‘Dhimmitude’ is the status mandated for non-Muslims, primarily Christians and Jews who live under Islamic rule.
The word ‘dhimmi’ means ‘protected people’ who, under Islamic law, are free to practice their religion in an Islamic regime.
However, dhimmis are also subject to rules and regulations designed to ensure ‘they feel themselves subdued’ as mandated for dhimmis under the Koran.
For the West, it is a good news-bad news scenario. The bad news is that the jihadist goal is to make dhimmis of us all. The good news is that we are getting good at it.
Dhimmi communities have survived for centuries under Islamic rule, as Islamic apologists are fond of pointing out, with barely a peep of protest in all those years.
Of course, they lived quietly – it was better than not living at all. For a dhimmi under Islamic rule to protest would be suicidal.
“If you upset us, we will hurt you. We will terrorize you and cause you harm.” That is the message being delivered from the Islamic world, and the West is receiving it loud and clear.
Congress has not enacted it, and no court has yet declared it, but it appears that there now exists a de facto blasphemy law in America. The law is clearly defined – any criticism of Islam or any disrespect to its tenets, doctrines, personages or documents deserves severe punishment by Islam.
Don’t come looking to the government to defend you. Just because you had the right doesn’t mean you should have exercised it.
It doesn’t matter whether the blasphemy is committed against the Koran, or whether it is against Mohammed by depicting him in an image, or whether it is against the planned Cordoba Mosque, a blasphemy against Islam is not like a blasphemy against Christianity or Judaism.
(If blasphemy against Christianity or Judaism were like blasphemy against Islam, the Comedy Network wouldn’t have enough material to fill a comedy program. They are so heavily dependent on Jesus and God for material that if they had to pay them royalties, it would bankrupt them.)
Nobody dies when some screwball threatens to burn a Bible. Not a single Christian group went on a murderous rampage when Muslim terrorists used the Church of the Nativity for a slit trench and pages from the Bible for toilet paper.
I heard one argument from some White House official who said that burning a Koran was like shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater – using the classic example of the kind of speech not protected by the 1st Amendment.
There’s enough baloney in that argument to start a deli. If it was true, then cheering for the New England Patriots at a Buffalo Bills home game would be unprotected speech for the identical reason – because the other side doesn’t like it.
(But at a football game, we aren’t afraid the players will suddenly rush the stands and blow themselves up.)
Assessment
Terror is not an enemy, in and of itself. It is a tactic. Nazi terror was deployed to advance Nazi ideology. Japanese terror was deployed to advance Imperial Japanese ambitions.
American terror was deployed as ruthlessly as was necessary, but in the cause of the greater good. The postwar history of both Germany and Japan stands as testimony to the ‘greater good’ accomplished by America’s ruthless acts of wartime terrorism.
The ‘enemy’ is one who is guilty of planning, aiding or committing an act of terror.
Until they take that leap, they are not the enemy. And after they take that leap, it is too late for more than retaliation, which is no consolation to the victims.
To prove it, we’re fighting terrorists. In a war in which an interrogation might save a city, the rules of engagement are those of law enforcement, not the rules of war. We are blinded by the fight.
Regardless of how it is described, this is a defensive war declared and prosecuted against the crime of terror and those who would commit it — ipso facto, criminals. As such, it is impossible to win. We are fighting the jihadists, but not the jihad.
During World War Two, the SS Einsatzgruppen murdered more than a million people as state-approved acts of terror in Eastern Europe. The war wasn’t against the Einsatzgruppen; it was against the Nazi ideology that approved it. It wasn’t won when the SS was defeated militarily; it was won when the ideology died in a Berlin bunker with its founder.
Do you follow?
In this case, while we battle the jihadis, we reverence the ideology that spawns them.
Military bases are opening centers of Islamic studies where US guards take ‘sensitivity training’ to learn how to handle Korans so that they don’t ‘desecrate’ them by unworthily touching them.
When it comes to Islam, the Commander in Chief takes on the role of Theologian in Chief and pronounces Islam to be a religion of peace and love hijacked by a ‘few’ (the official estimate is 10% of 1.2 billion or about 120,000,000) ‘radicals.’
The White House regularly hosts a Ramadan Feast, but has recently begun sending out Christmas cards wishing recipients a ‘happy holiday’ so as not to offend Islam.
It is instructional to note that Islam accounts for about 1% of the US population, according to the CIA World Factbook. (It is estimated that about 2% of the US population believes they have been abducted by aliens.)
The same authority estimates that 87% of Americans are Christian, at least in culture, if not in doctrine.
But ‘Christmas’ does not appear on the White House Christmas card out of sensitivity to the 1%. And I note with interest that the White House has never sponsored a get-together for representatives of the alien abductee lobby, either. Why?
Because US Islam is the tip of the iceberg – it’s their 1.2 billion co-religionists worldwide that the administration is trying to appease.
It is the jihad that sends out jihadis. The Islamic jihad. Until there is a recognition that the war is with Islamic jihadi ideology, we cannot win. Declaring war against Islamic jihadi ideology means declaring war with the Islamic world.
Dhimmitude has a curious effect on dhimmis, something similar to that of the Stockholm Effect on hostages.
The phrase, ‘Stockholm Effect’ was coined following a bank hostage situation in Sweden. Researchers discovered the hostages had come to identify, even sympathize, with their captors. It was a kind of traumatic stress reaction.
Dhimmitude imposes a similar reaction.
This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on February 28, 2006.