Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Brief Notes: On Dhimmitude and the Muslim War Against the Jews



{Cross-Posted at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers}

Michael

1,300 Years of Dhimmitude.

We cannot understand the Muslim – Jewish conflict in the Middle East without reference to the 1,300 years of dhimmitude that preceded it and the century of war against the Jewish population following their freedom in the early part of the twentieth century.

If one is to have any meaningful understanding of this conflict one must also have some understanding of Jewish history in Muslim lands. Further, one cannot have an understanding of Jewish history in Muslim lands without seriously considering the Jewish condition of persecution in those lands known as dhimmitude.

To try and understand the Arab and Muslim conflict against the Jews of Israel without considering thirteen centuries of dhimmitude is something akin to trying to understand the Black experience in the United States with no reference to slavery or Jim Crow.

It is absurd.

I suppose one of the primary questions for me, personally, is just why it is that Jewish scholarship has done such a piss-poor job of pointing out the long and ugly history of Jewish persecution among the Arabs and the failure to point out the connection between Israeli history and the history of dhimmitude?

There are people who have done work, of course.

Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History (2007) is one considerable effort.

Edwin Black, The Farhud, Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust (2010) is another.

Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (2010) is still another.

Yet I-P discussion throughout the progressive-left remains entirely innocent of the history of Jewish persecution in Muslim and Arab lands.

The problem is that you cannot really discuss I-P without discussing the history of Jewish dhimmitude because modern Israel emerged as a country, in part, because of Jewish persecution not just among the European Christians, but among a hostile Arab and Muslim population that outnumbers us by orders of magnitude that the rest of the world tends to think of as irrelevant.

It is not irrelevant.

There are something like 13 million Jewish people in the entire world. We are approximately .2 % of the world population.

We are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority.

Yet, there are something like 300 to 400 million Arabs, who mainly will not accept Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land and many of whom believe that they have a religious obligation to see us dead.

There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, many of whom think likewise.

Yet, somehow, in the progressive-left imagination, it is the Jews... the tiny minority, the historically persecuted ones... which must be spanked.  Not only do they refuse to acknowledge the rise of radical Islam today, they refuse to even discuss the I-P conflict within the context of the long history of Jewish persecution within Islam, yesterday.

And what this means, in my opinion, is that the progressive movement stands for nothing.



Morte.

15 comments:

  1. One problem may be that the concept of progressive means that looking to the past is not the answer to things; progress is what matters. Unfortunately, the past is ALL that matters to the Jihadists and that lot. So, progress is impossible.

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  2. Daniel Pipes has suggested that we need to win this fight in order to end it.

    You've implied the same, yourself.

    I'm afraid that you both may be right.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. School has been closed for 3 days in the south. A truce was announced so they are resuming school. No sooner did they announce the resumption of school than a grad rocket fell into the heart of the town of Netivot. Tomorrow school children may get hit by rockets. Heaven help us all IF that happens. Since NOTHING seems to stop the rockets for too long, it will happen eventually. How long can this crap continue?

      Delete
    2. This is a very tough nut, Doodad.

      But, should Israel take Hamas out of Gaza?

      That's a reasonable question, I think.

      It would take an operation considerably larger than Cast Lead and it would have to be done, given our current president, without US approval.

      Nonetheless, given the fact that Hamas quite literally calls for the murder of Jews anywhere we might be found, as attested to in their charter, I have no problem with Israel ending that organization...

      by any means necessary.

      As a matter of civil rights.

      Delete
  3. "The lives of 1,000,000 Israeli civilians are paralyzed. 200,000 Israeli children are out of school," the letter stated. "Yet, the Security Council has uttered zero words of condemnation of these attacks. There is something wrong with this equation. "

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4202520,00.html

    ZERO words of condemnation because it ain't happening in THEIR backyards.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Article by Leftist, formerly kafiyeh-donning, former anti-Israel activist who has become aware of what is, in fact, the case about the situation that Israel is in, and who is, therefore, now pro-Israel:

    Nicky Larkin: Israel is a refuge, but a refuge under siege
    http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html

    "I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right -- as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?"

    Read it all.

    ----

    Israel - A Brief Summary of the History of the Situation
    http://danielbielak.blogspot.com/2011/03/israel-brief-summary-of-history-of_17.html

    Haj Amin al-Husseini - The founder of the 'Palestinian movement'
    http://danielbielak.blogspot.com/2011/09/haj-amin-al-husseini-founder-of.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was just recently having technical difficulties with my blog (I accidentally removed the contents of the post: "Haj Amin al-Husseini - The founder of the 'Palestinian movement'", and I panicked and I tried to put the contents of the post back up, and, in the process of doing that, I messed some other things up).


      My blog is back up in good condition.

      Delete
  5. Some more Pallywood

    http://www.israellycool.com/2012/03/13/yet-another-blood-libel-busted/

    ReplyDelete
  6. "The Muslim War Against the Jews."

    Is that a fair way of describing the conflict?

    Am I a racist for describing the conflict in that fashion?

    How should it be described.

    Is it the "Israel - Palestine" conflict?

    Is it the "Arab - Israel" conflict?

    Is it the "Muslim - Jewish" conflict?

    Given the fact that "Oslo" is dead, everything is up in the air and we need to start thinking in original terms about the entire situation.

    We need to shake up the old terminology and old assumptions that solidified during the Oslo accords.

    The language that we use is hugely important and I very much recommend against using the kind of language that validates Arab hatred toward us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "'The Muslim War Against the Jews.'

      Is that a fair way of describing the conflict?

      Am I a racist for describing the conflict in that fashion?"

      Of course not.

      Islam is not a race. And Muslim culture - totalitarian, supremacist, imperialist, xenophobic, racist, genocidally anti-Jewish Muslim culture - is not a race. And Muslim countries - totalitarian, supremacist, imperialist, xenophobic, racist, genocidally anti-Jewish countries - are not a race.

      Would saying "The Nazi War against the Jews" be racist?

      Self-proclaimed "Pacifists" in the 1930's used the word "warmongering" to refer to attempts to warn about the nature and intentions of Nazi Germany.

      Just because mush-head racist so-called "Multi-Culturalists" adopt a racist untrue meme, doesn't mean that that racist untrue meme is true.

      Delete
  7. The thing that strikes me in contemporary discourse is that the rabid anti-Zionists go absolutely crazy when you use any form of the term "dhimmi." Any reference to it is considered anti-Muslim. But the one thing that you will never ever hear from them is any kind of acknowledgement that the concept and practice is bigotry in and of itself. So they have no problem with the bigotry that is represented by dhimmitude, but they will scream "BIGOT!!!!!!" if you so much as reference the historical fact of the "dhimmi" status.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Paul, that's absolutely right.

      It just amazes me the shear number of things that are verboten for discussion within progressive-left circles.

      I realize, of course, that you probably consider yourself "progressive" and the truth is that I considered myself to be so, as well, until fairly recently. Most of my friends on the planet probably think of themselves as "progressive."

      When I criticize that movement my intention, naturally, is not impugn everyone in it, but to highlight broad trends of it that are counterproductive.

      The denial of Jewish history is counterproductive.

      Delete
    2. I also agree with this comment.

      But I do not care what they think.

      Most of them live in an echo chamber so insulated that it's virtually impossible for them to think otherwise.

      The issue is how to remove the insulation so that they might be exposed to the warm rays of truth.

      Delete
    3. My method, School,

      has been to jump up and down, screaming my bloody head off.

      I'm not certain that it's been too effective, tho.

      :O)

      Delete
  8. Thanks, Dan.

    I'm not familiar with this guy, but will be sure to check him out.

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete