jews to wandering and to degradation was
maintained largely unchallenged until Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Revision of this view
aroused passionate opposition, particularly within the Eastern Arab dhimmi Churches, mouthpieces
of their patrons, the Arab League states.
Despite the efforts of religious and lay Christians who felt close to Jews and Judaism, the
results of Second Vatican Council were rather ambiguous and marked the success of the antisemitic
majority in the Catholic Church. They maintained a policy of delegitimizing and demonizing the
State of Israel and supported its replacement by a State of Palestine. In other words, the principle of
“wandering” remained a decisive goal. Besides, the condemnation of antisemitism was not
accompanied by a total rehabilitation of the Jews. This ambiguity allowed Christians to pity the
misfortunes of the Jews, allegedly brought about by their own malevolent natures.3 Indeed, the
ambiguity allowed Christians in subsequent decades to reconcile compassion for Jews with the most
virulent hostility toward Israelis. The transfer of the malevolent nature of the Jews to the State of
Israel was steadily sustained by a tireless activism from the Palestinian church leaders allied to the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
This whole process of demonizing the State of Israel was conceived of, elaborated upon, and
transmitted to Europe by these Palestinian dhimmi Arab Churches. The reunification of Jerusalem in
1967 exacerbated that tendency: ever since, the European populations have been flooded in the media
by anti-Israeli indoctrination.4 It is true that the proclamations of national councils of bishops in
Europe expressed different, more positive opinions. Yet the anti-Zionist phobia—culminating in the
1975 antisemitic UN General Assembly’s resolution 3379 (“Determines that Zionism is a form of
racism and racial discrimination”)—only began to abate when this resolution was rescinded in
December 1991, after the Gulf War. When, in December 1993, the Vatican recognized Israel, it
almost simultaneously recognized the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). This step left the
unpleasant impression that the belated establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel needed to be
balanced by recognition of the PNA.
This situation resulted from the weight of the antisemitic and pro-Islamic tendencies
representing a sizable sector of the Church. Those same currents had succeeded in imposing on
Second Vatican Council in 1965 a perfectly symmetrical position on the part of the Church in regard
to both Jews and Muslims. But this symmetry caught the Church in a trap, since the relation of
Christianity to the Jews was totally asymmetrical to the Church’s position toward Muslims—even
being in contrast to it. The Christian idea of supersession concerns the Jews, but not Muslims.
Conversely, Islam applied this idea to Judaism and Christianity, both of which, according to Islamic
doctrine, were preceded and completed by Islam. The biblical personalities mentioned in the Qur’an,
who barely resemble the originals—Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus, and others—are
considered Muslims. The absence of such reasoning in Judaism concerning Christianity creates a
false symmetry between Judaism and Islam.
Likewise, on a historical plane, no Christian country was ever conquered by the Jews, but
Christian lands were Islamized on three continents—Africa, Asia, and Europe—and governed by the
Sharia. Moreover, from its beginning, Islamic jurisprudence established and perfected a mandatory
Christian status, based on theology. Hence, there is an absolute absence of symmetry in the
theological, juridical, political, and historical domains between Islam and Judaism in relation to the
Christians. The Christian refusal to acknowledge the radical asymmetry between Judeo-Christian and
Muslim-Christian relations creates confusion on the path to reconciliation. Moreover, this symmetry,
which allegedly represents “justice,” does injustice to the Jews, because it denies the obvious
differences between Judaism and Islam.
Despite many high-quality works by Christian theologians and thinkers—and their tireless
efforts supporting a Judeo-Christian rapprochement—anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism still remain
dominant forces throughout Europe. In addition, the pro-Islamic lobbies use the Jewish tragedy of the
Holocaust to invent a European guilt toward Palestinian Arabs and Muslim immigrants in Europe, as
allegedly symmetrical to Europe’s guilt for the Holocaust. Thus, not only has the Holocaust been
taken over for the benefit of those who otherwise deny it and want to pursue a policy for Israel’s
demise, but the unjustified exaggeration of Christian guilt toward Islam—based on a false connection
to the Jewish tragedy in Europe—reinforces antisemitism. This tactic is widespread among certain
clerical groups in both the Eastern and Western “Islamized” Churches, especially in their wide
support for a free Muslim immigration policy into the European Union.
Political Aspects

Generally speaking, since the 1970s, the policy of various European governments toward Israel
has been manifested by hostility. This policy has combined the economic and political interests of
these states with their rivalries to obtain markets in the Arab world, especially for sales of military
weapons. This cynical policy has not been burdened by any scruples and has hidden its purposes
under cover of “humanitarian causes”—particularly that of the Palestinian Arabs.
In this context, Israel is treated like those Christian peoples whose claims hindered the
interests of the major European powers in the nineteenth cen-tury. State interests took precedence
over any solidarity regarding humanitarian principles. In the nineteenth century, only public opinion
obliged the powers to intervene belatedly to curtail the massacres of Christians during the course of
the many rebellious struggles in the Balkans. Later in the century, the Armenians were abandoned,
since no European power, even Russia, had an interest in destabilizing Turkey.
After World War I, France and Great Britain sacrificed the claims of the Armenians and the
Assyro-Chaldeans (in Iraq) in favor of a pro-Muslim policy. Half a century later, the destruction of
the Christian political structures in Lebanon by the Muslim-Palestinian alliance left Europe and
America generally indifferent. This Christian tragedy earned no more than shameful silence from
most European intellectuals and in the media—particularly from all those who showed compassion
for the Arab Palestinians, day after day, for decades. This observation applies equally to the victims
in East Timor and the Moluccas as well as to the Sudanese African Christians and animists, who for
years have undergone a jihad war and enslavement by northern Arab Muslims without much protest
from the European Union. This silence was all the more striking in that it contrasted with the massive
media campaign on behalf of the Muslims in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and later in Chechnya. Today, the
genocide of Christians in Indonesia is hardly mentioned in the press.
Furthermore, the various forms of discrimination suffered more and more by Christians in
Muslim countries have rarely aroused a media campaign or consistent interest from major
humanitarian organizations. One could therefore place Europe’s anti-Zionist option in the category of
general political cynicism. This raises the question of what political criteria determine the media’s
“selection” of information: is it criteria operating through either omission, disinformation, systematic
neglect (Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria, East Timor, the Moluccas, the Philippines, etc.), and/or directly
related to economic and geostrategic interests?
Hence, in its relations with the Muslim world, the West applies a similar policy to Christians
and Jews alike. One should also stress—and it is of major importance—the totally different policy of
the Turks from that of the Arabs toward former dhimmi populations. The Ottomans in the nineteenth
century and Turkey in the twentieth century received and settled millions of Muslim refugees, and
both made peace with their former subjugated peoples. With the exception of Jordan (78 percent of
the former League of Nations Palestine Mandate), the other twenty states of the Arab League, despite
covering immense territories—10 percent of the earth’s surface—refused to welcome, settle, and
grant citizenship to their Palestinian Arab kin; only Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel’s de jure
existence.

THE SHORT-TERM POLICY OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS

European democracies are governed by parties whose representatives dispose of little time to
apply their policies, which are based mainly on economic and social improvement. As a rule, the
aims of democracies are short-term issues. This situation does not exist in third world dictatorships—
like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, for example—whose dictators-for-life plan long-term ideological
policies. Experts usually claim that economic development is an essential factor toward achieving
peace and the suppression of hatred and prejudice. This claim is belied by the situation in Saudi
Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, where the prejudices toward women and non-
Muslims have barely changed over the centuries. Moreover, such generalizations neglect significant
civilizational differences, whereby some societies bestow prestige on a religious-inspired, warlike
strategy of world conquest over any current economic considerations. In the jihad civilization, peace
is only an interval between a continuation of hostilities.
The overlapping of the two domains, the economic and the political, has fostered Europe’s—
especially France’s—Arab policy; in the years ahead, this policy will develop significant political and
cultural changes in Europe. In particular, one may point to wide divergences concerning the status of
women, polygamy, and the integration of some Sharia rules into the European juridical system, as
demanded by millions of the recent Muslims immigrants to Europe. The European Union’s Arab
policy is rooted in a planned political project, which aims at creating a Euro-Arab economic and
geostrategic continent conceived as a counterbalance to American influence. It implies the fusion of
North-South populations and the intensification of European economic interests in the Arab and
Muslim world. Since the 1960s, a European immigration policy has been developed within this
economic-strategic context.
 This Euro-Mediterranean. North-South project had as its Utopian model the “Andalusian
paradise” of a perfect Muslim-Christian symbiosis. This foundation myth served to consolidate the
Euro-Arab alliance and to project the responsibility for the current discrimination undergone by
Christians in Muslim countries onto Israel’s intransigence. The European Union refuses to denounce
Islamic religious prejudices, preferring to expiate its impotent frustration on Israel. Yet it is obvious
that the discrimination in question is rooted in the laws of the Sharia. This mythical Andalusian
paradise would be reborn—it has often been claimed since the 1970s—if only a democratic Arab
Palestine were to replace Israel. Here it is important to point out that this Andalusian multicultural
paradise is a political myth. In reality, female Christian slaves taken in continuous border raids filled
the Andalusian harems, and the Muslim state’s power was based on armed forces made up of
thousands of Islamized Christian male slaves, while all non-Muslims remained dhimmis. They were
governed by rulers who enforced the rigorous Malikite Islamic rite. Andalusia—a typical example of
a jihad-orientated country—was constantly agitated by Christian insurrections, while all traces of
Christianity in Muslim-conquered Spain were eliminated from the thirteenth century until the
Reconquista in the sixteenth century.

PALESTINIANISM: THE DHIMMI PALESTINIAN-CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTION IN

THE CONTEXT OF THE EURO-ISRAEL-ARAB RELATIONSHIP

The contribution of the Palestinian Arab Christians in this context is considerable in three areas
of policy: (1) the Muslim immigration into Europe; (2) the ongoing destruction of Christianity in the
Arab and the larger Muslim world; and (3) the growing European anti-Zionism.
The theme of Muslim-Christian symbiosis, a “golden age” preceding the advent of “Sin”—
personified by the State of Israel—replaced history with myth. This theme, which forms one of the
principles of Arab nationalism, was propagated especially after the 1920s. It embodied in the Levant,
and especially in Mandatory Palestine, a policy of Muslim-Christian collabora-tion against Zionism.
After 1948, this myth formed the weapon justifying the elimination of the Jewish state.5 It provided a
strategy absolving the Arab world of any guilt, Israel being held responsible for the sufferings of the
Christians in the region. This connivance allowed trade between the West and the Arab-Muslim
world without hindrance. It reinforced the anti-Zionist campaign and curbed the Judeo-Christian
rapprochement.6 However, this policy, as practiced by Palestinian Arab Christians, both lay and
clergy, does not represent all Christian opinions. The success of this propaganda in Europe since the
1960s—totally disproportionate to the demographic importance of the Palestinian Arab Christians,
well under 5 percent of the total Palestinian Arab population—results from alliance with antisemitic
lobbies. Today, these same Christians are faced with the progress of the Hamas movement in the
areas now under Yasir Arafat’s administration.
Arab immigration into Europe had been planned and encouraged from the early 1960s on by
European politicians and their Arabist advisors. It continued the pro-Arab, pro-Muslim policy
maintained by European powers and Church hierarchies since the beginning of the century. In the
1960s, the overtures to other religions announced after the Second Vatican Council represented a
generous innovation that broke with the prejudices of the past. Concerning the Jews, however, the
policy of rapprochement with Judaism was counterbalanced by anti-Zionism and the defense of
Palestinian interests. Thus, the condemnation of antisemitism went hand in hand with the propagation
of anti-Zionism. The unilateral commitment of the Vatican and many Protestant churches to the
advocacy of the Palestinian Arab cause sustained the Christian theology of supersession that had
delegitimized the State of Israel.
After the Second Vatican Council, and at the instigation of the Palestinian churches. Catholic
and Protestant theological bodies reinforced their dialogue with Islam.7 Rapprochement with Judaism
was overshadowed by Christian interests in the Muslim world and the adamant opposition of Arab
Churches. These dhimmi churches function solely within the conceptual universe of dhimmitude,
which they have perpetuated for thirteen centuries. Their survival is linked to their promotion of
Muslim interests, the “service” of the dhimmis to Islam.
“Palestinianism” has sidelined the history of dhimmitude and prevented its critical
examination. The knowledge of these realities would have encouraged the desacralization of the
traditional Muslim prejudices concerning the People of the Book. Such a step would have led to a
Muslim aggiornamento. But the Muslim-Christian symbiosis, which was to be accomplished in a
future democratic Palestine—on Israel’s demise—became virtually a dogmatic axiom. It prevented
any knowledge of the history and of critical reflection about Muslim-Christian relations in the
context of jihad and dhimmitude—the concepts that were at the very foundation of these relations.
The prohibition on challenging this Muslim-Christian symbiosis imposed a taboo on the deteriorating
conditions of Christian communities in Muslim countries.8 As Israel was labeled the “Evil” in order
to maintain the Euro-Muslim alliance, this general silence also contributed to a worsening of their
own situation, inducing an irreversible Christian movement of conversion to Islam and a massive
emigration from Arab Muslim countries to the West.9
For both commercial and theological motives, holding Israel guilty for the deterioration of the
condition of the Christians in the Arab world is still a common practice. This response forms part of a
continuing tradition of triangular relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the context of
dhimmitude. In the past, persecuted by Muslims and powerless to avenge themselves upon their
persecutors. Christians often took out their frustration by attacking Jews. The persecution of Jews in
medieval Europe was often a Christian reaction to Muslim persecutions suffered by Christians in
Spain and the Levant. The modern indictment of the State of Israel forms part of this tradition. Not
daring to confront the Arab world, for fear of losing their markets, European politicians take revenge
on Israel for their own impotence. However, it is obvious that it is the Sharia laws, unrelated to Israel,
that limit the rights of Christians in Arab countries, and the discrimination and attacks they suffer
there express traditional Islamic prejudices.
The Palestinian Arab cause was an essential and fundamental element in Europe’s anti-
Zionism. The Christian idea of the Jews as a “deicide people” was often revitalized by the
presentation of a Muslim-Christian Palestine “crucified” by the Jewish state. As recently as
December 11, 2000—two weeks before the Christmas Jubilee—a new Palestinian daily. Intifada,
displayed on half of its front page a provocative caricature showing a crucified young woman with
the name “Palestine” above her head. Blood spurts from her martyred body onto a trio of caricatured
Jews looking up at the crucified woman were meant to represent Jesus/Palestine. Three days later.
Intifada provided another message in the design of a massive cross, this time without the crucifixion
scene, but with a prayer addressed to “My Lord the Betrayed—betrayed by the contemptible
treasonable kiss,” and ending: “O Son of the Virgin, they cannot overcome you twice.”10
Pressed by the Arab states, the Palestinian dhimmi Churches torpedoed the Judeo-Christian
rapprochement in Europe. As the heirs and guardians of an age-old tradition of debasing, even of
murdering, Jews in their homeland, they loudly justified the PLO’s international campaign of
terrorism. The political struggle against Israel prolonged and updated the theological struggle.
This phenomenon is unrelated to legitimate criticism of some aspects of Israeli policy, as is
normal for any state. Rather, it derives from the compulsive urge to hate and defame. Deicidal
allusions, ritual murder and world conspiracy accusations, supersessionist theology, and negationism
of the Holocaust are constantly recycled in the Muslim-Christian media of the Middle East, including
the Palestinian, while the European Union continues to finance the PNAs educational system, which
even omits Israel’s existence on maps.
Thus, as Europeans become reconciled with the Jewish communities in the EU countries—
negligible populations that survived a European genocide—anti-Zionism projects all its traditional
prejudices onto the State of Israel, which has come to embody the malevolent nature of Judaism
itself. It is true that the religious catechisms have been expurgated, but every day the teaching of
contempt echoes in another register. The more antisemitism is condemned, the more anti-Zionism is
unleashed by a sort of mimicry. This recycling of old hatreds projects onto the victims the crimes of
their oppressors. The more Israel’s Christian friends try to modify the Churches’ understanding, the
more support for Palestinianism and Palestinian Arab superses-sionism is reinforced. Arab-Palestine
is seen as the heir to biblical Israel and the root of Christianity itself. The negation of Israel’s identity
and history has enhanced the purity of the replacement theology.
It is not by coincidence that anti-Zionism has grown to such proportions in Europe, in that
same continent where the Holocaust was perpetrated. For decades, in some countries, Nazi
collaborators and sympathizers were to be found in senior places of power within the state, high
finance, and the media. Efforts to judge those responsible have often been blocked. Only Germany,
under an international obligation to do so, has courageously undertaken a critical examination of its
own past. By championing the Palestinian Arab cause, European antisemitism has absolved itself,
removing the stain of guilt and projecting it, with a vengeance, onto the Jews by demonizing and
“Naz-ifying” Israel.
It is not easy to estimate the strength of political European antisemitism today, bearing in mind
the objections to publish pro-Zionist opinions in the mainstream media. Indeed, it is certain that the
success of anti-Zionism can only be explained by the occult, or overtly political, support it receives at
the highest political and religious levels. Nonetheless, the Catholic encyclical Nostra Aetate (1965),
the tireless struggle against antisemitism by many Catholic and Protestant theologians, the Vatican’s
recognition of Israel, and the desire to deepen and maintain the Judeo-Christian rapprochement—as
exemplified by Pope John Paul IPs pilgrimage to Israel in March 2000— have created new forms of
behavior. The secularization of Western societies and increasing individualism have developed the
most varied range of opinions among all sectors of the population. Without a constant media
pounding as in recent years—strengthened from October 2000 with the second intifada—it would be
difficult to discern a consensus of European public opinion, although the tendencies and policies of
the European Union are clear. Some indicators for the future trends may be seen in: (1) the violently
hostile reactions to the 1996 election of Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister; (2) the explicit
boycott by the European Community of the third millennium Jerusalem celebration (a denial of its
Jewish biblical history); (3) the refusal to recognize even West Jerusalem as the capital of the State of
Israel (a symbolic reminder of the prohibition of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem); (4) praise for
Ehud Barak so long as Palestinian demands were constantly satisfied in the “peace process”; (5) the
anti-Israeli war propaganda in the media after Arafat launched Intifada II; (6) the almost universal
hostility to Ariel Sharon’s election; and (7) the growing tendency to root Christianity in Arab
Palestinianism.

THE END OF JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY?

Is the road toward “Palestinian Liberation Theology” leading to a total divorce between the two
religions? The rejection of its Jewish roots has constituted a permanent movement in the Church.
This problem appears clearly at two levels. The first has led to the elimination of the Jews, justified
by their demonization. As many Christians have so well understood, the Holocaust and the Nazi
return to paganism sounded Christianity’s death knell. In other words, the executioner perishes
spiritually in the death of his victim.
The second level appears in a process of de-Christianization, through hatred of a Jewish
essence and spirituality structuring and sustaining Christian thought. The total expulsion of Judaism
from the Christian consciousness is taking place through the elaboration of a theology seeking to de-
Judaize the Bible, including the New Testament. It has already been expressed in Europe through the
“Palestinization” of the Bible—that is, in its de-Judaization.11
Palestinian Liberation Theology thus forms part of this historical movement to eliminate
Judaism from Christianity. Jesus is no longer considered to be a Jew born in Judea but an Arab from
Palestine—so, too, his mother, his family, his disciples, and the apostles. This travesty would seem
childish if it did not actually express an implicit desire to expel Judaism totally from Christianity and
to usurp its heritage through Muslim-Christian Palestinianism. The de-Judaization of Christianity
proceeds from a self-destructive dynamic and an impossibility to reconcile the hatred for Jews with
the Jewish origin of Christianity. This hatred is particularly virulent in the historic Palestinian
paganized Churches—in the Land of Israel itself—and explains this new avatar of the theology of
supersession. The filial relationship between Judaism and Christianity is unacceptable and scandalous
for Christian Arabs steeped in anti-Judaism. It is out of this conflict between a Christianity born of
Judaism and its rejection of Judaism that arise “the Bible problems” of the Palestinian Christians. The
current attempts to detach the New Testament from the Old by de-Judaizing Jesus, and his disciples
and apostles (through their Palestinization, Arabization, or even Islamization), fall within the scope
of this controversy.
Yet the positive change in Vatican policy toward Israel, as well as the Judeo-Christian
rapprochement, undermines the traditional Judeophobie stance of the Syrian-Palestinian Churches.
These Churches are now confronted by a revision of theology that removes them from the role of
Israel’s victims, which they enjoyed and widely proclaimed throughout the world. and places them in
the role of persecutors of the Jewish people in its ancient homeland for nearly two millennia. And
this role—for which they have not yet atoned—excludes them from assuming the position of the
arbiters of “justice” in relation to the Jews and Israel.
The de-Judaization of the gospels, and of all the biblical texts, indicates an incapacity to
reconcile Judaism with Christianity in a Church that first endeavored to bring Jewish ethics to the
pagan world. The pagan deviation— represented by Judeophobia as manifested in communism and
Nazism— became the greatest digger of Christianity’s grave. Today, this same Judeophobie tendency
is reappearing in the Arabization of the gospels, and a drift toward Islamizing Christian theology. It is
difficult to know whether this step results from Judeophobia itself or from the intolerance of the
Islamic environment (which rejects Judaism and Christianity in the same way, hence the Islamization
of the Arab dhimmi Churches in their quest for toleration). Be that as it may, this trend, which is
currently being relentlessly propagated in Europe by a pro-Islamic, Judeophobie, Christian clergy,
forms part of those constant surrenders arising out of the dhimmi mentality.
Making due allowance for historical differences, the situation after the Holocaust is somewhat
reminiscent of that which prevailed in the Orient on the eve of Islam’s rise in the seventh century and
the subsequent collapse of empires. The massacres of Jews by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius at the
instigation of the Palestinian clergy was followed a few years later by the Arab conquest and the
Islamization of large areas of Eastern Christendom. The latter was facilitated by virulent anti-Judaism
and bloody doctrinal conflicts among the Churches, an alliance between the Christians and the
Muslims against the Jews and against each other, a spiritual void, and corruption among the leaders
of both Church and State.

HISTORY—WHY BOTHER?

One often hears that history is superfluous. The truth is that history becomes a snare for those
who forget it and for those who get bogged down in it and try to revive it today at all costs. The
liberating dimension of history can only develop through the relativization of conflicting truths and
through the resolve not to revive history but to invent a future. Yet a knowledge of history is essential
for inventing the future. Forgetting history leads one to fall fatally into its pitfalls.
The tragic developments in Lebanon since the mid-1970s may well have been programmed by
the political options that were adopted at the beginning of the twentieth century.12 Likewise, the
restoration of the State of Israel represented the outcome of a long process. Europe in twenty or thirty
years will have been transformed by policies that were decided in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus history
constantly projects itself into the future; it is not an insignificant element of the past but an active
catalyst of our present and our future.
History ought to lead us to reflect upon the ways out of history in order to resolve conflicts
through policies of peace and reconciliation. Such policies deal with strategic aspects: territories and
borders—but with ideologies, too. The peace that seemed to be taking shape between Israel and its
Arab neighbors, including the Palestinian Arabs, implied a total modification of mentalities. Yet the
Arabization of biblical geography and history perpetuates within the Palestinian dhimmi Churches
the old theology of supersession; they seem condemned either to endless hostility or to an
Islamization that underlies the self-proclaimed Palestinian Arabness of their origins.
But peace also means recognizing the Other in respect of his being. Peace must put an end to
negationist substitutions, perverse forms of a fundamental rejection of human diversity. For
Palestinian Arabs, peace means accepting Israel’s legitimacy—de jure, and not by tolerance—as well
as Israel’s history in its ancestral homeland. And for Israel, peace also means recognizing that
Christianity and Islam are universal religions, whose contributions to civilization are fundamental.
Peace means accepting and respecting their legitimacy within the State of Israel. The liberation of the
Jews in the Land of Israel from the Christian theological curse and from Islamic dhimmitude would
abolish for all peoples the concept of divine hatred and divine condemnation.
Ending this history of conflict means approaching one another with equal respect. Then peace
among religions, peace among men and women, can radiate from Israel and the Middle East
throughout the world, eliminating the darkness of fanaticism. For the restoration of the State of Israel
—its acceptance by the nations with its capital Jerusalem—rejects the concept of a people,
collectively cursed, excluded from divine love, and dispossessed by replacement theologies. In that
way, the atonement for this greatest injustice also bears within it the reconciliation among Jews,
Christians, and Muslims.
 58.
HONEST INTELLECTUALS
MUST SHED THEIR
SPIRITUAL TURRANS
Ibn Warraq

Aldous Huxley once defined an intellectual as someone who had found something in life
more important than sex: a witty but inadequate definition, since it would make all impotent men and
frigid women intellectuals. A better definition would be a freethinker, not in the narrow sense of
someone who does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion, but in the wider sense of someone
who has the will to find out, who exhibits rational doubt about prevailing intellectual fashions, and
who is unafraid to apply critical thought to any subject. If the intellectual is really committed to the
notion of truth and free inquiry, then he or she cannot stop the inquiring mind at the gates of any
religion—let alone Islam. And yet, that is precisely what has happened with Islam, criticism of which
in our present intellectual climate is taboo.
The reason why many intellectuals have continued to treat Islam as a taboo subject are many
and various, including:

• political correctness leading to Islamic correctness;

• the fear of playing into the hands of racists or reactionaries to the detriment of the West’s
Muslim minorities;
• commercial or economic motives;
• feelings of postcolonial guilt (where the entire planet’s problems are attributed to the West’s
wicked ways and intentions);
• plain physical fear;
• and the intellectual terrorism of writers such as Edward Said.

Reprinted from the Guardian, November 4. 2002.

Said not only taught an entire generation of Arabs the wonderful art of self-pity (if only those
wicked Zionists, imperialists, and colonialists would leave us alone, we would be great, we would
not have been humiliated, we would not be backward) but intimidated feeble Western academics, and
even weaker, invariably leftish, intellectuals into accepting that any criticism of Islam was to be
dismissed as Orientalism, and hence invalid.
But the first duty of the intellectual is to tell the truth. Truth is not much in fashion in this
postmodern age when Continental charlatans have infected Anglo-American intellectuals with the
thought that objective knowledge is not only undesirable but unobtainable. I believe that to abandon
the idea of truth not only leads to political fascism but stops dead all intellectual inquiry. To give up
the notion of truth means forsaking the goal of acquiring knowledge. But man, as Aristotle put it, by
nature strives to know. Truth, science, intellectual inquiry, and rationality are inextricably bound
together. Relativism, and its illegitimate offspring, multiculturalism, are not conducive to the critical
examination of Islam.
Said wrote a polemical book, Orientalism (1978), whose pernicious influence is still felt in all
departments of Islamic studies, where any critical discussion of Islam is ruled out a priori. For Said,
Orientalists are involved in an evil conspiracy to denigrate Islam, to maintain its people in a state of
permanent subjugation, and are a threat to Islam’s future. These Orientalists are seeking knowledge
of Oriental peoples only in order to dominate them; most are in the service of imperialism.
Said’s thesis was swallowed whole by Western intellectuals, since it accords well with the
deep anti-Westernism of many of them. This anti-Westernism resurfaces regularly in Said’s prose, as
it did in his comments in the Guardian after September II. The studied moral evasiveness,
callousness, and plain nastiness of Said’s article, with its refusal to condemn outright the attacks on
America or to show any sympathy for the victims or Americans, leave an unpleasant taste in the
mouth of anyone whose moral sensibilities have not been blunted by political and Islamic
correctness. In the face of all evidence, Said still argues that it was US foreign policy in the Middle
East and elsewhere that brought about these attacks.
The unfortunate result is that academics can no longer do their work honestly. A scholar
working on recently discovered Quranic manuscripts showed some of his startling conclusions to a
distinguished colleague, a world expert on the Qur’an. The latter did not ask, “What is the evidence,
what are your arguments, is it true?” The colleague simply warned him that his thesis was
unacceptable because it would upset Muslims.
Very recently. Prof. Josef van Ess, a scholar whose works are essential to the study of Islamic
theology, cut short his research, fearing it would not meet the approval of Sunni Islam. Gunter Luling
was hounded out of the profession by German universities because he proposed the radical thesis that
at least a third of the Qur’an was originally a pre-Islamic, Christian hymnody, and thus had nothing
to do with Mohammed. One German Arabist says academics are now wearing “a turban spiritually in
their mind,” practicing “Islamic scholarship” rather than scholarship on Islam. Whereas biblical
criticism has made important advances since the sixteenth century, when Spinoza demonstrated that
the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, the Qur’an is virtually unknown as a human
document susceptible to analysis by the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism.
Western scholars need to defend unflinchingly our right to examine Islam, to explain its rise
and fall by the normal mechanisms of human history, according to the objective standards of
historical methodology.
Democracy depends on freedom of thought and free discussion. The notion of infallibility is
profoundly undemocratic and unscientific. It is perverse for the Western media to lament the lack of
an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore books such as Anwar Shaikh’s Islam—The Arab
Imperialism or my Why I Am Not a Muslim. How do they think reformation will come about if not
with criticism?
The proposed new legislation by the Labour government to protect Muslims, while well
intentioned, is woefully misguided. It will mean publishers will be even more reluctant to take on
works critical of Islam. If we stifle rational discussion of Islam, what will emerge will be the very
thing that political correctness and the government seek to avoid: virulent, racist populism. If there
are further terrorist acts, then irrational xenophobia will be the only means of expression available.
We also cannot allow Muslims subjectively to decide what constitutes “incitement to religious
hatred,” since any legitimate criticism of Islam will then be shouted down as religious hatred.
Only in a democracy where freedom of inquiry is protected will science progress. Hastily
conceived laws risk smothering the golden thread of rationalism running through Western
civilization.
 CONTRIBUTORS

BAT YE’OR is the author of four books on jihad and dhimmitude, The Dhimmi: Jews and
Christians under Islam (1985), The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to
Dhimmitude (1996), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2002), and her latest study,
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, January 2005)

ROY BROWN is president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, an NGO at the
UN, and has written extensively on human rights, humanism, and population issues.

PAUL COOK is advocacy manager for the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity in
the UK. He headed its international campaign on apostasy and was involved at the UN.

MARK DURIE holds a PhD in Linguistics from the ANU (1984). He is a senior associate of the
Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and a minister at
St. Hilary’s Anglican Church in Kew.

LARS HEDEGAARD is a regular contributor to two Copenhagen newspapers, Berlingske

Tidende and Weekendavisen.

IBN WARRAQ is the author of Why I Am Not a Muslim (Prometheus Books, 1995) and the
editor of the essay collections Leaving Islam (Prometheus Books, 2003), What the Koran Really Says
(Prometheus Books, 2002), and The Quest for the Historical Mohammed (Prometheus Books, 2000).

SHAFIQUE KESHAVJEE is a pastor and author of The King, the Sage, and the Fool (Le Roi, le
Sage, et le Bouffon, Paris: Le Seuil, 1998), which was translated into fifteen languages.

DAVID G. LITTMAN is a historian, translator, and author of many articles and publications on
dhimmis. Since 1986 he has been active on human rights issues for several NGOs at the UN
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. He is currently an NGO representative there for the
Association for World Education and World Union for Progressive Judaism.

WALID PHARES is a professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic-University and

Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

DANIEL PIPES is director of the Middle East Forum, a member of the presidentially appointed
board of the US Institute of Peace, and a prize-winning columnist for the New York Sun and the
Jerusalem Post. His most recent book, Miniatures: Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics
(Transaction Publishers) appeared in late 2003.

SAMUEL SHAHID is professor of missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in

Fort Worth, Texas.

MUHAMMAD YOUNUS SHAIKH, a medical doctor, was sentenced to death for blasphemy in
Pakistan in 2001 and spent two years in solitary confinement before his release following a fourth
trial. He received asylum in Switzerland, where he now lives.
 PATRICK SOOKHDEO holds a PhD from London University’s School of Oriental and African
Studies. He is director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. His books include A
People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian Community of Pakistan (Christian
Focus, 2002) and Understanding Islamic Terrorism: The Islamic Doctrine of War (Isaac Publishing,
2004).

ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch. His previous books include Onward Muslim
Soldiers (Regnery, 2003), Islam Unveiled (Encounter, 2002), and Islam: A Guide for Catholics (with
Daniel Ali, Ascension, 2003).

SRDJA TRIFKOVIC is the author of Sword of the Prophet (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002);
director of the Center for International Affairs at the Rockford Institute, a think tank in Rockford,
Illinois; and foreign affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

RENÉ WADLOW is currently the main representative to the United Nations in Geneva of two
NGOs: the Association of World Citizens and the Association for World Education. He is editor of
www.transnational-perspectives.org. and formerly professor and director of research at the Graduate
Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva.

ROBERT S. WISTRICH is a professor of modern history at the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem, director of its Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, and
editor of its journal (Antisemitism International). He is the author of many highly acclaimed books
and has edited several documentaries for British TV (in 2003, Blaming the Jews).
 Foreword

NOTES

1. Amnesty International. ASA .33/15.91.

2. “Tacitus,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 1034.

3. See, for example. Stelio Cro, The Noble Savage: Allegory of Freedom (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990).

4. Michel de Montaigne, “On Cannibals,” in Essays trans. J. M. Cohen (Har-mondsworth, UK: Penguin. 1978), p. 113.

5. Ibid., p. 114.

6. Quoted in Pierre Bayle, “Mahomet and Nestorius,” in Dictionary Historical and Critical, trans. John Peter Bernard, Thomas Birch, and John Lockman, 10 vols. (London,
1740).

7. Ibid.

8. Quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Century, trans. Miriam Kochan and David Littman
(Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), p. 384.

9. Ibid., p. 90.

10. P. M. Holt, “The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale,” in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford
University Press, 1962), p. 300.

11. Arthur Jeffery, “The Quest of the Historical Mohammed,” Muslim World 16, no. 4 (October 1926): 32.

12. Quoted in Holt, “The Treatment of Arab History,” p. 302.

13. Quoted in G. H. Bousquet, “Loi musulmane et droit europeen,” Revue Psy-chologie des Peuples (le Havre, France) 3 (1950): 110, n. 2.

14. Qutoed in Paul Edwards, “Voltaire,” in The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, ed. Gordon Stein, vol. 2 (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), p. 715.

15. Edwards, “Voltaire,” p. 718.

16. Ibid., p. 715.

17. Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 95.

18. Ibid.

19. Quoted in Ye’or, Decline of Eastern Christianity, p. 385.

20. Ibid., pp. 386-89.

21. W. Montgomery Watt, in Bell’s Introduction to the Qur ‘an, by Richard Bell, revised and enlarged by W. Mongomery Watt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1977), p. 17.

22. “Carlyle, Thomas,” in Oxford Companion to Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). p. 171.

23. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: On Heroes and Hero Worship (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1973), p. 297.
 24. Ibid., pp. 288-301.

25. Ibid., p. 307.

26. Ibid., p. 306.

27. Ibid., p. 299.

28. Quoted in Norman Daniel, Islam and the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 306.

29. Daniel, Islam, p. 307.

Chapter001

NOTES

1. United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, United

States of America v. Randall Todd Rover, Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi,
Masoud Ahmad Khan, Yong Ki Kwon, Mohammed Aatique, Seifullah
Chapman, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Donald Thomas Surratt, Caliph Basha
Ibn Abdur-Raheem, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, Sabri Benkhala, June 2003,
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/usroyer603ind.pdf (accessed
August 23, 2004). See also Terry Frieden, ‘“Jihad Network’ Suspects Plead
Not Guilty,” CNN.com, July 3, 2003,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/03/terror.arraignment; Nicholas K.
Geranios, “Second Man with Ties to University of Idaho Arrested,”
Associated Press, March 14, 2003. For Khafagi’s position with CAIR,
which CAIR reportedly denies, see Carol Eisenberg, “A Troubling Year for
Muslims in America,” Newsday, September 2, 2002. For Ghassan Elashi,
the third CAIR official arrested, and other illuminating information about
the group, see Joe Kaufman, “The CAIR-Terror Connection,” Front-
PageMagazine.com, April 29, 2004,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read Article.asp?ID=13175
(accessed August 23, 2004).
2. Bat Ye’or, “Myths and Politics: The Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society: Origin of a Myth,” paper presented at the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies and
International Strategic Studies Association Symposium on the Balkan War, August 31, 1995, http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/LectureEl.html (accessed August 22, 2004).

3. Many of these have been collected at Bat Ye’or’s Web site, “Dhimmis and Dhimmitude: The Status of Minorities under Islamic Rule,” an outstanding resource:
www.dhimmitude.org. The spelling of words, when not in a quotation, has generally been Americanized throughout, even in articles originally published in the United Kingdom.

4. Bat Ye’or, “Myths and Politics.”

5. Ibid.
 6. Quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Century, trans. Miriam Kochan and David Littman
(Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), p. 384.

7. Ibid., p. 423.

8. “Soldier Held on Suspicion of Espionage,” CNN.com, February 13, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/12/natl.guard.espionage/ (accessed August 23, 2004).

9. Stephen Brown, “France’s Rushdie Affair,” FrontPageMagazine.com, November 21, 2003, http://www.frontpagemag.com/ Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID= 10931 (accessed
August 23, 2004).

10. “Carey Makes Fresh Islam Speech,” BBC News online, May 12, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/l/hi/ulc/3708859.stm (accessed August 23, 2004).

11. “Fears as Young Muslims ‘Opt Out,’“ BBC News online, March 7, 2004, .Uk/l/hi/uk/3539535.stm (accessed August 23, 2004).

12. Russell Bassett, “Commentary: Islam—Respect the Faith, Not the Fanatics,” Army News Service, May 14, 2004.

13. “Two Sentenced for Trying to Join Taliban,” Associated Press, November 24, 2003.

14. Samar Fatany, “Stop the Attack against Islam,” Arab News, May 12, 2004.

15. “2nd Issue of ‘Voice of Jihad’ Al-Qa’ida Online Magazine: Strategy to Avoid Clashes with Saudi Security Forces, Convert the World’s Countries to Islam,” Middle East
Media Research Institute, October 31, 2003.

16. Igor Rotar, “Central Asia: Hizb-ut-Tahrir wants worldwide Sharia law,” Forum 18 News Service, October 29, 2003.

17. David Isenberg, “Jemaah Islamiya ‘Damaged but Dangerous,’“ Asia Times, September 4, 2003.

18. “Obligatory to Implement the Shari’ah,” www.muhajiroun.com.

19. Quoted in Steven Stalinsky, “The ‘Islamic Affairs Department’ of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C.,” Middle East Media Research Institute, November 26, 2003.

20. Bill Graham, “Now Is the Time to Reach Out to the Muslim World,” Globe and Mail, May 14, 2004. For the Khadrs, see “Khadr Mother and Son Return to Canada,”
Globe and Mail, April 20, 2004. For Chretien, see “Married to the Jihad: The Lonely World of al-Qa’ida’s Wives,” Independent, May 16, 2004.

21. Stewart Bell, “Al-Qaeda Says Canada Deserves Bombing: Jihad Spokesman Says Canadians Were Mean to Khadrs,” National Post, May 15, 2004.

22. Imam Muslim, Sahih Muslim, trans. Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, rev. ed. (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2000), bk. 1, no. 284.

23. The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, vol. 6 (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997), bk. 65, no. 4581.

24. Ibid., vol. 4, bk. 60, no. 3448.

25. Ibid., vol. 4, bk. 60, no. 3449.

26. Ibid., vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 2941.

27. Sahih Muslim, bk. 19, no. 4294.

28. Sahih Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 58, no. 3162.

29. Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMR1), “Friday Sermons in Saudi Mosques: Review and Analysis,” MEMRI Special Report 10, September 26, 2002,
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR01002(accessed August 23, 2004). This undated sermon appeared on the Saudi Web site www.alminbar.net
shortly before the MEMRI translation was published.

30. Middle East Media Research Institute, “A Friday Sermon on PA TV: . . . We Must Educate Our Children on the Love of Jihad . . . ,” MEMRI Special Dispatch 240, July
11, 2001, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd &ID=SP24001 (accessed August 23, 2004).

31. Ibid.

32. Ahmed ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Beltsville, MD: Amana, 1999), sees. 011.3, 5.

33. Ibid., p. ix.

 34. Ibid., p. xx.

35. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 130.

36. Ibid., p. 131.

37. Charles Hamilton, trans., The Hedaya (1870; reprint, Kitab Bhavan, 1994), p. 18.

38. Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, p. 131.

39. Sahih Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 58, no. 3168.

40. See “Saudi Police Torture Indian Catholic for His Faith,” ZENIT News Agency, June 2, 2004.

41. Quoted in Robert Hussein, Apostate Son (Colorado Springs, CO: Najiba, 1998), p. 120.

42. Ibid., p. 161.

43. Ibid., p. 193.

44. Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, trans. Adil Salahi, vol. 8 (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation and Islamonline.net, 2003), p. 115.

45. Ibid., p. 112.

46. In line with sura 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion.”

47. Ibid., p. 123.

48. Sayyid Abdul A’la Maududi, Toward Understanding the Qur’an, trans. Zafar Ishaq Ansari, vol. 3 (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1990), p. 202.

Part002

NOTE

1. See Abu Dawud, Suncm Abu Dawud, trans. Ahmad Hasan, (New
Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1990), bk. 35, no. 4240.

Chapter002

NOTES

1. S. Abul Ala Maududi, The Rights of Non-Muslims in the Islamic State

(Lahore. Pakistan: Islamic Publications, 1982).
2. Najih Ibrahim bin Abdullah, “The Ordinances of the People of the Covenant and the Minorities in an Islamic State,” Balagh (Cairo), May 29, 1988, and June 5, 1988.

3. Abdullah Mustapha Muraghi, Islamic Law Pertaining to Non-Muslims (Egypt: Library of Letters, n.d.).
 4. Adbullah. “The Ordinances of the People of the Covenant and the Minorities in an Islamic State.”

5. Maududi. The Rights of Non-Muslims in the Islamic State.

6. Ibid.

7. The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Musin Khan, vol. 9 (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997), bk. 88, no. 6922.

8. ‘Abdur Rahman I. Doi, Shari’a: The Islamic Law (London: Taha, 1984).

9. Muraghi, Islamic Law Pertaining to Non-Muslims.

10. Maududi, The Rights of Non-Muslims in the Islamic State.

11. Ibid.

12. Al-Muslim Weekly, May 2, 1993.

13. Maududi, The Rights of Non-Muslims in the Islamic State.

Chapter003

NOTES

1. Suzanne Haneef, What Everyone Should Know about Islam and

Muslims (Lahore, Pakistan: Kazi, 1979), p. 173.
2. Ahmed von Denffer, Christians in the Qur’an and the Sunna (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1979), p. 38.

3. Ibid., p. 41.

4. Abdul Rahman Ben Hammad al-Omar, The Religion of Truth (Riyadh: General Presidency of Islamic Researches, 1991), p. 86.

5. Sahih Bukhari hadith 9.50, narrated by Abu Juhaifa: “I asked ‘Ali ‘Do you have anything Divine literature besides what is in the Qur’an?’ Or, as Uyaina once said, ‘Apart
from what the people have?’ ‘Ali said, ‘By Him Who made the grain split (germinate) and created the soul, we have nothing except what is in the Qur’an and the ability (gift) of
understanding Allah’s Book which He may endow a man with, and what is written in this sheet of paper.’ I asked, ‘What is on this paper?’ He replied, ‘The legal regulations of Diya
(Blood-money) and the (ransom for) releasing of the captives, and the judgment that no Muslim should be killed in Qisas (equality in punishment) for killing a Kafir (disbeliever).’
Sunan of Abu Dawud hadith 2745, narrated by Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As: “The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: . .. A believer shall not be killed for an unbeliever, nor a
confederate within the term of confederation with him.”

6. 7498 Al-Risala (Maliki manual), 37.04: “Blood Rate to Other Than Muslim Men”: “The blood-wit for a woman shall be half that of a man. Similarly the blood-wit for a
male Christian or Jew is half that of a male Muslim, and the blood-wit for their women is half that of their men. As for a Magian, his blood-wit is eight hundred dirhams. The blood-
wit for their women is half that of their men. Similarly, in respect of wounds, compensation given to non-Muslims is half what is given to their Muslim counterparts.”

7. 4833 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual), “Christians and Jews May Testify Concerning Each Other”:

The testimony of Zimmees with respect to each other is admissible, notwithstanding they
be of different religions. Malik and Shafe’i have said that their evidence is absolutely
inadmissible, because, as infidels are unjust, it is requisite to be slow in believing any thing
they may advance, God having said (in the Koran) “When an unjust person tells you any thing,
be slow in believing him”; whence it is that the evidence of an infidel is not admitted
concerning a Muslim; and consequently, that an infidel stands (in this particular) in the same
predicament with an apostate. The arguments of our doctors upon this point are twofold. First,
it is related of the prophet, that he permitted and held lawful the testimony of some Christians
 concerning others of their sect. Secondly, an infidel having power over himself, and his minor
children, is on that account qualified to be a witness with regard to his faith is not destructive
of this qualification, because he is supposed to abstain from every thing prohibited in his own
religion, and falsehood is prohibited in every religion. It is otherwise with respect to an
apostate, as he possesses no power, either over his own person, or over that of another; and it
is also otherwise with respect to a Zimmee in relation to a Muslim, because a Zimmee has no
power over the person of a Muslim. Besides, a Zimmee may be suspected of inventing
falsehoods against a Muslim, from the hatred he bears to him on account of the superiority of
the Muslims over him.

3197 Al-Hedaya, vol. 1 (Hanafi manual) [qualification of a witness]: “It is necessary that the
witnesses be … Muslims; the evidence of infidels not being legal with respect to Muslims.”

8. 4781 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual), chap. 4, “Of the Decrees of a Qazi Relative to Inheritance” [case of the widow of a Christian claiming her inheritance after
having embraced the faith]:

If a Christian die, and his widow appear before the Qazi as a Muslima, and declare that
“she had become so since the death of her husband,” and the heirs declare that she had become
so before his death, their declaration must be credited. Ziffer is of opinion that the declaration
of the widow must be credited; because the change of her religion, as being a supervenient cir-
cumstance, must be referred to the nearest possible period. The arguments of our doctors are,
that as the cause of her exclusion from inheritance, founded on difference of faith, exists in the
present, it must therefore be considered as extant in the preterite, from the argument of the
present;—in the same manner as an argument is derived from the present, in a case relative to
the running of the water course of a mill;—that is to say, if a dispute arise between the lessor
and lessee of a water-mill, the former asserting that the stream had run from the period of the
lease till the present without interruption, and the latter denying this case, if the stream be
running at the period of contention, the assertion of the lesser must be credited, but if oth-
erwise, it follows that the argument in question suffices, on behalf of the heirs, to desert the
plea of the widow. With respect to what Ziffer objects, it is to be observed that he has regard to
the argument of apparent circumstances, for establishing the claim of the wife upon her
husband’s estate, and an argument of this nature does not suffice as proof to establish a right
although it would suffice to annul one.

4782 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [case of the Christian, widow of a Muslim, claiming
under the same circumstances]:

If a Muslim, whose wife was once a Christian, should die, and the widow appear before
the Qazi as a Muslima, and declare that she had embraced the faith prior to the death of her
husband, and the heirs assert the contrary,— in this case also the assertion of the heirs must be
credited, for no regard is paid, in this instance, to any argument derived from present
circumstances, since such an argument is not capable of establishing a claim, and the widow is
here the claimant of her husband’s property. With respect to the heirs, on the contrary, they are
repellents of the claim; and probability is an argument in their favour, the widow is
supervenient, and is therefore an argument against her.
9. 7520 Al-Risala (Maliki manual), 37.27, “A Christian Rapist”: “If a
Christian rapes a Muslim woman he is to be killed immediately by any
Muslim. But a Muslim cannot be executed on account of a non-believer.”
 10. Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Fiqh 4.75a, “A Non-Muslim Woman Who Dies While Carrying a Child by a Muslim Is to Be Buried in a Separate Grave”: “Al-Baihaqi reported from
Wathilah bin al-Asqa’ that he buried a Christian woman bearing the child of a Muslim in a cemetery that belonged to neither Muslims nor Christians. Ahmad supports this opinion
because he says that the woman, being a disbeliever, cannot be buried in a cemetery of Muslims, for they would suffer because of her punishment, nor can she be buried in a Christian
cemetery because her fetus, which is a Muslim, would suffer by their punishment.”

11. 5556 Al-Hedaya, vol. 3 (Hanafi manual), “Of the Usurpation of Things Which Are of No Value”:

A Mussulman is responsible for destroying the wine or pork of a Zimmee—

If a Mussulman destroy wine or pork belonging to a Zimmee, he must compensate for
the value of the same; whereas, if he destroy wine or pork belonging to a Mussulman, no
compensation is due.—Shafei maintains that in the former case also no compensation is due. A
similar disagreement subsists with respect to the case of a Zimmee destroying wine or pork
belonging to a Zimmee; or of one Zimmee selling either of these articles to another; for such
sale is lawful, according to our doctors,—in opposition to the opinion of Shafei. The argument
of Shafei is that wine and pork are not articles of value with respect to Mussulmans,—nor with
respect to Zimmees, as those are dependant of the Mussulmans with regard to the precepts of
the Law. A compensation of property, therefore, for the destruction of these articles is not due.
The arguments of our doctors are that wine and pork are valuable property with respect to
Zimmees: for with them wine is the same as vinegar with the Mussulmans, and pork the same
as mutton; and we, who are Mussulmans, being commanded to leave them in the practice of
their religion, have consequently no right to impose a rule upon them.—As, therefore, wine
and pork are with them property of value, it follows that whoever destroys these articles
belonging to them does, in fact, destroy their property of value: in opposition to the case of
carrion or blood, because these are not considered as property according to any religion, or
with any sect.

5557 Al-Hedaya, vol. 3 (Hanafi manual):

And must compensate for it by a payment of the value.

Hence it appears that if a Mussulman destroy the wine or pork of a Zimmee, he must
compensate for the value or the pork,—and also of the wine, notwithstanding that it be of the
class of similars; because it is not lawful for Mussulmans to transfer the property of wine, as
that would be to honour and respect it. It is otherwise where a Zimmee sells wine to a Zimmee,
or destroys the wine of a Zimmee; for in these cases it is incumbent upon the seller to deliver
over the wine to the purchase, and also upon the destroyer to give as a compensation a similar
quantity of wine to the proprietor, since the transfer of the property of wine is not prohibited to
Zimmees:—contrary to usury, as that is excepted from the contracts of Zimmees;—or to the
case of the slave of a Zimmee, who having been a Mussulman becomes an apostate; for if any
Mussulman kill this slave, he is not in that case responsible to the Zimmee, notwithstanding
the Zimmee consider the slave as valuable property, since we Mussulmans are commanded to
show our abhorrence of apostates. It is also otherwise with respect to the wilful omission of
the Tasmeea, or invocation in the slaying of an animal, where the proprietor considers such
omission as lawful, being for instance, of the sect of Shafei;—in other words, if a person of the
sect of Haneefa destroy the flesh of an animal so alin [sic] by a person of the sect of Shafei,
the Haneefite is not in that case responsible to the Shafeyite, notwithstanding the latter did,
according to his tenets, believe the slain animal to have been valuable property; because the
authority to convince the Shafeyite of the illegality of his practice is vested in the Haneefite,
inasmuch as it is permitted to him to establish the illegality of it by reason and argument.

5561 Al-Hedaya, vol. 3 (Hanafi manual):

And must compensate for them by paying their intrinsic value.

 Proceeding upon the doctrine of Haneefa, the destroyer, in the case here considered, is
responsible for the value the articles bear in themselves, independent of the particular
amusement to which they contribute. Thus if a female singer be destroyed, she must be valued
merely as a slave girl; and the same of fighting rams, tumbling pigeons, game cocks, or
eunuch slaves; in the other words, if any of these be destroyed, they must be valid and
accounted for at the rate they would have borne if unfit for the light and evil purposes to which
such articles are commonly applied; and other musical instruments. It is to be observed that, in
the case of spilling Sikker or Monissaf, the destroyer is responsible for the value of the article,
and not for a similar, because it does not become a Mussulman to be proprietor of such
articles. If, on the contrary, a person destroy a crucifix belonging to a Christian, he is
responsible for the value it bears as a crucifix; because Christians are left to the practice of
their own religious worship.
12. 3915 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [of a crucifix or
chessboard]:
Amputation is not incurred by stealing a crucifix, although it be of gold,— nor by stealing
a chess-board or chess pieces of gold, as it is in the thief’s power to excuse himself, by saying
“I took them with a view to break and destroy them, as things prohibited.” It is otherwise with
respect to coin bearing the impression of an idol, by the theft of which amputation is incurred;
because the money is not the object of worship, so as to allow of it destruction, and thus leave
it in the thief’s power to excuse himself. It is recorded, as an opinion of Abu Yusuf, that if a
crucifix be stolen out of a Christian place of worship, amputation is not incurred; but if it be
taken from a house, the hand of the thief is to be struck off, for in such a situation it is lawful
property, and the object of custody.
13. sura 9:28: “O ye who believe! Truly the pagans are unclean; so let
them not after this year of theirs approach the Sacred Mosque.”
Sahih Bukhari hadith 4.393, narrated by Said bin Jubair:
That he heard Ibn ‘Abbas saying, “Thursday! And you know not what Thursday is? After
that Ibn ‘Abbas wept till the stones on the ground were soaked with his tears. On that I asked
Ibn ‘Abbas, “What is (about) Thursday?” He said, “When the condition (i.e. health) of Allah’s
Apostle deteriorated, he said, ‘Bring me a bone of scapula, so that I may write something for
you after which you will never go astray. The people differed in their opinions although it was
improper to differ in front of a prophet. They said, ‘What is wrong with him? Do you think he
is delirious? Ask him (to understand).’ The Prophet replied, ‘Leave me as I am in a better state
than what you are asking me to do.’ Then the Prophet ordered them to do three things saying,
‘Turn out all the pagans from the Arabian Peninsula, show respect to all foreign delegates by
giving them gifts as I used to do.’“ The sub-narrator added, “The third order was something
beneficial which either Ibn ‘Abbas did not mention or he mentioned but I forgot.”
14. Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual), chap. 9, “Of the Laws
Concerning Apostates”:
An exposition of the faith is to be laid before an apostate;
When a Muslim apostatises from the faith, an exposition thereof is to be laid before
him, in such a manner that if his apostasy should have arisen from any religious doubts or
scruples, those may be removed. The reason for laying an exposition of the faith before him is
that it is possible some doubts or errors may have arisen in his mind, which may be removed
 by such exposition; and as there are only two modes of repelling the sin of apostasy, namely,
destruction or Islam, and Islam is preferable to destruction, the evil is rather to be removed by
means of an exposition of the faith;—but yet this exposition of the faith is not incumbent,*
(according to what the learned have remarked upon his head,) since a call to the faith has
already reached the apostate.
* That is, it is lawful to kill an apostate without making any attempt to recover him
from his apostasy.

4131 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [who, if he does not repent within three days, is put to
death, whether he be a freeman or a slave]:

An apostate is to be imprisoned for three days, within which time if he return to the faith,
it is well: but if not, he must be slain.
It is recorded in the Jama Sagheer that “an exposition of the faith is to be laid before an
apostate, and if he refuse the faith, he must be slain”:— and with respect to what is above
stated, that “he is to be imprisoned for three days,” it only implies that if he require a delay,
three days may be granted him, as such is the term generally admitted and allowed for the
purpose of consideration. It is recorded from Haneefa and Abu Yusuf that the granting of a
delay of three days in laudable, whether the apostate require it or not: and it is recorded from
Shafe’i that it is incumbent on the Imam to delay for three days, and that it is not lawful for
him to put the apostate to death before the lapse of that time; since it is most probable that a
Muslim will not apostatise but from some doubt or error arising in his mind; wherefore some
time is necessary for consideration; and this is fixed at three days. The arguments of our
doctors upon this is fixed at three days. The arguments of our doctors upon this point are
twofold.—First, God, says, in the Koran, “Slay the Unbelievers,” without any reserve of a
delay of three days being granted to them; and the prophet has also said “Slay the man who
changes his religion,” without mentioning any thing concerning a delay: Secondly, an apostate
is an infidel enemy, who has received a call to the faith, wherefore he may be slain upon the
instant, without any delay. An apostate is termed on this occasion an infidel enemy, because he
is undoubtedly such; and he is not protected, since he has not required a protection; neither is
he a Zimmee. because capitation-tax has not been accepted from him; hence it is proved that
he is an infidel enemy.* It is to be observed that, in these rules, there is no difference made
between an apostate who is a freeman, and one who is a slave, as the arguments upon which
they are established apply equally to both descriptions.
* Arab. Hirbee; a term which the translator has generally rendered alien, and which
applies to any infidel not being a subject of the Muslim government.

7512 Al-Risala (Maliki manual), 37.19, “Crimes against Islam”:

A freethinker (zindiq) must be put to death and his repentance is rejected. A freethinker is
one who conceals his unbelief and pretends to follow Islam. A magician also is to be put to
death, and his repentance also is to be rejected. An apostate is also killed unless he repents. He
is allowed three days grace; if he fails to utilise the chance to repent, the execution takes place.
This same also applies to women apostates.
If a person who is not an apostate admits that prayer is obligatory but will not perform
it, then such a person is given an opportunity to recant by the time of the next prayer; if he
does not utilise the opportunity to repent and resume worship, he is then executed. If a Muslim
refuses to perform the pilgrimage, he should be left alone and God himself shall decide this
case. If a Muslim should abandon the performance of prayer because he disputes its being
 obligatory, then such a person shall be treated as an apostate—he should be given three days
within which to repent. If the three days lapse without his repenting, he is then executed.
Whoever abuses the Messenger of God—peace and blessing of God be upon him—is to
be executed, and his repentance is not accepted.
If any dhimmi (by ‘dhimmi’ is meant a non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country)
curses the Prophet—peace be upon him—or abuses him by saying something other than what
already makes him an unbeliever, or abuses God Most High by saying something other than
what already makes him an unbeliever, he is to be executed unless at that juncture he accepts
Islam.
The property of an apostate after his execution is to be shared by the Muslim
community.
15. 7410 Al-Risala (Maliki manual), 32.11, “Effects of Change of
Religion”: “If either of a couple apostatises, according to the view of other
jurists, such a marriage is to be dissolved without a divorce.”
16. 4120 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [The construction of infidel places of worship in a Muslim territory is unlawful; but those already founded there may be repaired
]:

The construction of churches or synagogues in the Muslim territory is unlawful, this

being forbidden in the traditions:—but if places of worship originally belonging to Jews or
Christians be destroyed, or fall to decay,* they are at liberty to repair them,—because
buildings cannot endure for ever, and as the Imam has left these people to the exercise of their
own religion, it is a necessary inference that he has engaged not to prevent them from
rebuilding or repairing their churches and synagogues. If, however, they attempt to remove
these, and to build them in a place different from their former situation, the Imam must prevent
them, since this is an actual construction: and the places which they use as hermitages are held
in the same light as their churches, wherefore the construction of those also is unlawful. It is
otherwise with respect to such places of prayer as are within their dwellings, which they are
not prohibited from constructing, because these are an appurtenance to the habitation. What is
here said is the rule with respect to cities; but not with respect to villages or hamlets; because
as the tokens of Islam (such as public prayer, festivals, and so forth) appear in cities, Zimmees
should not be permitted to celebrate the token of infidelity there, in the face of them; but as the
tokens of Islam do not appear in villages or hamlets, there is no occasion to prevent the
construction of synagogues or churches there. Some allege that in our country Zimmees are to
be prohibited from constructing churches or synagogues, not only in cities, but also in villages
and hamlets; because in the villages of our country various tokens of Islam appear; and what is
recorded from Haneefa, (that the prohibition against building churches and synagogues is
confined to cities, and does not extend to villages and hamlets) relates solely to the villages of
Koofa; because the greater part of the inhabitants of these villages are Zimmees. there being
few Muslims among them, wherefore the tokens of Islam do not there appear: moreover, in the
territory of Arabia, Zimmees are prohibited from constructing churches of synagogues either
in cities or villages, because the prophet has said “Two religions cannot be professed together
in the peninsula of Arabia.”
17. sura 29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day nor
hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His apostle nor
acknowledge the religion of truth (even if they are) of the People of the
Book until they pay the Jizya with willing submission and feel themselves
subdued.”
 18. Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, The Meaning of the Qur’an, vol. 2 (Lahore. Pakistan: Islamic Publications, 1993), p. 183.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.. 2:186.

21. Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual):

[The] capitation-tax is a sort of punishment inflicted upon infidels for their obstinacy in
infidelity, (as was before stated;) whence it is that it cannot be accepted of the infidel if he
send it by the hands of a messenger, but must be exacted in a mortifying and humiliating
manner, by the collector sitting and receiving it from him in a standing posture: (according to
one tradition, the collector is to seize him by the throat, and shake him, saying. “Pay your tax,
Zimmee!”)—It is therefore evident that capitation-tax is a punishment; and where two
punishments come together, they are compounded, in the same manner as in Hidd, or stated
punishment. Secondly, capitation-tax is a substitute for destruction in respect to the infidels,
and a substitute for personal aid in respect to the Muslims, (as was before observed;)—but it is
a substitute for destruction with regard to the future, not with regard to the past, because
infidels are liable to be put to death only in future, in consequence of future war. and not in the
past. In the same manner, it is also a substitute and in the past.

Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [arrear of capitation-tax is remitted upon the bject’s death
or conversion to the faith]:

If a person become a Muslim, who is indebted for any arrear of capitation-tax, such arrear
is remitted: and in the same manner, the arrear of capitation-tax due from a Zimmee is remitted
upon his dying in a state of infidelity. . . . Capitation-tax is a species of punishment inflicted
upon infidels on account of their infidelity, whence it is termed Jizyat. which is derived from
Jizya, meaning retribution; now the temporal punishment of infidelity is remitted in
consequence of conversion to the faith; and after death it cannot be inflicted, because temporal
punishments are instituted solely for the pur-pose of removing evil, which is removed by
either death or Islam. Thirdly, capitation-tax is a substitute for aid to the Muslims, and as the
infidel in question, upon embracing the faith, becomes enabled to aid them in his own person,
capitation-tax consequently drops upon his Islam.
22. 4118 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) |in a case of arrear for two
years, ly one year’s tax is levied]:
If a Zimmee owe capitation-tax for two years, it is compounded,—that is, the tax for one
year only is exacted of him:—and it is recorded, in the Jama-Sagheer, that if capitation-tax be
not exacted of a Zimmee until such time as the year has elapsed, and another year arrived, the
tax for the past year cannot be levied. This is the doctrine of Haneefa. The two disciples
maintain that the tax for the past year may be levied. If, however, a Zimmee were to die near
the close of the year, in this case the tax for that year cannot be exacted, according to all our
doctors: and so likewise, if he die in the middle of the year, (which instance has been already
treated of.) Some assert that the above difference of opinion obtains also with respect to tribute
upon land: whilst others maintain that there is no difference of opinion whatever respecting it,
but that it is not compounded, according to all our doctors.— The argument of the two
disciples (where they dissent) is that capitation-tax is a consideration, (as was before said,) and
if the considerations be numerous, and the exaction practicable, they are all to be exacted; and
in the case in question the exaction of capitation-tax for the two years is practicable: contrary
 to where the Zimmee becomes a Muslim, for in this case the exaction is impracticable. The
arguments of Haneefa upon this point are twofold. First, capitation-tax is a sort of punishment
inflicted upon infidels for their obstinacy in infidelity, (as was before stated;) whence it is that
it cannot be accepted of the infidel if he send it by the hands of a messenger, but must be
exacted in a mortifying and humiliating manner, by the collector sitting and receiving it from
him in a standing posture: (according to one tradition, the collector is to seize him by the
throat, and shake him. saying, “Pay your tax, Zimmee!”)—It is therefore evident that
capitation-tax is a punishment; and where two punishments come together, they are
compounded, in the same manner as in Hidd, or stated punishment. Secondly, capitation-tax is
a substitute for destruction in respect to the infidels, and a substitute for personal aid in respect
to the Muslims, (as was before observed;)—but it is a substitute for destruction with regard to
the future, not with regard to the past, because infidels are liable to be put to death only in
future, in consequence of future war, and not in the past. In the same manner, it is also a
substitute and in the past. With respect to what is quoted from the Jama Sagheer—”and
another year also pass,” so as to make two years,—for it is there mentioned that capitation-tax
is due at the end of the year, wherefore it is requisite that another year be elapsed, so as to
admit of an accumulation of two years’ tax, after which the two year’s taxes are com-pounded:
—Others, again, allege that the passage is to be taken in its literal sense; and as capitation-tax
is held by Haneefa to be due upon the commencement of the year, it follows that by one year
passing, and another arriving, an accumulation of the tax for two years takes place.
23. 3989 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual) [infidels may be attacked
without provocation]: “The destruction of the sword is incurred by infidels,
although they be not the first aggressors, as appears from various passages
in the sacred writings which are generally received to this effect.”
24. Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual): “[The] capitation-tax is due only in lieu of destruction. . . . That is to say, is imposed as a return from the mercy and forbearance
shown by the Muslims, and as a substitute for that destruction which is due upon infidels.”
3997 Al-Hedaya, vol. 2 (Hanafi manual), states that infidels refusing either to embrace the
faith or to pay tribute may be attacked.

Chapter004
1. Dhimma is an Arabic word describing the relationship or covenant
between the dominant Muslim power and the subjected populations
belonging to the revealed religions; dhimmi refers to “the People of the
Book” {ahl al-kitah), that is, the Jews, the Christians, and equally the
Zoroastrians and Sabeans. Others were usually given the choice between
conversion to Islam or death.
2. Attributed, traditionally, to Umar I (634-44 CE) but, by most European orientalists, to Umar II (717-0 CE).

3. Y. Masriya [Bat Ye’or], “A Christian Minority: The Copts in Egypt,” in Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, ed. Willem A. Veenhoven and
Winifred Crum Ewing, vol. 4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 77-93; Bat Ye’or, Reflexions sur la condition de Vopprime: Le Dhimmi (to be published). [This reference to
Bat Ye’or’s first book on the dhimmis has been left as printed in 1976. Nearly four years later—during which period the manuscript circulated—it found a publisher in Paris, with a
modified title: Le Dhimmi: Profit de Vopprime en Orient et en Afrique du Nord depuis la conquete arabe (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1980); The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under
Islam, preface by Jacques Ellul (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985).

4. D. F. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, extracts from the proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, 1968, 3rd ed.
(Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir. 1976), p. 61. [D. F. Green was the pseudonym, for this book only, of David G. Littman (“D.”) and Yehoshafat (“F.”) Harkabi.]

5. Ibid, p. 91.
 6. Bernard Lewis, “An Anti-Jewish Ode: The Qasida of Abu Ishaq against Ibn Nagrella,” in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday,
ed. Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research 1975), pp. 660-63.

7. Antoine Fattal, Le Statut Legal des Non-Musulmans en Pays dlslam (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958). pp. 369-72, quoted in Y. Masriya, Les Juifs en Egypte (Geneva:
Editions de l’Avenir. 1971), p. 63.

8. See David G. Littman, “Quelques aspects de la condition du dhimmi: Juifs d’Afrique du Nord avant la colonization,” Yod, Revue des Etudes Hebraiques et juives modernes
et contemporaines (Paris) 2, no. 1 (1976): 45 (letter of 1894).

9. Louis Gardet, La cite musulmane: Vie sociale et politique, Etudes musul-manes, (Paris, 1954), p. 348. [Reprint Paris:Vrin, 1995.]

10. Robert Brunschwig, “Les non-Musulmans, I. Les Juifs,” in La Berberie orien-tale sous les Hafsides Des Origins a la fin du XX Siecle, vol. 1 (Paris: lTnstitut d’Etudes
Orientales d’Alger, 1940), p. 404.

11. Gustave von Grunebaum, “Eastern Jewry under Islam: Reflections on Medieval Anti-Judaism,” Viator (University of California) 2 (1971): 369.

12. Bernard Lewis, “The Pro-Islamic Jews,” Judaism (New York) 17, no. 4 (1968): 401.

13. Leon Godard. Le Maroc: Notes d’un voyageur, 1858-59 (Algiers, 1860), p. 32, quoted in Joseph Goulven, Les Mellahs de Rabat-Sale (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927), p.
123.

14. Israel Benjamin (II), Cinq annees de voyage en Orient (1846-1851) (Algiers, 1855). p. xxviii. [English translation puplished as Eight Years in Asia and Africa, from 1846
to 1855, with a preface by Dr. B. Seeman Hanover, 1959.] The writer’s pen name was chosen, so he recounts in a note, in memory of twelfth-century Jewish traveler Benjamin de
Tulede.

15. Jacob Saphir, Eben Sappir (Jerusalem, 1866), p. 52, quoted in Joshua Feld-mann. The Jews of the Yemen (London: Speaight & Sons, 1913), pp. 15-16.

16. Yomtob Semach, Une mission de I’Alliance au Yemen (Paris: Alliance Israelite Universe, 1910); see also Bulletin de I’Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1910, pp. 48-167.

17. David G. Littman, “Jews under Muslim Rule in the Late 19th Century,” Wiener Library Bulletin (London) 28, n.s. 35-36 (1975): 65-76; “Jews under Muslim Rule II:
Morocco 1903-1912,” Wiener Library Bulletin 29, n.s. 37-38 (1976); Littman, “Quelques aspects de la condition du dhimmi: Juifs d’Afrique du Nord avant la colonization.”

18. Said Ghallab, “Les Juifs sont en enfer,” Les Temps Modernes, no. 277 (June 1965): 2247, 2249, 2251. See Sadat’s “Letter to Hitler” (1953) in Green, Arab Theologians
on Jews and Israel, p. 87.

19. Green, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, for many examples.

20. Through natural increase, their number has now gone from 1.75 to 2 million souls. [In 2004. roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population of 5,200,000.]

21. Georges Vajda, “L’ image du Juif dans la tradition islamique,” Les Nouveaux Cahiers (Paris), nos. 13-14 (1968): 7.

22. Ali Bey Domingo Badia y Leblich], Travels of Ali Bey in Morocco, Tripoli, Cyprus, Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Turkey, between the Years 1803 and 1807, vol. 1 (London:
Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orne, and Brown, 1816), pp. 33-34.

23. Arthur Leared, Morocco and the Moors, 2nd ed., rev. and ed. Richard Burton (London: Sampson Low, Marston. Searle & Rivington and New York: Scribner & Welford,
1891), pp. 175-76, 217, 254.

24. William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1826), pp. 66-67.

25. Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg, Tunis, the Land and the People, new ed. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1882), pp. 118-19.

26. Paolo della Cella, Narrative of an Expedition from Tripoli in Barbary to the Western Frontier of Egypt, in 1817, by the Bey of Tripoli in Letters to Dr. Viviani of Genoa …
, translated from the Italian by Anthony Aufrere (London: John and Arthur Arch, 1822), p. 197.

27. Edward Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptian, 2 vols. (London, 1836); reprint, I vol. (London: Everyman Library, 1963), pp. 559-60.

28. Bulletin lnteheur de I’Alliance Universelle (Paris) 1, no. 2 (November 1945): 9.

Chapter005
NOTES
 1. Fouad Abdel-Moneim Riad, “The Battle for a Moral World,” Al-
Ahram (Cairo), May 16-22, 2002, p. 8.
2. Desmond Tutu, “Build Moral Pressure to End the Occupation,” International Herald Tribune, June 14, 2002.

3. Patrick Sookhdeo, A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian Community in Pakistan ( Pewsey, Wiltshire, UK: Isaac Publishing, 2002).

4. Amber Haque, ed., Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects (Beltsville, MD: Amana; Kuala Lumpur: A. S. Noordeen, 1999).

Chapter006
1. The appeal mentioned took place at the International NGO
Conference on discrimination against indigenous populations in the
Americas, held at the United Nations in Geneva, September 21-23, 1977.
2. Said Yahya Ibn Muhammad, quoted in Yomtob Semach, Une mission de I’Alliance au Yemen (Paris: Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1910), pp. 38-40.

3. Leon Godard, Le Maroc: Notes d’un voyageur, 1858-59 (Algiers, 1860), p. 35, quoted in Joseph Goulven, Les Mellahs de Rabat-Sale (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927), pp. 27-
28.

4. Quoted in Albert M. Hyamson, ed. with an introduction and notes, The British Consulate in Jerusalem in Relation to the Jews of Palestine, 1838-1914 (London: Edward
Goldston. for the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1939), part 1 (1838-1861), p. 171.

5. Moshe Perlmann, ed. and trans., Shaykh Damanhuri on the Churches of Cairo (1739) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), p. 56.

6. Quoted in Georges Vajda, “Un traite Maghrebin: ‘Adversus Judaeos’ Akham Ahl al-Dimma, du Sayh Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Karim al-Magili.” in Etudes d’ori-entalisme
dediees a la memoire de Levy-Provencal, vol. 2 (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962), p. 811.

7. Quoted in Martin Schreiner, “Contributions a l’Histoire des Juifs en Egypte,” Revue des Etudes Juives (Paris) 31 (1895): 11.

8. “Palestine National Covenant of the PLO,” quoted in Yehoshafat Harkabi, Palestinians and Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), pp. 51-69.

9. Quoted in Abou Yousof Ya’koub, Le Livre de Tlmpot Fancier (Kitab el-Kharadj), trans. E. Fagnan (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1921), pp. 217-18.

10. Here is meant Ibrahim Pacha, son of Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt. He conquered and controlled Syria and Palestine from 1832 to 1840.

11. Quoted in Hyamson, British Consulate in Jerusalem, pp. 4-7.

12. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. Sinai and Palestine (London: John Murray. 1866). p. 117.

13. Quoted in John Bowring, Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria (Addressed to Lord Palmerston and Presented to Both Houses of Parliament) (London, 1840;
reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1973), p. 129.

14. John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land(\%7>l; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), p. 32.

15. Thomas Jenner. Palestine et Liban (Paris: Grassart and Neuchatel: Delachaux Niestle. 1883), p. 142.

16. Quoted in International Herald Tribune, March 8, 1977.

17. Quoted in Le Monde, January 20-21, 1974.

18. Laurence Oliphant. Haifa: or. Life in Modern Palestine (1887; Jerusalem: Canaan Publishing House, 1976), pp. 238-39, 241-42.

19. The Exodus from Yemen (Jerusalem: Keren Hayesod, n.d.).

20. Alexandre Lucciana, French vice-consul in Hodeida, Yemen, letter to the president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris, November 29, 1881; available at the AIU
Archives, France VIII D 49.
 21. Semach, Une mission de I’Alliance, p. 109.

Chapter008

NOTE

1. ECOSOC, E/CN. 4/1996/62, para. 97a.

Chapter009

1. Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary (1830-34, 1846-51), prime minister (1855-58, 1859-65); James Finn, consul, Jerusalem (1845-62); Laurence Oliphant (1829-88);
Arthur James Balfour, prime minister (1902-1905), foreign secretary (1916-19); Winston Churchill (1874-1965); Orde Wingate (1903^4).

2. For simplification, all the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are included in the expression Oriental Jewry.

3. Moses Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen (New York: Halkin Edition, 1952), pp. xviii, xx.

4. Dar al-lslam. House of Islam, in contrast to the rest of the world, denoted (tar al-Harb, the House of War. Muslim jurisprudence posits a perpetual state of war between the
two until Islamic rule prevails throughout the world.

5. Voice of Falastin (Lebanon), December I, 1975. Broadcast of Yasir Arafat’s speech of November 30, 1975, in Damascus to the administrative council of the Palestine
Student Association. See also Jerusalem Post, December 3, 1975.

6. For a recent example, see Yasir Arafat’s message of February 11,1979, to the Ayatollah Khomeini: “I pray Allah to guide your steps on the road of faith and jihad in Iran,
which will continue the struggle until we reach the walls of Jerusalem, where we will raise the flags of our two revolutions” (Le Figaro [Beirut], February 13, 1979).

7. See D. F. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, extracts from the proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, 1968, 3rd ed.
(Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 1976).

8. In concluding a peace treaty with Israel on March 26, 1979, Egypt courageously chose a revolutionary path, in contrast to the reactionary. PLO-led Arab Rejection Front.

Chapter010

NOTES

1. The term dhimmi designates the “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitab): Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, whose lands were Islamized by the conquering Arabs. They were
obliged to pay to the Islamic community (umma) an annual poll tax (jizya) symbolizing the repurchase of their lives. The word dhimma applied to the relationship or covenant
between the dominant Muslim power and the subject peoples.

2. Quoted in France Soir, February 13, 1979.

3. Dar al-Islam means “House of Islam”—the regions under Muslim rule.

4. Out of nearly one million Jews who lived in Arab countries in 1948, just over thirty thousand remained in 1978: twenty thousand in Morocco; five thousand in Tunisia; and
forty-five hundred in Syria. Two-thirds of these Jewish refugees represent today, with their children, 41 percent of Israel’s Jewish population (about 1.3 million).

5. Harvey E. Goldberg. “Rites and Riots. The Tripolitanian Pogrom of 1945.” Plural Societies (The Hague) 8, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 35-56.

6. See Yehoshafat Harkabi. Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Keter/Israel Universities Press, 1971); D. F. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, extracts from
the proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, 1968, 3rd ed. (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 1976); S. Abraham [Shmuel Moreh|, “The Jew and the
Israeli in Modern Arabic Literature,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 119-36.

7. Quoted in Yehoshafat Harkabi, Palestinians and Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), pp. 51, 63.

8. Le Monde. April 2, 1976.

 9. Martin Gilbert, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps (London: Wei-denfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 20-22. In the year 1936 alone, tens of thousands of trees
belonging to Jews were destroyed by Arabs under order from the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler during World War II.

Chapter011

NOTES

1.Moshe Gil. A History of Palestine, 634-1099, ed. and trans, from Hebrew by Ethel Broido (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

2.Ibid., p. 71; for the buildup of the Haram al-Sharif mosque, see the article by Heribert Busse, “The Temple of Jerusalem and Its Restitution by ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,”
in Bianca Kiihnel, ed.. The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art (Jerusalem: Journal of the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University, 1998), pp. 23-33.

3.The Hadith comprises words and deeds attributed by tradition to Muhammad and collected in a corpus. The Hadith and the Qur’an form the major bases of the Sharia.

4.Edouard Driault, Histoire diplomatique de la Grece de 1821 a nos jours, vol. 1, L’insurrection et Tindependance (1821-1830) (Paris: PUF, 1925), p. 456.

5.Edouard Driault and Michel Lheritier, Histoire Diplomatique de la Grece de 1821 a nos jours, vol. 2, Le regne d’Othon—La grande idee (1830-1862) (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1925), p. 190.

6.Jonathan Frankel. The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder, “ Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997).

7.On this subject see George Emile Irani, Le Saint-Siege et le conflit du Proche Orient, trans. Dominique Edde (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1991).

8.Jacques Fremeaux, Le monde arabe et la securite de la France depuis 1958 (Paris: PUF, 1995), p. 52, mentions the connivance of French politics with PLO terrorists.

9.Doreen Ingrains, comp. and annotator, Palestine Papers 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict (London: John Murray, 1972), p. 60.

10.Ibid., p. 168.

11.Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1943), p. 432.

12.Pierre-Andre Taguieff. Les protocoles des sages de Sion : Faux et usages d’unfaux, 2 vols. (Paris: Berg International, 1992). See the thorough, profound study of
antisemitism, from the origins of Christianity to the present day, by Religious Studies emeritus professor William Nicholls: Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (Northvale, NJ,
and London: Jason Aronson, 1995); and Pierre Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques francais: D’Edouard Drumont d Jacob Kaplan (1886-1994) (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1997). •

13.Negib Azoury, Le Reveil de la Nation Arabe dans VAsie turque . . . (Paris: Plon, 1905).

14.Quoted in Pierrard. Juifs et Catholiques francais, pp. 28, 124.

15.Azoury, Le reveil de la nation arabe, pp. iii, iv.

16.Ibid., pp. vi, viii.

17.Israel State Archives (ISA), Stet GR 2, 5/155.

18.Ibid. Memorandum of the MCA addressed to the Conference de la Paix in Paris, February 3, 1919. following a General Assembly of the MCA in Jerusalem, January 27,
1919.

19.Storrs, Orientations, p. 358.

20.Ibid., p. 371; parentheses in the original.

21.Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 (London: Cass, 1974), p. 32.

22.Quoted in Storrs. Orientations, p. 378.

23.Quoted in Friedrich Heer, “The Catholic Church and the Jews Today,” Midstream (New York), May 1971, pp. 20-31.
 24.Quoted in ibid., p. 22. For connections and collaboration of Catholic prelates with the Nazis, see Annie Lacroix-Riz, Le Vatican, I’Europe et le Reich de la Premiere
Guerre mondiale a la guerre froide (Paris: Armand Colin, 1996).

25.Quoted in Heer. “The Catholic Church and the Jews Today,” p. 23.

26.Storrs, Orientations, p. 358.

27.Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti (London: Cass, 1993), pp. 69-73; for the allegations of Antonius, see ibid., pp. 61-62.

28.Ibid., p. 75.

29.Genevieve Dermenjian, La crise anti-juive oranaise, 1895-1905: L’an-tisemitisme dans I’Algerie coloniale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986), p. 206.

30.Ibid., p. 135.

31.Norman Daniel, L’Islam et TOccident (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993), p. 390.

32.Youakim Moubarac, L’Islam et le dialogue islamo-chretien, 5 vols. (Beirut: Editions du Cenacle Libanais, 1972-73), 3:172.

33.Kenneth Cragg, The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East (London: Mowbray, 1992), p. 68.

34.Quoted in Hai’m Shapiro, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Root and Branch,” Jerusalem Post, February 23. 1997.

35.Cragg, The Arab Christian, p. 275. Cragg dedicates the book to the son of a Syrian Presbyterian pastor, Fayez A. Sayegh, close collaborator of the PLO and initiator of the
1975 resolution assimilating Zionism and racism, in Taguieff. Proto-coles, 1:326, n. 17.

Chapter013

NOTES

1. Le Monde, December 2. 1972; see the document.

2. Arthur Stanley Tritton, The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects (London: F. Cass, 1970), p. 1.

3. Ibid.; Antoine Fattal, Le Statut Legal des Non-Musulmans en Pays d’Islam (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958); Eliahu Strauss (Ashtor), “The Social Isolation of Ahl-
Adh Dhimma,” in Etudes orientales a la memoire de Paul Hirschler, ed. O. Komlos (Budapest, 1949), pp. 73-94.

4. Tritton, The Caliphs, p. 145.

5. Ibid., p. 144.

6. Ibid., p. 33.

7. Moshe Ma’oz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840-61 (Oxford and London: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 27. By the Hatt-i Humayun edict of 1858, European
powers forced the Ottoman sultan, who was still the nominal suzerain of Egypt, to proclaim equality among Muslims, Christians, and other minorities throughout his empire.

8. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 164.

9. Charles Issawi, Egypt: An Economic and Social Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 161-62.

10. Marcel Colombe, L’evolution de I’Egypte, 1924-1950 (Paris: G. P. Maison-neuve, 1951). p. 171.

11. Ibid., p. 144.

12. Ibid., p. 143.

 13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 146.

15. Ibid.

16. Elie Kadourie, The Chatham House Version (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1970), pp. 199-200. Maraghi no doubt alludes to the verses in the Qur’an (sura 5:51) and
to the Hadith (acts and words attributed to Muhammad) that forbid or strongly discourage relations between Christians and Muslims. The segregation of the dhimmis was at the root
of their social and political ostracism by the Islamic community (umma).

17. Anwar Sadat, Revolt on the Nile (London: A. Wingate, 1957), p. 30.

18. Thomas Kiernan, Yasir Arafat (London: Abacus, 1976).

19. Quoted in Silvia Haim, Arab Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 64.

20. Edward Wakin, A Lonely Minority: The Modern History of Egypt’s Copts (New York: Morrow, 1963).

21. Georges Henein, EExpress, November 20-26, 1972.

22. See Wakin, A Lonely Minority, pp. 53, 88.

23. Le Monde, November 16, 1972.

24. Smith, Islam in Modern History, pp. 163-64.

25. Josette Alia, “Les Chretiens d’Orient,” Le Nouvel Observateur, no. 581, December 29, 1975-January 4, 1976.

26. Bernard Lewis, “The Return of Islam,” Commentary 61, no. I (January 1976): 39-49.

27. Le Monde, March 26, 1976.

Chapter019

NOTES

1. La Risala (Epitre sur les elements du dogme et de la loi de VIslam

selon le rite mdlikite), 5th ed., trans, from Arabic by Leon Bercher (Algiers,
I960), p. 163.
2. See www.onlyam.com/islamics/newtopics/foreign_policy/land_policy/land_classiftcation.html.

Chapter021

NOTES

1.Bat Ye*or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury. NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 2002), pp. 103-104.

2.Mary Robinson, speech delivered at the Organization of the Islamic Confer-ence Symposium on Human Rights in Islam, Geneva, March 15, 2002.
 Chapter022

NOTES

1.This lecture (“Vers un retour a l’esprit de Munich”) was originally delivered at a seminar (“La Democratic a l’epreuve de la menace islamiste”) in the French Senate on
June 6, 2004, organized by the B’nai B’rith (France).

2.Charles-Emanuel Dufourcq, La vie quotidienne dans I’Europe medievale sous domination arabe (Paris: Hachette, 1978). This book examines the Arab conquest and
colonization of Andalusia; see esp. chap. I, “Les jours de razzia et d’invasion.” I am grateful to Dr. Andrew Bostom for having brought Dufourcq’s works to my attention.

3.Pierre Lyautey (the nephew of Marechal Lyautey, French governor of Morocco), “Le nouveau role de la France en Orient” (The new role of France in the Middle East),
Comptes rendus-des seances de I’Academic des Sciences d’Outre-mer May 4, 1962 (Paris), p. 176. See also Jacques Fremaux, Le Monde Arabe et la Secu-rity de la France depuis
1958 (Paris: PUF, 1995).

4.Tariq Ramadan, “Critique des (nouveaux) intellectuels communautaires,” Oumma.com, October 3, 2003.

5.William Montgomery Watt, The Majesty That Was Islam: The Islamic World. 661-1100 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1974), p. 257.

Chapter024

NOTES

1. Times (London), December 19.

2. Times (London), December 27, 2001.

3. New York Times, September 13, 2002.

4. II Giornale (Milan), October 14, 2000.

5. Obsener (London), October 27. 2001.

6. James Doran, “UK Assets of Islamic Charity Are Frozen,” Times (London), January 16, 2002.

7. Quoted in Washington Times, January 16, 2002.

8. Philip Jenkins, Chronicles, September 2001.

9. Sam Francis, “Mass Immigration Let Terrorists Operate,” VDARE.com, http://www.vdare.com/francis/specter.htm (accessed September 20, 2004).

Part005

NOTE

1.“Human Rights and Human Wrongs” (available at the US Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and many other libraries) was the title used for eleven
publications (nos. 1-11) published by the WUPJ in Geneva. They contain all the verbatim oral—and written—statements made by its representatives in Geneva to the UNCHR and the
UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights from 1986 to 1991.
 Chapter026

NOTES

1. UNCHR resolution 1993/62, para. 5.

2. UNCHR resolution 1999/13, 1(f)- However, the same resolution, under 3(e), “expresses its concern … [a]t continuing threats by the Fifteen Khordad Foundation to the life
of Mr. Salman Rushdie including the increase in the bounty announced by the foundation.”

3. Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, October 3, 1998.

4.Quoted in an article on the UNCHR, Reuters, February 14, 1999.

5.Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments, vol. 2, Regional Instruments (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1997), pp. 474-84.

6.The reference is to CDHRI article 6(a): “Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform.”

7.From the introductory address by Dr. Azeddine Laraki, secretary-general of the OIC, provisional publication of the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights:
HR/IP/SEM/1999/1. part 1, March 15, 1999, p. 6 (GE.99-40940).

8.Reply from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 16, 1998, to the letter from Rene Wadlow and David Littman, representatives of the
Association for World Education to the United Nations, Geneva, to Mary Robinson, September 24, 1998.

9. UN recording, April 29, 1999, at the sixty-first meeting. (The Summary Record, E/CN.4/1999/SR.61 omits this introductory passage.)

10.Dina Porat et al., eds., Anti-Semitism Worldwide, 1995-96 (Tel Aviv: Anti-Defamation League and World Jewish Congress, 1996), p. 4; see also UNCHR: E/CN/1997/71,
E-3, chap. 2, para. 27.

11.UNCHR 1997/125, in E/CN.4/I997/SR.70.

12.UNCHR report on racism, E/CN.4/1997/71; corrigendum, E/CN.4/1997/ 71/Corr. 1 of July 8, 1997.

13.At the August 1997 Sub-Commission on Human Rights and at the 1998 UNCHR. See E/CN.4/1998/SR. 11, para. 50, and E/CN.4/1998/SR.I2. para. 10.

14.UNCHR report on racism, E/CN.4/1999/15, para. 78 and 79 (D. Anti-Semi-tism).

15.Dina Porat et al., eds., Anti-Semitism Worldwide, 1997-98 (Tel Aviv: Anti-Defamation League and World Jewish Congress, 1998), pp. 181-205.

16.This quotation, later dropped, is from the original draft resolution, “Defamation of Islam.”

17. UN recording, April 29, 1999, and partially in E/CN.4/1999/SR.61, paras.1-2.

18.Other speakers, such as Sheikh Jasim bin Nasir ath-Thani. the head of Qatar’s delegation, concurred with this argument: “There is no doubt that Islam, which preceded the
Universal Declaration on Human Rights by fourteen centuries, was first in declaring equality among humans in all rights and responsibilities, and in defining rights and freedoms both
for individuals and groups.” Quoted from the delegation’s text, delivered on April 1, 1999 (also E/CN.4/1999/SR. 13, para. 95). [For a scholarly analysis of the historical document
mentioned by Ambassador Akhram, see Moshe Gil, “The Constitution of Medina: A Reconsideration,” Israel Oriental Studies (Jerusalem) 4 (1974): 44-65.]

19.UN recording, April 29, 1999, and partially in E/CN.4/1999/SR.61, paras.1-2.

20.UN recording, April 29-30, 1999; E/CN.4/1999/SR.61-62.

21.Letter dated February 18, 1994 (E/CN.4/1994/122); report on Sudan by Dr. Gaspar Biro (E/CN.4/1994/48).

22.UNCHR resolution 1994/79 (5), and subsequently 1995/77 (9), 1996/73 (8). 1997/59 (9), 1998/67 (8), and 1999/15 (4).

23.From the undelivered statement of John Garang, point 2, and from the circulated SPLM press statement, point 8, March 22, 1999.

24.Quoted in article on ECOSOC meeting, Associated Press, New York, June 18, 1999; Reuters, June 18, 1999.
 Chapter027

NOTES

1. From official text; see also UN summary record E/CN.4/I998/SR.2, para. 9.

2. See also the seminar’s descriptive circular.

3. Hasni Abdi. “Droits de l’homme a la carte,” Tribune de Geneve, November 25, 1998. Translated from the French text.

4. Soheib Bencheikh, “L’Islam et la liberte religieuse,” HR/IP/SEM/1998/ WP. 11; Ridwan el Sayyed (Lebanon), “Human Rights in Contemporary Muslim Thought,”
HR/IP/SEM/1998AVP.13.

5. “It was necessary that Muslim theologians and thinkers should break their shameful silence and appeal for a reform of their theology and a rereading of the Koran,”
(E/CN.4/1998/SR.21, para. 66, March 23, 1998); see also “Le probleme des musulmans est d’avoir sacralise l’lslam,” Le Courrier (Geneva), November 14-15, 1998.

6. A Compilation of International Instruments, vol. 1, Universal Instruments, 2 parts, 5th rev. (St/HR/I/Rev.5) (New York and Geneva: UN Centre for Human Rights, 1993-
94), pp. 418, 950.

7. The new Iranian Constitution (December 1979) referred to human rights in article 20, without endorsing the UDHR. See A/C.3/37/SR.56, paras. 53-55, for a 1982 demand
to transform the UDHR “through sincere dialogue and honest scholarly endeavour.”

8. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; London: Pinter, 1991), p. 27.

9. A/C.3/39/SR.65, paras. 91-95.

10. Official Records of the Human Rights Committee, 1992-93, CCPR/12 (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), vol. 1, 46th session, 1196th meeting (New
York and Geneva: UN (ICCPR), 1996), paras. 55-59.

11. E.CN.4/1992/SR.20, paras. 17-20. See also International Commission of Jurists press release, Geneva. December 5, 1991.

12. “Pakistan Imposes Strict Islamic Law.” Associated Press, January 17, 1999. [For a detailed description of this and what followed, see Patrick Sookhdeo, A People
Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian Community in Pakistan (Pewsey, Wilt. UK: Isaac Publishing, 2002), pp. 151-58.]

13. Pakistani constitution of 1985, article 203-D [1], quoted in C. H. Kennedy, “Repugnance to Islam—Who Decides? Islam and Legal Reform in Pakistan,” International
and Comparative Law 41. part 4 (October 1992): 772.

14. Association for World Education, “Blasphemy Legislation in Pakistan’s Penal Code,” NGO Written Statement. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/NGO/3.

15. A Compilation of International Instruments, vol. 2, Regional Instruments (New York and Geneva: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1997), pp.
478-84.

16. See E/CN.4/1994/122.

17. Agence France Press, February 14, 1994.

18. See General Assembly interim reports A/48/601, A/49/539. A/50/569, A/51/490, and A/51/510, as well as CHR reports E/CN.4/1994/48, E/CN.4/1995/58,
E/CN.4/1996/62, E/CN.4/1997/58, and E/CN.4/1998/66. Extracts from Biro’s 1993-95 reports, detailing slavery and forced conversions to Islam, were summarized in a documentary
article with an introduction by David G. Littman, “The U.N. Finds Slavery in the Sudan,” Middle East Quarterly 3, no. 3 (September 1996): 90-94.

19. See Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman, “Dangerous Censorship of a UN Special Rapporteur,” Justice no. 14 (September 1997): 10-17 (reprinted in this book as chapter
29); “Blasphemy at the United Nations?” Middle East Quarterly 4, no. 4 (December 1997): 85-86; “UN Special Rapporteur Censured on ‘Islamist and Arab Antisemitism,’“
Midstream 44, no. 2 (February-March 1998): 8-13.

20. E/CN.4/1997/71, subheading E.3, chap. 2.

21. E/CN.4/1997/SR.70, paras. 22-23.

22. See E/CN.4/1998/71, corr. 1.

 23. E/CN.4/I998/SR.11, para. 50, and SR. 12, para. 10. For another “blasphemy” case in relation to the 1948 Genocide Convention, see the 1997 written statement by the
Association for World Education, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/NGO/15.

24. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, p. 67. In chapter 5, “Discrimination against Women and Non-Muslims,” she concludes, “In these circumstances, reference to Islamic
criteria on rights is not likely to result in respect for the principles of equality and equal protection of the law as mandated in international human rights law; instead, such references
tend to undermine the rights involved and to afford legal rationales for discrimination” (p. 108). A recent attempt at an analysis of this problem led another author lo conclude,
“Although doctrinal Islam does not stand in dire need of reinterpreting its juridical tenets, it surely needs reformulation of its human rights doctrine specifically in reference to gender,
non-revealed religions, and equality between and among Muslims and non-Muslims.” Mahmood Monshipouri, “The Muslim World Half a Century after the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights: Progress and Obstacles,” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 16, no. 3 (September 1998): 287-314.

25. On this idea, see Gaspar Biro, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Cold War,” statement to an international colloquium titled “La Declaration
universelle des droits de l’homme, 1948-1998: Avenir d’un ideal,” at the Sorbonne, Paris, September 14-16, 1998 (See their Web site: [email protected].

Chapter028

NOTES

1. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/NGO/3.

2. See Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman, “Dangerous Censorship of a UN Special Rapporteur,” Justice (Tel Aviv), no. 14 (September 1997): 10-17 (reprinted in this book
as chapter 29).

3. E.CN.4/2004/24. p. 15.

4. E/CN.4/2004/NGO/5.

5. See Ronald L. Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of the Jews (London: Pergamon, 1987), pp. 71-87; see also Yigal Carmon,
“Contemporary Islamist Ideology Permitting Genocidal Murder,” paper presented at the Stockholm International Forum on Preventing Genocide, January 25, 2004, Middle East
Media Research Institute (MEMRI) special report no. 25.

6. Original title: “Silences sur la nouvelle judeophobie: aveuglement, complaisance ou connivances?”

7. The original French is as follows: “La culture de la haine et de la mort est imperceptiblement devenue, en ce debut du troisieme millenaire, un mouvement sociale
transnational dote d’une avant-garde djihadist sans scruples.” David G. Littman read the French version when he gave his oral statement at the UNCHR on March 23, 2004.

8. Pierre-Andre Taguieff. Rising from the Muck: The New Anti-Semitism in Europe (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004).

9. Pierre-Andre Taguieff, Precheurs de haine: Traversee de la judeophobie planetaire (Paris: Ed. Fayard/Mille et une nuits, 2004).

10. “Le vaste programme revolutionnaire de la destruction du ‘vieux monde’ en vue de le reconstruire ‘sur de nouvelles bases’ tend a faire place a un reve extermi-nateur
d’incendiaire et de vandale: eliminer l’Etat juif et transformer I’Amerique en champ de ruines. Quoi qu’il en soit, la corruption ideologique des grandes causes n’a jamais ete plus
radicale ni plus eclatante. Ni plus repugnante. C’est dans ce dernier caractere de la grande confusion de I’epoque qu’on peut trouver des raisons d’e-sperer: si la confusion ideologique
et la corruption des idees sont desormais de plus en plus visibles et audibles, au point d’etre aveuglantes et assourdissantes, il devient de moins en moins possible de refuser d’ouvrir
les yeux et de se decider enfin a entendre.

Chapter029

1. See Jerusalem Post, March 26 and April 11,1997; New York Times, April 21, 1997.

2. See E/1997/SR.37.

3. See E/1997/105.

4. The US ECOSOC document E/1997/105 was introduced to the fifty-fourth session of the Commission on Human Rights, March-April 1998. [Ramlawi was obliged to
retract the accusation before the session could begin. |

5. Our italics, from his verbatim statement, para. 6; and E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/ SR35.

6. E/CN.4/1994/122, March 1, 1994.

 7. E/CN.4/1994/48.

8. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, The Concept and Present Status of the International Protection of Human Rights (Dordrecht: Martin Nijhoff, 1989).

9. E/CN.4/1997/71.

10. E.3, chap. 2.

11. Dina Porat et al., eds., Anti-Semitism Worldwide (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1996).

12. Verbatim text; see also the summary record, E/CN.4/1997/SR.68.

13. E/CN.4/1997/SR.70.

14. Rene Wadlow, “Shooting the Messenger,” Human Rights Tribune (Ottawa) 4, nos. 2-3 (June 1997): 10-11.

15. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/NGO/3.

16. William Nicholls, introduction to Christian Antisemitism: A History- of Hate (Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson, 1993), p. XIX.

17. Ibid. p. 437.

18. Mustafa Mahmoud, “The Israeli Haughtiness, and How It Will End” [in Arabic], Al-Ahram International (Cairo), May 17, 1997.

19. See preface, by Mustafa Tlass, to The Matzah of Zion [in Arabic] (Damascus: Tlass edition, 1983/1985). For full UN documentation of the Syrian representative’s
declaration, see Human Rights and Human Wrongs, nos. 10 and 11 (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir and World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1991).

20. Pierre Taguieff, Les protocols des sages de Sion (Faux et usages d’un faux), 2 vols. (Paris: Berg International, 1992).

21. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic], 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dar an-Nafais, 1990).

22. Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman, Constitution of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas: 18 August 1988, E/CN.4/1997/NGO/85.

23. The Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research (Cairo: Government Printing Offices, 1970): Arabic edition in 2 vols., 1968.

24. D. F. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (Geneva: Editions de I’Avenir, 1971; see 3rd ed., 1976), p. 9.

25. Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1971); Hebrew ed., 1968.

26. Moshe Ma’oz, The Image of the Jew in Official Arab Literature and Communications Media, at a July 1975 “Continuing Presidential Seminar on World Jewry and the
State of Israel” (Jerusalem: Shazar Library and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976), p. 7. See also Olivier Carre, “Juifs et Chretiens dans la Societe islamique ideale d’apres Sayyid
Qutb,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques (Paris) 68 (1984): 50-72; Olivier Carre, Mystique et Politique: Lecture revolutionnaire du Coran par Sayyid Qutb, Frere
Musulman Radical (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1984); Olivier Carre, L’Utopie islamique dans I ‘Orient arabe (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1991);
Gilles Kepel, The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Contemporary Egypt, preface by Bernard Lewis (London: Al Saqui, 1985; American ed., Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1986; original French ed., Paris: La Decouverte, 1984); Johannes J. G. Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins andlslamic
Resurgence in the Middle East (New York and London: Macmillan, 1986); Rivka Yadlin, An Arrogant Oppressive Spirit: Anti-Zionism as Anti-Judaism in Egypt (Oxford and
Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1989); Raphael Israeli, Muslim Fundamentalism in Israel (London and McLean, VA: Brassey’s, 1993); Bat Ye’or, Juifs et Chretiens sous I’Islam: Les
dhimmisface au deft integriste (Paris: Berg International, 1994); Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Martin
Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 1996); and the annual reports on antisemitism
worldwide of the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the World Jewish Congress.

27. See Emmanuel Sivan, “Eavesdropping on Radical Islam,” Middle East Quarterly (Philadelphia) 2, no. 1 (March 1995): 13-25; David Sitman, “Propagating Anti-
Semitism on the Internet,” Justice (Tel Aviv), no. 12 (March 1997): 7; and Jeff Stein, “Look at What Hate Groups Say,” Baltimore Sun, April 5, 1997, reprinted in the International
Herald Tribune, April 6, 1997.

28. E/CN.4/1997/71/Corr. I.

29. E/1997/SR.37.

30. E/CN.4/Sub.s/1997/NGO/3.

31. Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism, p. 325.

32. James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (London: Soncino Press, 1934).
 Chapter030

NOTES

1. On April 4. 2002, the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the highest ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world (his nomination needs approval by
Egypt’s president), referred to the Jews as “the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.” This is a commonplace statement made today by numerous Arab theologians
(www.palestine-inf/arabic/palestoday/readers/mashoor/120401/htm). For a detailed study on this racist phenomenon, see Aluma Solnick, “Based on Koranic Verses, Interpretations,
and Traditions, Muslim Clerics State: The Jews Are the Descendants of Apes, Pigs, and Other Animals” and English trans, in MEMRI, Special Report no. 11, November I, 2002,
http://memri.org/bin/opener.cgi7Page =archives&ID=SR01102. See Also Ahmad Abd al-M’uti Higaz.i, “An Egyptian Intellectual Campaigns to Change the Religious Discourse Led
by Al-Azhar,” Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), September 16, 2002 (“Those who quote |religious scriptures| and impose the word [namely, the chief clerics| are the ones responsible for
producing fundamentalist terror.”), see English trans., http://memri.org/bin/opener.cgi ?Page=archives&ID=SP43602, in MEMRI, Special Dispatch no. 436, November 3, 2003. Al-
M’uti Higazi sharply criticized Al-Azhar University and Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi and Egyptian mufti, Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyeb. See also Yigal Cannon, president of MEMRI,
“Harbingers of Change in the Antisemitic Discourse in the Arab World.” http://memri.org/bin/opener.cgi’.’Page=archives&ID =1A13503, English trans, in Inquiry and Analysis
Series, no. 135, April 23, 2003. A New Recommendation by Al-Azhar: Stop Calling Jews “Apes and Pigs” (March 2003). This decision followed a decisive request to the Islamic
Research Institute from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to examine the matter, after receiving strong complaints from the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC.

2. E/CN.4/2003/NGO/4.

3. Ibid.

4. Al-Usbu (Egypt), November 17,2003.

5. The first Arabic edition was translated from the French and appeared in 1925 and 1927.

6. David G. Littman. “Syria’s Blood Libel Revival at the UN: 1991-2000,” Midstream (New York) 46. no. 2 (February/March 2000): 2-8.

7. As described in the Syria Times (Damascus), November 11. 2003.

8. International Herald Tribune. December 8, 2003.

9. At the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). held in the Vienna Hofburg.

10. “Human Rights Day Message,” dated December 5, 2003.

11. D. F. Green, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 1971; 3rd ed., 1976).

12. Ibid., 3rded.. pp. 7-10.

13. See the lecture by Lebanese Sheikh Nadim al-Jisr: “Good Tidings about the Decisive Battle between Muslims and Israel, in the Light of the Holy Qur’an. the Prophetic
Traditions, and the Fundamental Laws of Nature and History.”

14. From the 3rd edition of Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel. D. F. Green was the joint pseudonym of David G. Littman [D.] and Yehoshafat (Fati) Harkabi [F.], used
once for this publication, in English (three editions), French (two editions), and German (one edition) from 1971 to 1976. Yehoshafat Harkabi (d. 1994) participated in the Israeli-Arab
armistice negotiations held in Rhodes in 1949. From 1955-1959 he served as chief of Army Intelligence of the Israel Defense Forces and was in charge of Strategic Research in the
Israel Ministry of Defense. He received academic degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard, becoming a full professor at the Hebrew University. His first major
study, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Hebrew. 1967) was published in English (1971); Palestinians and Israel in 1974 (French ed. Palestine et Israel [Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir. 1972]).
Several books and articles followed.

Chapter031

NOTES

1. Nicholas D. Kristof. “Don’t Let Sudan’s Ethnic Cleansing Go On,” New York Times; reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, March 25, 2004.

2. E/CN.4/1996/62, para. 52.

3. Conclusion to his speech at the march on Washington, DC, August 28, 1963.
 Chapter032

NOTES

1. Under item 4: E/CN.4/2003/14, para. 1, 4.

2. Under item 17: E/CN.4/2003/101, para. II. A (a) 10.

3. Robert Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985).

4. “Zionism: One of the Earliest Examples of a National Liberation Movement,” written statement E/CN.4/2004/NGO/89.

5. The UN Conference against Racism was help in Durban in August 2001.

6. Ethnos, April 7, 2002.

7. In French: “Les Juifs, de victimes sont devenus bourreaux.”

8. La Stampa, April 3, 2002.

9. Les Territoires Perdus de la Repuhlique: Antisemitisme, racisme et sexisme en milieu scolaire (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2002).

10. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (London: Thames Methuen, 1991).

Chapter033

NOTE

1. “The Ancient Jewish Community of Iran: End Silence on Disappearances, Discrimination, ‘Dhimmitude,’“ E/CN.4/2004/NGO/87. This report has been included in the
present book as chapter 34.

Chapter034

NOTES

1.Comments and questions on December 11. 2003, from David G. Littman, representative at the United Nations Office in Geneva of the World Union for Progressive
Judaism (delegated by Rabbi Francois GaraY to participate for him): floor open for written questions and comments to Mohammad Khatami, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
after his lecture “Inter-religious Dialogue and International Relations at the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs” (World Council of Churches, Geneva). The original
text was handed in as a “question” to be selected, or not, by the WCC officer on the podium. In the end, President Khatami replied at great length to the first “set of questions,” and
then time ran out. He asked for all the written questions to be given to him so that he could reply in writing. No direct answer was received to this appeal.

2.Cf. letter from the OHCHR of September 14, 2000, chapter 42, p. 425.

3.See E/CN.4/2004/3/Add.2, paras. 12-15..

4.Visit to Islamic Republic of Iran, February 15-27, 2003: E/CN.4/2004/3/Add .2. June 27. 2003.

5.For a historical overview and nineteenth-century documents from the archives of the Alliance Israelite Universelle (Paris), see David G. Littman, “Jews under Muslim
Rule: The Case of Persia.” Wiener Library Bulletin (London) 32. n.S. 49-50 (June 1979): 2-15.
 6.Ibid., pp. 12-14. The vivid description in the original French was published in David G. Littman. “Les Juifs en Perse avant les Pahlevi,” Les Temps Modernes 395 (June
1979): 1910-35 (reprint. Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir. 1979). An English version was republished by Bat Ye’or as “Destruction of the Jewish Quarter. Shiraz (Iran),” appendix 2 in
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison. NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), pp. 403^105.

7.E/CN.4/2000/35.

8.See the fifteenth periodic report of states’ parties. Add. Islamic Republic of Iran: CERD/C/338/Add. 8 of October 28, 1998. In regard to Christians, Bahais, and Jews, see
also in Bat Ye’or, “Countries Applying the Shari’a: Iran,” in Islam and Dhimmitude, pp. 225-28.

9.E/CN.4/2000/35, para. 7.

10.Ibid., para. 9.

11.This matter was raised in some detail then—with reference to the special rapporteur’s report on Iran—by the representative of the WUPJ, a year after the “Rushdie Affair”
(February 14, 1989). See the oral statement by David G. Littman on February 20, 1990 (E/CN.4/1990/SR.31), verbatim in Human Rights and Human Wrongs, no. 8, pp. 25-28
(statement of the observer from Iran on February 28, 1990. in E/CN.4/1990/SR. 43).

12. See also E/CN.4/2003/19/Add.l, “Report of the Joint OHCHR/UNESCO Workshop,” under H. Topic 8, which refers to Leila Zerrougui’s background paper:
HR/PARIS/SEM.3/2003/BP.8.

Chapter035

NOTES

1. See “Historical Facts and Figures: The Forgotten Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries” (E/CN.4/2003/Sub.2/NGO/35), reprinted as chapter 34 in this book. See also the
one-page article from the New York Times of May 16, 1948—the day after five Arab armies invaded Israel—with the title: “Jews in Grave Danger in All Muslim Lands.”

2. Cf. Bat Ye’or, 77!^ Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985): The Decline of Eastern Christianity under
Islam (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).

3. English translation. It was spoken in the original French: “Le jourou le crime se pare des depouilles de l’innocence, par un curieux renversement . . . c’est I’inno-cence qui
est sommee de fournir ses justifications.”

Chapter036

NOTES

1. Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002/2003), p. 172.

2. Lucasz Hirszowicz, 77ie Third Reich and the Arab East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 26, quoted in Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 300.

3. Broadcast March 1, 1944; quoted in Maurice Perlman, Mufti of Jerusalem: The Story of Haj Amin el Husseini (London: Gollancz, 1947), p. 51; and quoted in Bat Ye’or,
Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 283.

4. UN Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, SR., September 25-November 25, 1947, p. 185.

5. Full details can be found in a full-page article by Richard A. Yaffe, “Arab Pogroms Endanger 800,000 outside Palestine: Jews Slain, Homes and Synagogues Burned
Down,” PM (World Jewish Congress), January 18, 1948.

6. Renzo di Felici, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970, trans. Judith Roumani (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 193-94, 365, n. 19. See the recent
testimony by Giulia Boukhobza (born in Libya in 1951), “Justice for Jews from Arab Nations,” International Herald Tribune, July 1, 2003, p. 9.

7. Interview with Qaddoumi, in Kul al-Arab (Israeli Arab newspaper), January 3, 2003.

8. For documentation, see Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985/2003); Bat Ye’or, The
Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: 7th to 20th Century (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996/2003); and Bat Ye’or, Islam
and Dhimmitude.

9. UN English interpretation as recorded verbatim from statement delivered in Arabic (E/CN.4/2002/SR.54).

10. Photograph by Yossef Yinnon (1972) on the back cover of an eight-page publication by Bat Ye’or, Oriental Jewry and the Dhimmi Image in Contemporary Arab
Nationalism, lecture for Jews in Arab Lands Committee, World Organisation of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), Jews College, London, September 5, 1978 (Geneva: Editions de
l’Avenir, 1979). This text appears as chapter 9 in this book.

11. Malka Hillel Shulewitz, ed., The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands (London and New York: Cassell, 1999; New York: Continuum, 2000);
Shmuel Trigano, ed., L’exclusion des Juifs des pays arabes: Aux sources du conflit israelo-arabe (Clamecy, France: In Press Editions, 2003).

12. Cf. Working Group on Minorities, ninth session, May 12-16, 2003, under item 4, the update reports by Asbjorne Eide, and under item 4 of the Sub-Commission on
Human Rights, the reports undertaken by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro.

Chapter037

NOTES

1. Art. 6, act 52, 1966.

2. Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002), pp. 180-82, 231-34, and in the index under “Egypt.”
For earlier details, see Y. Masriya [Bat Ye’or], “A Christian Minority: The Copts in Egypt,” Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: A World Survey. (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 4:79-93 (reprinted in this book as chapter 13).

3. WGAD opinion 10/1999, para. 6.

4. Military felony case 66/97.

5. AWE statement: E/CN.4/2001/NGO/49; opinion: E/CN.4/2000/4/Add. I, pp. 52-55; “Reply,” E/CN.4/2000/4. paras. 27-28.

6. Youssef Sidhom, Arabic article in Watani Weekly (Cairo), November 30, 2003,p. 1.

7. Youssef Sidhom, Arabic article in Watani Weekly, March 16, 2003, p. 1.

8. Quoted by Nadia Abou el-Magd in an Associated Press article, July 29, 2002, from Cairo (Neged Borai was reacting to the latest court decision at that time on Prof. Saad
Eddin Ibrahim).

Chapter038

NOTES

1. AFP, February 15, 2004.

2. Official IRNA news agency, as reported by Reuters on February 14, 2003.

3. Ayatollah Javardi-Amoli is quoted as saying in February 1997, “This is not a fatwa which died with the death of the religious leader who issued it. . . . It is a hukm which is
permanent and it will stay in place until it is carried out.”

4. Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1990), pp. 27, 30.

5. E/CN.4/1990/22. para. 254.

6. Time International, May 24, 1993.

 7. Iran Times, June 26, 1992.

8. Iran Times, November 13 and 20, 1992.

9. E/1994/23-E/C. 12/1993/19, para. 128.

10. Rhein A. Myullerson, Christine Chanet, and Rosalyn Higgins.

11. 1196th meeting, paras. 23-32; CCPR/12, vol. I, pp. 104-105.

12. 1230th meeting, para. 9; CCPR/12, Vol. I, p. 246.

13. BBC World Service report; see written statement E/CN.4/Sub.2/I997/ NGO/15.

14. German foreign minister Joschka Fischer prefers the “definition of the world’s central problem … as ‘the new totalitarianism’ of ‘destructive jihadist terrorism.’“ See the
recent article by John Vinocur, “Europe’s Old Axis Has Lost Its Luster,” International Herald Tribune, February 19, 2004, p. 8. See also Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); and Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury, NJ: Associated
University Presses, 2002).

15. E/CN.4/2004/4. Consultations with the expanded bureau of the Commission on Human Rights, para. 44, p. 14.

Chapter039

NOTES
1. Charles H. Kennedy, “Repugnancy to Islam—Who Decides? Islam and Legal Reform in Pakistan,” International and Comparative Law 41, part 4 (October 1992): 772.
[See a recent study by Patrick Sookhdeo, A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian Community in Pakistan (Pewsey, Wilt. UK: Isaac Publishing, 2002).]

2. Peter Jacob Dildar, “Minorities under the Law,” Frontier Post (Islamabad, Pakistan), June 18. 1994.

3. Verbatim transcription; see also E/CN.4/Sub.2/1992/SR.27, paras. 70-71.

4. Rene Wadlow and David G. Littman, “Dangerous Censorship of a U.N. Special Rapporteur,” Justice, no. 14 (September 1997): 10-17 (reprinted in this book as chapter
29); “Blasphemy at the United Nations?” Middle East Quarterly (December 1997): 85-86; “UN Special Rapporteur Censured on ‘Islamist and Arab Antisemitism.’“ Midstream
(February-March 1998): 8-13.

5. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/NGO/3.

Chapter040

NOTES

1. E/CN.4/Sub. 2/2003/NGO/15.
2. E/CN.4/2003/14.

3. HRI/GEN/l/Rev.6 of 22 May 2003. p. 146.

4. UN Human Rights Committee, 48th sess., General Comment no. 22, pp. 155-56.

5. Early Day Motion 1290, May 22, 2003.

6. Ibn Warraq, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (Amherst. NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).
 7. Conclusion of Tractus Theologico-Political Treatise of 1670. For the English translation given, see R. H. M. Elwes, The Works of Spinoza, vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1955),
pp. 264-65.

Chapter041

NOTES

1. Richard 11, act 2, scene 1, lines 35-36.

2. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/15; reprinted in this book as chapter 42.

3. Al-Jazeera television (Qatar) and Al-Arabiya television (United Arab Emirates), April 15, 2004; English trans, from Arabic in “Osama Bin Laden Speech Offers Peace
Treaty with Europe, Says Al-Qa’ida ‘Will Persist in Fighting’ the U.S.,” MEMRI Special Dispatch 695, April 15, 2004, Middle East Media Research Institute Web site,
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP69504 (accessed September 27, 2004). See also “Terrorism (Al-Irhaab): The Fashion of the 21st Century,” al-
Muhajiroun Web site, March 31, 2004.

Chapter042

NOTES

1. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/25.
2. See “Saudi Arabia—Questions of Human Rights,” Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, London, Web site, http://www.saudiembassy.org.uk/publications/questions-of-human-
rights/questions-of-human-rights.htm (accessed September 27, 2004). Recent English translation in “The Website of the Saudi Embassy in London,” MEMRI Special Dispatch 529,
June 26, 2003, Middle East Media Research Institute Web site, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP52903 (accessed September 27, 2004). For an
earlier explanation, see the Memorandum on Human Rights (Riyadh, 1972), and CoUoques de Riyad, by the Saudi Ministry of Information (p. 57), in answer to a request from the UN
Human Rights Committee. The document was subsequently removed from the Saudi Web site.

3. “Iran Bill to End Marriage at 9: Guardian Consent Still Needed,” International Herald Tribune, August 10, 2000.

4. See the UNSR’s report, E/CN.4/1994/48 (February I, 1994), and the government of Sudan’s reply, E/CN.4/1994/122 (March I, 1994).

5. See Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh. “Dialogue conflictuel sur les droits de rhomme entre Occident et Islam,” Islamochristiana (Vatican City) 17 (1991): 53-82; Gerard
Conac and Abdelfattah Amor, eds., Islam et droits de I’homme, with a preface by Ibrahima Fall (Paris: Economica, 1994); Anne Elizabeth Mayer. Islam and Human Rights: Tradition
and Politics, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999); Mah-mood Monshipouri, “The Muslim World Haifa Century after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Progress
and Obstacles,” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 16, no. 3 (September 1998): 287-314.

6. See A/C.3/37/SR.56, paras. 53-55 (1982), and A/C.3/39/SR.65, paras. 91-95 (December 7, 1984).

7. See the written statement by the Association for World Education,E/CN.4/2000/NGO/3; see also resolution 49/19-P on the CDHRI, in Human Rights: A Compilation of
International Instruments, vol, 2, Regional Instruments (New York and Geneva: Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, United Nations, 1997), pp. 477-84.

8. International Commission of Jurists press release, Geneva, December 5, 1991; and E/CN.4/1992/SR.20, paras. 17-20.

9. For full details on this question, see David G. Littman, “Universal Human Rights and Human Rights in Islam,” Midstream 45, no. 2 (February-March 1999): 2-7 (reprinted
as chapter 27 in this book); and David G. Littman, “Islamism Grows Stronger at the United Nations,” Middle East Quarterly (Philadelphia) (September 1999): 59-64 (reprinted as
chapter 26).

10. HR/IP/SEM/1999/1, part 1, March 15, 1999, p. 6.

11. OIC/SEM/2002/3, part 2, para. 2, p. 14.

12. Annex to resolution 49/19-P (OIC/SEM/2002/2) (LEG1-5. DISK NO.6/24-ICFM).

13. See E/CN.4/2003/14.

 14. Ibid., para. 7.

15. Ibid., para. 11.

Chapter043

NOTE

1. See resolution 2004/L.5.

Chapter044

NOTES

1. See al-Raghib al-lsfahani (d. 1108 CE), Al-mufradat fi harib al-

Qur’an (Cairo, 1890).
2. Samuel M. Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam (London and New York: Marshall Brothers, 1924), pp. 34-35. See also al-Razi, al-Tafsir al-Kabir, vol. 2 (Cairo, 1890),
11. 17-20.

3. Quoted in Zwemer, Law of Apostasy, pp. 33-34.

4. Ibn Kathir, Linterpretation du Coran, trans. Fawzi Chaaban (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1998), 2:128.

5. Abul Ala Maududi, The Punishment of the Apostate According to Islamic Law, trans. Syed Silas Husain and Ernest Hahn (Lahore, Pakistan: Islamic Publications, 1994);
also available at http://www.answering-islam.org/Hahn/Maududi/ (accessed September 28, 2004).

6. Ibn Maja, Hudud, chap. 2; al-Nisai, Tahrim al-Dam, chap. 14; al-Tayalisi, no. 2689; Malik, Aqdiya tradition 15; al-Bukhari, Institabat al-murtadin, chap. 2; al-Tirmidhi,
Hudud, chap. 25; Abu Dawud, Hudud, chap. I; Ibn Hanbal i. 217, 282, 322.

7. Al-Bukhari, Sahih, trans. Ahmad Hasan (Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1987), 8:519-20.

8. Abu Dawud. “Punishment of an Apostate,” hadith no. 4337, chap. 1605 in Kitab al-Hudud, vol. 3 of Sunan, trans. Ahmad Hasan (Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1990), p. 1212.

9. Al-Nisai, Tahrim al-Dam, chap. 11; Qasama, chap. 13; Abu Dawud, Hudud, chap. 1

10. Al-Bukhari, Maghazi, chap. 60; Istitabat al-Murtaddin, chap. 2 Ahkam. chap. 12; Muslim, Imara, tradition 15; Abu Dawud, Hudud, chap.I; Ibn Hanbal, 1, v. 231.

11. Al-Shafii, Umm, I 228; Abu Yusuf, Kharaj. 109

12. “Apostasy from Islam,” in Dictionary of Islam, ed. Thomas Patrick Hughes (Delhi, 1885), p. 16.

13. T. W. Juynboll, “Apostasy,” in Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Publishers, 1910), p. 626.

14. “Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations Web site, http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm (accessed September 28, 2004).

15. Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, “Le delit d’apostasie aujourd’hui et ses consequences en droit arabe et musulman,” Islamochristiana (Vatican City) 20 (1994): 93-116; Ann
Elizabeth Mayer. Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), p. 164.

16. Abu-Sahlieh, “Le delit d’apostasie,” p. 94.

 17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, p. 187.

20. Abu-Sahlieh, “Le delit d’apostasie,” p. 98.

21. Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Les Musulmans face aux droits de I’homme (Bochum, Germany: Winkler, 2001), p. 110.

22. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, p. 167.

23. Ibid., pp. 167-68.

24. Ibn Warraq, ed.. Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 98.

25. Christianity Today,, August 28, 2000.

26. General Comment no. 22. HRI/GEN/l/Rev.6, May 22, 2003, pp. 155-56.

Chapter045

NOTES

1. The author can be reached at Maison de l’Arzillier, av. de Rumine 62.

1005 Lausanne, Switzerland, or at [email protected].
2. The original French version was published by Editions du Seuil in Paris, 1998.

3. For the often difficult situation of Christians, see, for example, Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Appeles par le Christ, ils viennent de I’Islam (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991).

4. See, for example, “Apostasie,” in Dictionaire encyclopedique du judaisme (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1996), p. 81.

5. Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, “Le delit d’apostasie aujourd’hui et ses consequences en droit arabe et musulman,” Islamochristiana (Vatican City) 20 (1994): 95.

6. Mohamed Charfi, Islam et liberie: Le malentendu historique (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998), p. 79.

7. E/CN.4/2004/19.

Chapter048
1. John Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, bk. 4, chap. 20,
sec. 17.
2. Winston Churchill, London Saturday Evening Post, February 15, 1930.

3. See “Human Rights and Human Wrongs,” World Union for Progressive Judaism statement no. 8, Geneva, April 17, 1990, pp. 36-39. It was recorded at the UNCHR; a
greatly abridged summary record (E/CN.4/1990/SR.52) omitted mention of Churchill. And Tribune de Geneve, January 26-27, 1991.

4. Martin Gilbert. “United States of Abraham,” London Jewish Chronic le, December 31, 1993.

5. David G. Littman, letter to the editor, Journal de Geneve, May 9, 1969.

 6. Daniel J. Elazar, Two Peoples—One Land: Federal Solutions for Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991); Raphael Israeli,
Palestinians between Israel and Jordan: Squaring the Triangle (London: Praeger, 1991); Emile A. Nakhleh, “Palestinians and Israelis: Options for Coexistence,” Journal of
Palestinian Studies (Berkeley, CA) 23, no. 2 (Winter 1993).

7. Quoted in Ha-Aretz (Tel Aviv), June 24, 1993.

8. “Draft Document of Principles of Women’s Rights,” Jerusalem Times, August 5, 1994.

9. Olivier Carre, L’utopie islamique dans VOrient arabe (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1991), p. 210.

10. Pierre-Andre Taguieff, Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion: Faux et Usages d’un Faux, 2 vols. (Paris: Berg International, 1992), p. 1223.

11. Art. 32.

12. Taguieff, Les Protocoles, 1:380.

13. The court transcripts used are from the report on the “Bergman Affair” provided by the Swedish Committee against Antisemitism. Stockholm.

14. Translated by Ihsan Haqqi (Beirut: Dar an-Nafais; 1st ed., 1988; 2nd ed.. 1990).

15. In an amendment to this law, enacted April 1, 1963, and called law no. 7 of 1963, “Law Amending the Jordanian Citizenship Law,” it became subsection 2 of section 3 of
the 1954 law.

Chapter049

NOTES

1. UN press conference tape, September 2, 1983, in Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhim-mitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2002), pp. 319, 466, n. 42.

2.David G. Littman, “Arafat, Jesus et l’histoire,” Dimanche Tribune (Lau-sanne), September 11, 1983; Tribune de Geneve, September 14, 1983; La Vie Protes-tante
(Geneva), October 7, 1983.

3.Francois Abu Mokh, Les Confessions d’un Arabe Catholique. Entretiens avec Joelle Chabert et Francois Mourvillier (Paris: Centurion, 1991), p. 195; for English see Bat
Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 466, n. 42.

4.Flora Lewis “The Remarkable Resiliance of Chairman Arafat,” International Herald Tribune (Paris), March 9, 1984; letter by David G. Littman, “Arafat and Jesus,”
International Herald Tribune (Paris), April 4, 1984.

5.Patrick and Nicola Goodenough, Jerusalem Post, April 5, 1997, and in Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, pp. 275-76.

6.Documentation from Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Jerusalem, in Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 276.

7.Documentation from Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), and Association for World Education, in Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 276.

8.Interview with Arafat, October 5, 2002. English translation in MEMRI, Spe-cial Dispatch—Palestinian Authority, no. 42, October II, 2002,
http://www.memn.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP42802.

9.Mark Durie. “ ‘Isa. the Muslim Jesus,” chapter 53 in this volume.

10. Raphael Israeli, Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martyrology (London: Frank Cass, 2003).

Chapter050
NOTES

1.Edward Said, “Israel-Palestine: A Third Way,” Le Monde

Diplomatique (Paris) August-September 1998.
2.Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). Specific page references to this work are given in the text.

3.Quoted by Jon Manchip White, introduction to Edward William Lane, Modern Egyptians (New York: Dover, 1973), p. v.

4.F. E. Peters, The Hajj (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); ref-erences to and quotes from Burton are to be found on pp. 72, 100, 128-29, 175-77, 187-88,
215-18, 225-26, 242, 255-56, 257-58, 265, 289, 338, 350.

5.Keith Windschuttle, “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited,’“ New Crite-rion 17, no. 5 (January 1999).

6.Ibid.

7.Ibid.

8.J. M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 503.

9.Ibid., p. 504.

10.See Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (London: Allen and Unwin, 1935), pp. 82-108.

11.See the afterword to Orientalism, p. 341, where Cahen is misspelled Cohen. Rushdie is also misspelled, on p. 351.

12.R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 91-92, 108-109.

13. The Jones quote comes from his Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York: New York University Press, 1993), pp. 34-35.

14.K. Paddaya, “Sir William Jones: An Appreciation,” http://www.picatype.com/dig/da2/da2aa06.htm.

15.See Keith Windschuttle, “The Ethnocentrism of Clifford Geertz,” New Cri-terion 21, no. 2 (October 2, 2002).

16.See Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998).

17.Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), p. 29.

18.Windschuttle, “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited.’“

19.Ian Buruma, review of Out of Place: A Memoir, by Edward Said, New York Times Book Review, October 3, 1999.

20.Quoted in Courrier International, May 28, 1998, no. 395.

21.Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mas-tery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). p. 27.

22.Ibid., p. 45.

23.Ibid., p. 2.

24.Ibid., p. 3.

25.Ibid., p. 203.

26.Howard Bloom, 77?e Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), p. 231.

27.Windschuttle, “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited.’“

 28.Quoted in J. L. Myers, “Herodotus,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 507-509. For much of this paragraph I am indebted
to Myers.

29.Maxime Rodinson, “The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam,” in The Legacy of Islam, ed. Joseph Schacht and Charles Edmund Bosworth (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1974), pp. 15-16.

30. Gotthold Lessing, Nathan the Wise, trans. William Taylor, 1830, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/butbook/lookup7nunrf820.

31.P. J. Keating, “W. S. Blunt,” in The Penguin Companion to Literature, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 55.

32.Quoted in B. Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 83-84.

33.J. M. Roberts, The Triumph of the West (London: BBC Publications, 1985), p. 176.

34.B. Lewis, “La carte du Proche-Orient,” in Islam et Politique au Proche-Orient aujourd’hui (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), pp.162-63.

35.Rodinson, “The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam,” p. 59.

36.C. Destremau and Jean Moncelon, Louis Massignon (Paris: Plon, 1994), p. 258.

37.Mircea Eliade, Journal I, 1945-1955, trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

38.Maxime Rodinson, “A Critical Survey of Modern Studies on Muhammad,” in Studies on Islam, ed. M. Swartz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 57.

39.E. W. Said, “Impossible Histories: Why the Many Islams Cannot Be Sim-plified.” review of What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, by B.
Lewis. Harper’s (July 2002).

40.Quoted by Said, Orientalism, pp. 314-15, from B. Lewis, “Islamic Concepts of Revolution,” in Revolution in the Middle East, and Other Case Studies: Proceed-ings of a
Seminar, ed. P. J. Vatikiotis (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 33. 38-39.

41. Said quoting Malek.

42.It is ironic that Said draws much of his inspiration from the French philoso-pher Michel Foucault. since the latter has often defended the thesis that non-Western peoples
do not share the same “rationality “ as Western peoples, a viewpoint that Said denounces throughout Orientalism. Said also inherited from Foucault the antihu-manism of much
postmodernist thought, where “the death of man” is announced with much glee. But this antihumanism of Foucault results in the denial of individual freedom and individual
responsibility, and we see it resurfacing in Said’s entire philosphical outlook where Arabs are encouraged to see themselves as helpless vic-tims of the dark impersonal forces of
imperialism, rather than free agents in charge of their own destinies, willing to take to responsibility as adults for their own acts. Reflections gathered from K. Windschuttle’s very
important work The Killing of His-tory (New York: Free Press, 1996).

43.Windschuttle, “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited.’“

44.Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 108.

45.Ibid., p. 126.

46.Windschuttle. “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited.’“

47.Lawrence I.Conrad, “Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan: From Orientalist Philology to the Study of Islam,” in The Jewish Discovery of Islam, ed. M. Kramer (Tel Aviv:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1999), p. 140.

48.Ibid., note 18, p. 170. The rest of the footnote reads: “See Geoffrey, ed.. World Survey of Islamic Manuscripts (London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Founda-tion, 1992-
94), 1:275-90 (Paris); 320-29 (Berlin); 2:365-76 (Leiden); 3:471-90 (London).”

49.Ibid., p. 142.

50.Ibid.

51.Ibid., p. 139.

52.See ibid., notes 30-34 for the full references.

53.Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 118.

54.Conrad, “Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan: From Orientalist Philology to the Study of Islam,” pp. 162-63.
 55.Ibid., p. 161.

56.Ibid., p. 164.

57.Raphael Patai, Ignaz Goldziher and His Oriental Diary (Detroit: Wayne-State University Press. 1987), p. 28.

58.S. Almog, “The Racial Motif in Renan’s Attitude to Jews and Judaism,” in Antisemitism Through the Ages, ed. Shmuel Almog (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988), pp. 255-78.
Referred to by Conrad, “Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan: From Orientalist Philology to the Study of Islam,” p. 156.

59.E. Renan, “Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (1851),” in The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, ed. Ibn Warraq (Amherst. NY: Prometheus Books. 2000). pp. 127-
66.

60.H. W. Wardman, Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography (London: Athlone Press. 1964), p. 89.

61.Renan, “Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (1851),” p. 163.

62.Herbert Berg, “The Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough.” in The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, p. 502. Herbert Berg is professor at the Uni-versity of North
Carolina at Wilmington.

63.W. Montgonery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 110.

64.Ibid.

65.R. Stephen Humphreys, “Tradition and Innovation in the Study of Islamic History: The Evolution of North American Scholarship Since 1960,” lecture pre-sented at the
Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, October 21, 1997. R. Stephen Humphreys is King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of California,
Santa Barbara.

66.Maxime Rodinson. Europe and the Mystique of Islam, trans. Roger Veinus (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), p. 131, n. 3; quoted by M. Kramer, Ivory
Towers on Sand (Washington. DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001). p. 30.

67.Interview with Rodinson. in Approaches to the History of the Middle East, ed. Nancy Elizabeth Gallagher (London: Ithaca Press, 1994), p. 124; quoted by Kramer, Ivory
Towers on Sand, p. 38.

68.P. J. Vatikiotis, Among Arabs and Jews: A Personal Experience, 1936-1990 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1991), p. 105; quoted by Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand.
p. 38.

69.J. Berque. “Au-dela de rOrientalisme: Entretien avec Jacques Berque,” Qantara 13 (October-December 1994): 27-28; quoted by Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand. p. 30.

70.C. Dewey, “How the Raj Played Kim’s Game,” Times Literary Supplement. April 17. 1998. p. 10; quoted by Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, p. 31.

71.Said, Orientalism, p. 127.

72.B. Lewis. “The Question of Orientalism,” in Islam and the West. p. 112.

73.Maxime Rodinson, La Fascination de /’Islam (Paris: Editions La Decouverte, 1989), p. 97, note 132. The other two scholars are Jean Sauvaget and Claude Cahen.

74.Ibid., p. 123.

75.Interview with Nikki Keddie. in Approaches to the History of the Middle East, pp. 144-45: quoted by Kramer. Ivory Towers on Sand, p. 37.

76.Quoted by Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, p. 38.

77.Interview with Albert Hourani, in Approaches to the History of the Middle East, p. 41; quoted by Kramer. Ivory Towers on Sand. p. 38.

78.Interview with Albert Hourani in Approaches to the History of the Middle East, pp. 40-41; quoted by Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, p. 30.

79.A. Ahmed, //; Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 160-61.

80.Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), pp. 317-18.

81.Ibid., p. 319.
 82.Sadiq al-Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” in Forbidden Agendas: Intolerance and Defiance in the Middle East, ed. Jon Rothschild (London: Al Saqi
Books, 1984), p. 350.

83.Sadiq al-Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse” [in Arabic] (Beirut, 1981), p. 18; quoted in E. Sivan, Interpretations of Islam: Past and Present (Princeton:
Darwin Press, 1985), p. 144.

84.Sadiq al-Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” in Forbidden Agendas intolerance and Defiance in the Middle East, p. 363.

85.Quoted in Sivan, Interpretations of Islam: Past and Present, p. 136.

86.Quoted in ibid., p. 139.

87.Al-Bitar, quoted in ibid., p. 151.

Chapter051

NOTES

1.To see what the public is told, I looked at op-ed pieces, quotations in news-paper articles, and interviews on television rather than at articles in learned journals.

2.The following analysis relies on Douglas Streusand, “What Does Jihad Mean?” Middle East Quarterly (September 1997).

Chapter052

NOTES

1.Council on American-Islamic Relations. “About CAIR,” http://www.cair-net.org/asp/aboutcair.asp.

2.International Institute of Islamic Thought, “Q & A on Islam and Arab Amer-icans,” 2002.

3.Ahmed ibn Naqib al-Misri. Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Beltsville. MD:Amana Publications. 1999), p.
xx.

4.Ibid.. o9.0. o9.1. o9.8. and o9.9.

5.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Islamist Leader in London: No Uni-versal Jihad as Long as There Is No Caliphate,’“ MEMRI Special Dispatch no. 435, October
30. 2002, www.memri.org.

6.Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors,” Commentary (November 2002).

7.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Leading Egyptian Government Cleric Calls For: ‘Martyrdom Attacks That Strike Horror into the Hearts of the Ene-mies of Allah.’“
MEMRI Special Dispatch no. 363. April 7, 2002, www.memri.org.

8.Douglas Jehl, “Moderate Muslims Fear Their Message Ss Being Ignored,” New York Times. October 21. 2001.

9.Stephen Gibbs and Matthew Moore, “Australia Will Be ‘Destroyed Instantly’ If It Strikes at Muslim Countries, Says Cleric,” Syndey Morning Herald, December 13, 2002,
www.smh.com.au.

10.“Radical Cleric Held over Church Attack,” December 26, 2002, www.cnn.com.

11.MEMRI. “Leading Egyptian Government Cleric Calls For: ‘Martyrdom Attacks That Strike Horror into the Hearts of the Enemies of Allah.”

12.The Sabr Foundation. “The Quran on War, Peace and Justice.” November 8, 2001. www.islaml01.com.
 13.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Ramadan Sermon from Iraq,” MEMRI Special Dispatch no. 438, November 8, 2002, www.memri.org.

14.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Egyptian Cleric: Ramadan the Month of Jihad,” MEMRI Special Dispatch no. 308, December 5, 2001, www.memri.org.

15.“Full text: bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America,’“ Guardian Unlimited Observer, November 24, 2002. http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00 .html.

16.Ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, ol 1.1, ol 1.2.

17.Ibid., oil.3a, b.

18.Ibid., oil.5.

19.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Friday Sermons in Saudi Mosques: Review and Analysis,” MEMRI Special Report no. 10, September 26, 2002, www.memri.org.

20.Ibid.

21.Aluma Solnick, “Based on Koranic Verses, Interpretations, and Traditions, Muslim Clerics State: The Jews Are the Descendants of Apes, Pigs, and Other Ani-mals,”
MEMRI Special Report no. 11, November 1, 2002, www.memri.org.

22.Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors.”

23.Muhammed ibn Ismaiel al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari: The Translation of the Meanings, trans. Muhammad M. Khan (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997), vol. 5, book 56, no.
2785. Bukhari (810-870) is generally considered by Muslims to be the most reliable source for traditions about Muhammad.

Chapter053

NOTES

1. Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, The Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic

Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, ed. and trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller
(Evanston, 1L: Sunna Books, 1991), p. 603.
2. Bat Ye*or. Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, trans. Miriam Kochan and David Littman (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), p.
370.

Chapter054

NOTES

1. Mark Cohen, “Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter-Myth, History,”

Jerusalem Quarterly 38 (Spring 1986): 125-37.
2. Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, preface by Jacques Ellul, trans. David Maisel, Paul Fenton, and David G. Littman (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1985).

3. Ibid., document 10, p. 187.

4. Ibid., document 8. pp. 185-86.

 5. Ibid., documents 12, 94, 98. 99. and others.

Chapter055

NOTES

1. Bat Ye’or, “Jihad and Human Rights Today,” National Review Online, July 1, 2002, http://www.nationalreview.com/commeitt/comment-yeor070102.asp.

2. Bayoumi, Abdel-Moti, “Wrong Zionist Perceptions of Jihad in Islam via the Internet,”Al-Musawwar (mainstream Egyptian Arabic weekly), August 23, 2002, p. 55.

3. “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” adopted and issued at the Nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in Cairo, August 5, 1990, article 24.

4. Ibid., article 25. It was published in the UN’s Regional Instruments, vol. 2 of Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments (New York/Geneva: UN [Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights], 1997).

5. William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers: Political, Historical, and Civil, Containing an Account of the Geography, Population, Government (Boston: Cummings & Hilliard.
1826).

6. Mohammed Sabry, L’Empire Egyptien sous Mohamed-Ali et la Question d’Orient, 1877-1849 (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1930).

7. Under the subheading “War Crimes,” section III.

8. See the replies of Dr. Bayoumi in the Q/A of September 3. 2002. to the questions of Dr. Hulsman, editor in chief of the Religious News Service for the Arab World. Cairo.

9. Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos, The Greek Nation, 1453-1669: The Cultural and Economic Background of Modern Greek Society, trans. Ian and Phania Moles (New
Brunswick. NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976), p. 44.

Chapter057

NOTES

1. Sayings or acts attributed to the prophet Muhammad that are

considered normative and obligatory. Compiled in manuals of Islamic
jurisprudence, they form— with the Qur’an—the foundation of Islamic law,
the Sharia. According to Muslim doctrine, the Qur’an. the Hadith, and the
Sharia are expressions of the divine will, hence their character as a sacred
norm that cannot be violated.
2. Dhimmitude: from the word dhimmi—the condition attributed by the Islamic conquerors to the non-Muslim populations vanquished by jihad. It means “protected,” since
these indigenous. non-Muslim peoples were theoretically protected from death or slavery if they submitted to Islamic rules. For a historical overview, see The Decline of Eastern
Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, trans. Miriam Kochan and David G. Littman (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 1996). Dhimmitude
permeates Muslim religious perceptions of Jews and Christians, and some of its rules are still applicable today, either mildly or strictly, in several Muslim countries. For an analysis of
what I call the “civiliza-tions of dhimmitude,” see Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, trans. Miriam Kochan and David G. Littman (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2002).

3. The late Abbe Youakim Moubarac, a Syrian Catholic priest, and secretary-general of the Council of Catholic Patriarchs of the Orient, became the most virulent protagonist
of this thesis. See his, L’Islam et le Dialogue Islamo-Chretien. vol. 3 of L’Islam et le Dialogue Islamo-Chretien. Pentalogie Islamo-Chretienne, 5 vols. (Beyrouth: Edition du Cenacle
Libanais, 1972-1973), pp. 155-70. Father Moubarac’s theses are described in Islam and Dhimmitude, as well as those of Canon Nairn Stifan Ateek and Bishop Kenneth Cragg, a
former Anglican deputy bishop of Jerusalem.
 4. Within a week of the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada in October 2000. under the auspices of the Jerusalem patriarch Michael Sabbah, the chancellor of the Latin
Patriarchate, Fr. Raed Awad Abusahlia, seized the occasion to begin a pernicious anti-Israel campaign by the publication of twelve-page “messages” twice a week, through his Olive
Branch from Jerusalem. They aimed at persuading Western churches and groups to influence their governments in favor of the Palestinian cause and to exert maximum pressure on
Israel. This “service” is discussed in the conclusion to Islam and Dhimmitude.

5. For this symbiosis, see Robert Brenton Betts, Christians in the Arab World: A Political Study (London: SPCK, 1979), pp. 226-27. This “golden age” myth was regularly
expressed by Arab politicians and clergymen; for example, by Abbe Moubarac. who quotes the then Syrian patriarch Sayegh in his L’Islam et le Dialogue Islamo-Chretien vol. 4 (Les
Chretiens et le monde arabe), p. 64, and vol. 5 (Palestine et Arabite), p. 139.

6. The Arab League strongly opposed the movement for Jewish-Christian reconciliation by insisting—through the Eastern dhimmi churches—on maintaining the “deicide
people” accusation.

7. Moubarac gives details in his Palestine et Arabite, p. 28.

8. Michel Hayek, a Lebanese Maronite priest, declared: “Why not admit clearly—so as to break a taboo and a political proscription—what is so resented in the flesh and in
the Christian conscience: that Islam has been the most dreadful torment that ever befell the Church. Christian sensibility has remained traumatized to this day.” “Nouvelles approches
de 1’Islam,” Les Conferences du Cenacle (Beyrouth) 22, no. 970 (1968); English translation from Islam and Dhimmitude.

9. See Middle East Quarterly 8, no. 1 (Winter 2001). The entire issue is devoted to “Disappearing Christians of the Middle East.”

10. A long spear transfixes the woman’s body and the cross, its protruding point embossed with a star of David, and an American flag at the shaft end. (Palestinian Media
Watch. December 13 and 15, 2000, [email protected].) At Easter 1997, in a mock Passion Play, three Arab Palestinians had themselves bound to crosses at Har Homa overlooking
Jerusalem, with the inscription: “The Crucifixion of the Peace Process, of Jerusalem, and of Bethlehem.” The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Dar-wish—probably assisted by Christians—
often exploits the traditional Christological anti-Jewish themes of the crucifixion.

11. Abbe Moubarac proposes to “debiblioniser” (“de-Bible-ize”) the Bible, in his L’Islam et le Dialogue Islamo-Chretien, pp. 124-25. This theme is discussed in Islam and
Dhimmitude.

12. Walid Phares. Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995).