Dhimmis In The Making?

Diana West had an interesting article in Yesterdays (10Feb06) Washington Times (which I found through Michelle Malkins' site). The topic: dhimmitude, "the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by jihad wars, encompassing all of the demographic, ethnic, and religious aspects of the political system. The word "dhimmitude" as a historical concept, was coined by Bat Ye'or in 1983 to describe the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule" (for more, see dhimmitude.org).

Here are a few excerpts. The full article can be found here;

We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude...Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as "people of the book [the Bible]," were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost.

There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia) designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi...The extremely distressing but highly significant fact is, dhimmitude doesn't only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.

This is the lesson of Cartoon Rage 2006, a cultural nuke set off by an Islamic chain reaction to those 12 cartoons of Muhammad appearing in a Danish newspaper. We have watched the Muslim meltdown with shocked attention, but there is little recognition that its poisonous fallout is fear. Fear in the State Department...Fear in Whitehall...Fear in the Vatican...And fear in the media, which have failed, with few, few exceptions, to reprint or show the images...That's dhimmitude.
[...]
How far does it go? Worth noting, for example, is that on the BBC Web site, a religion page about Islam presents the angels and revelations of Islamic belief as historical fact, rather than spiritual conjecture (as is the case with its Christianity Web page); plus, it follows every mention of Mohammed with "(pbuh)," which means "peace be upon him"—"as if," writes Will Wyatt, former BBC chief executive, in a letter to the Times of London, "the corporation itself were Muslim."
[...]
Calling these cartoons "unacceptable," and censoring ourselves "in respect" to Islam brings the West into compliance with a central statute of sharia...

I think West is overstating things a bit, but she does catch the mood of some of our cultural and political elites well. It is they, not the rank and file Westerner, who are choosing to submit to Islamic pressure. Why? That is the question, isn't it? For some, it is a misguided sense of cultural sensitivity. They have been brought up to be distrustful of their own heritage and to view other modes of thought as more "authentic" than the West's. For others, it is purely business. They would rather pay their jizya - in this case, censorship - than risk losing access to Muslim consumers. Some probably even think that by differing to Muslim demands now, we enhance our ability to positively influence them in the future. But, no one respects weakness, particularly in a contest between paradigms. If we show weakness, the Islamists will claim victory and those Muslims who could still be swayed one way or the other will wonder why they should moderate (i.e., Westernize) their values, when our leaders won't defend the values we want to see spread in the Islamic world.

technorati tags: islam, mohammed cartoon