The Religion of Peace and its Treatment of the Dhimmis

Dhimmis are non-Muslims living under Islam. As Muslims are multiplying in the West – and native non-Muslim populations are decreasing – and are trying to institute Shariah Law, as Islam requires, it is important to consider what it might be like to live under Islamic Law. Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief, of World Magazine, gives us a telling glimpse:

• The books of historian Bat Ye’or are full of specific detail. In Persia in 1890, Jewish women had to “expose their faces in public [like prostitutes]…The men must not wear fine clothes, the only material permitted them being a blue cotton fabric. They are forbidden to war matching shoes. Every Jew is obliged to wear a piece of red cloth on his chest. A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street…If a Muslim insults a Jew, the latter must drop his head and remain silent…The Jew cannot put on his coat; he must be satisfied to carry it rolled under his arm…It is forbidden for Jews to leave the town or enjoy the fresh air of the countryside…Jews must not consume good fruit” (Sept. 10, 2011, 75)

• Dhimmis, as historian Bat Ye’or has shown, typically had to pay discriminatory taxes acknowledging their status as second-class citizens. They were on the hook for additional sums payable on Islamic demand. They had to supply forced labor on demand. They were ineligible for any public office and were without the right even to testify in legal battles. Dhimmis were not allowed to construct new places of worship, but sometimes received permission to worship in buildings that predated Muslim conquest…Dhimmis were not allowed to possess weapons, marry Muslim women, meet with others on the streets, or ride horses or camels…(74-75)

Such degrading rulings are not the product of a chance, unrepresentative Islamic culture, but of Islam itself. Olasky quotes French philosopher Jacques Ellul arguing that the dhimmi status,

• Was not the product of historical accident …but the expression of an absolute, unchanging, theologically grounded Muslim conception of the relationship between Islam and non-Islam. It is not a historical accident of retrospective interest, but a necessary condition of existence…one must know what the Muslims did with these unconverted conquered people, because that is what they will do in the future. (75)

The texts of Islam bear out how Islam sees the infidel:

• Muhammad the messenger of Allah said, “Do not greet Jews or Christians with peace if you meet one of them in you way then push them over to a ditch or a narrow path.” (Hadith Number 4030, Reported by Al Muslim)

Consequently, Muslims are entitled to reign over the entire world. Therefore, Jihad should prevail until the entire world is Islamic:

• “And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah.” (Surah 8:39)

Nor are these isolated verses. Al-Maqdisi and Solomon claim that:

• Almost two thirds of the Qu’ran that is well over 4,000 verses referring to the Jews and Christians and by deduction declaring them to be in enmity with the Muslims. (Al-Yahud, 26)

It is no wonder that there is no peace in the Middle-East, nor is there any reason to believe that a real peace will occur. Olasky argues that the abuse of dhimmis is endemic to Islam:

• North American 19th century theologian al-Maghali advised that dhimmis be assembled on tax day “in the lowest and dirtiest place” with threatening officials placed above the dhimmis “so that it seems to them, as well as to the others, that our object is to degrade them.” With the stage set, al-Maghali advised, officials could play out a little drama of dragging dhimmis “one by one (to the official responsible) for the exacting of payment…This is the way that the friends of the Lord, of the first and last generations will act toward their infidel enemies. (World, 76)

• The result of beating and belittlement was obvious to observers in Turkey two centuries ago, who noted that dhimmis have “the most submissive cringing tone,” and in Morocco during the 1870’s, who said Jews had terrorized expressions.

Once the opportunity was available to them, these “terrorized” Jews emigrated en masse to Israel. Olasky observes that 9/11 wasn’t a product of radical Islam but of Islam itself:

• The notebooks of two of the terrorists showed their goal on Sept. 11, 2001: “Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters. The time of fun and waste has gone…Those few hours that are left you in your life are very few. From there you will begin to live the happy life, the infinite paradise…read al-Tawba and Anfal [traditional war chapters from the Quran] and reflect on their meanings and remember all of the things that Allah has promised for the martyrs…Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and women of paradise are waiting, calling out, ‘Come hither, friend of God.’”

I fear that the moribund West has not the will or the vision to resist Islam. They have blinded themselves with religious pluralism, multiculturalism, multi-sexism, postmodernism, modernism, the new age, moral relativity, and distractions of every conceivable nature. Meanwhile, anyone who tries to shake the West out of its sleep is dismissed as a “hate-monger” or an “Islamophobe.” One might think that they want to be dhimmis?