Dhimmitude is aneologism characterizing the status of non-Muslims underMuslim rule, popularized by theEgyptian-born British writerBat Ye'or in the 1980s and 1990s. It is constructed from theArabicdhimmi, "non-Muslim living in anIslamic state". Akbarzadeh and Roose suggest that Ye'or equates Dhimmitude with servitude.[1]
Bat Ye’or defines it as a permanent status of subjection in whichJews andChristians have been held under Islamic rule since the eighth century, and that forces them to accept discrimination or "faceforced conversion,slavery or death". The term gained traction amongBosnian Serb forces during theBalkan wars in the 1990s and is popular among self-proclaimedcounter-jihadi authors. Scholars critical of the term have dismissed it variously as misleading, muddled, polemical and evenIslamophobic.[2]
The term was coined in 1982 by thePresident of Lebanon,Bachir Gemayel, in reference to attempts by the country's Muslim leadership to subordinate the nativeLebanese Christian minority. In a speech of September 14, 1982 given at Dayr al-Salib in Lebanon, he said: "Lebanon is our homeland and will remain a homeland for Christians ... We want to continue to christen, to celebrate our rites and traditions, our faith and our creed whenever we wish ... Henceforth, we refuse to live in any dhimmitude!"[3]
The concept of "dhimmitude" was introduced into Western discourse by the writerBat Ye'or in a French-language article published in the Italian journalLa Rassegna mensile di Israel [it;de] in 1983.[4] In Bat Ye'or's use, "dhimmitude" refers to allegations of non-Muslims appeasing and surrendering toMuslims and discrimination against non-Muslims in Muslim majority regions.[5]
Ye'or further popularized the term in her booksThe Decline of Eastern Christianity[6] and the 2003 followupIslam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide.[7] In a 2011 interview, she claimed to have indirectly inspired Gemayel's use of the term.[8]
The associations of the word "dhimmitude" vary between users:
This Islamizing innovation, one of many formative Arabic impacts on Jewish philosophy,[14] regarding servitude, apparent also in his language had little earlier basis in Jewish laws regarding residents in Israel (ger toshav).Noah Felodman andDavid Novak note that it bears a close parallel with what Islamic law requires of dhimmis, non-Muslims desiring to live unconverted in Islamic countries: "Maimonides here both borrows the Islamic legal model of subordinate status for tolerated peoples and turns it on its head by putting Jews on top and others below."[15][16]
Robert Irwin's review stated that her bookIslam and Dhimmitude confuses religious prescriptions with political expediency, is "relentlessly and one-sided polemical", "repetitive", "muddled", and poorly documented in terms of the original languages. Her book stretches from massacres of Jews from Muhammad's time to the poor press Israel receives in modern times. It is, he opined, a book even Israel's keenest supporters can do without. It denounces Christians for failing to back Jewish resistance to Muslim repression. Irwin thinks that the author is rankled by the failure ofPalestinian Christian Arabs to assist Israel against their Muslim neighbours. He states that her facts are accurate but devoid of context: many ordinances for times of crisis had to be continually renewed and quickly fell into disuse. Both Jews and Christians often flourished, Irwin notes, under Muslim rule, and the laws ofshari'a were frequently flouted. He citesBernard Lewis's analysis of an anti-Jewish poem in terms of the envy of the writer for the fact Jews were doing rather well in the poet's milieu at that time, a point that concluded: "To the citizen of a liberal democracy, the status ofdhimmi would no doubt be intolerable - but to many minorities in the world today, that status, with its autonomy and its limited yet recognized rights, might well seem enviable".[17]
Sidney H. Griffith, a historian of early Eastern Christianity, dismissed Bat Ye'or'sdhimmitude as "polemical" and "lacking in historical method", whileMichael Sells, a scholar of Islamic history and literature, describes thedhimmitude theory as nothing more than the "falsification" of history by an "ideologue".[2]
Mark R. Cohen, a leading scholar of the history of Jewish communities of medieval Islam, has criticized the term as misleading and Islamophobic.[18]
Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus ofNear Eastern Studies atPrinceton University, states,
If we look at the considerable literature available about the position of Jews in the Islamic world, we find two well-established myths. One is the story of a golden age of equality, of mutual respect and cooperation, especially but not exclusively in Moorish Spain; the other is of "dhimmi"-tude, of subservience and persecution and ill treatment. Both are myths. Like many myths, both contain significant elements of truth, and the historic truth is in its usual place, somewhere in the middle between the extremes.[19]