C L O S E R – The Dhimmi Card

Terms like “dhimmitude” are often used polemically, a little bit the same like the term political correct is used. The latter term refers more to politics concerning issues of the multiculti society, while the former seems to be a psychological attitude of people that have surrendered to Muslims (gaining) dominance. This of course has triggered some muslim bloggers who now seek to explain dhimmitude for dummies. Brian Ulrich made an attempt that has been given considerable attention around the blogosphere. Some excerpts:

It is, however, important to note the Covenant of Umar, the document eventually attributed to the reign of the second rightly guided caliph which sets out the laws which dhimmis were to follow as their part of the covenant. These are not in the Qur’an, and in fact many represent continuations of Byzantine and Sassanid practices. Many others, such as the ban on Arabic inscriptions, seem to imply that at the time these regulations actually took shape, authorities were concerned to maintain social and cultural distance between a ruling elite and non-Muslims, who were then a majority of the population outside the Arabian peninsula.

A point which I emphasize to my students, however, is that the Umar document represents the theory, not the practice. Occasionally a ruler would start enforcing most or all of its prohibitions, but more often the main impediments faced by Christians and Jews were those common to all minorities, a popular prejudice against that which was different emphasized especially in times of difficulty. The stereotypes involving Jews in the Muslim Middle Ages more closely resembled that of Hispanics in the contemporary United States than the conspiracy theorizing of today. Another window into non-Muslim communities is that utilized most effectively by S.D. Goitein, the treasure trove of documents known as the Cairo Geniza. Here we see in the voluminous correspondence of medieval Egyptian Jewry that in that place and time, Jews and Christians played important social and political roles and were fully integrated into the large and prosperous economy of the Islamic world.
As might be expected, individuals whose letters are preserved in the Geniza have a variety of opinions regarding their status, but in his A Mediterranean Society, Goitein uses the analogy of “a nation within a nation,” noting that they share a common homeland and ultimate government guaranteeing justice and security, but follow different laws and answer to different religious authorities. The importance of that last should not be underestimated, for medieval Muslim rulers relied on religious leaders to govern, and just as the ulema were responsible for the Muslims, so Jewish and Christian communal leaders were responsible for their own people.

The period of the Crusades and Mongol invasions is usually considered an important turning point in this history. I know more about the Christians, but Jews were also affected by the strong sense of Muslim identity under attack from these outside powers, and subject both to government demands for money to fight these wars and the fact they were, in effect, still outsiders to the now larger, religiously defined Muslim community.

Even then, however, we still don’t have anything like the anti-Semitism seen today in much of the Muslim Middle East. When did that start to appear?

Lewis ties this into the idea that Muslims resent the inversion of the order in which their true religion was leading them into a glorious future, though since I understand that theory is riddled with holes I didn’t quote it above. The main point is that the deplorable anti-Semitism we see today in places like Iran and Syria has its origins in Europe, not the Qur’an, even if certain Qur’anic verses are occasionally ripped out of context to justify it, and those who draw comparisons between Hamas, Ahmadinejad, and the Nazis might do well to consider their own analogy and remember that “pogrom” is a European word. (As an aside, there are perhaps interesting parallels in Lewis’s depiction of the British using allegations of Muslim anti-Semitism to intervene in the Ottoman Empire and certain events in the news today.)

In another post he elaborated a little more on the topic.

The first is the “Hispanic” analogy. That was pretty off-the-cuff, and I have no doubt that a careful academic study would prove it fatuous. What I was going for was the idea that Jews were seen more as menial people associated with jobs no one else wanted to do and to some degree as a cultural threat. Despite perhaps sharing a sports loyalty, I would disagree with the tone of Mariner’s comment in the thread. On the religious point, for example, I think anti-Catholic bigotry still plays some role in how we view Hispanics, but a more relevant comparison might be to the huge backlash against flying Mexican flags. I could tackle a couple of the others, too, but really taken past the level of people’s perceptions, you’re comparing apples and oranges – a medieval religious legal system defined first and foremost by religious identity as opposed to a modern secular one based off nationality in a territorial defined space. Tomorrow I’ll try to remember to grab a copy of Goitein’s Geniza study and see what the voices of the past actually have to say for themselves.

As far as the line about anti-Semitism first appearing in the late 19th century as a European import, that was Bernard Lewis’s quote, and I guess it does seem a bit odd out of context, though people should be given pause by the fact that this is not a scholar who is given to blaming things on Europe. (That’s part of why I’m leaning on him, especially for the modern period which I don’t know very well.) I haven’t re-read his entire book carefully, but from what I’ve glanced at and remember, what he calls anti-Semitism is basically this ideology which sees Jews as evil, powerful, manipulative, and responsible for many of the world’s problems. This is clearly different than seeing them as poor souls with an inferior religion. Seriously, the fact that works like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Europe isn’t even controversial!

Some of the reactions, like those at Faithfreedom.org, are typical for those who constantly pull the ‘dhimmi-card’: putting the other one down as a person whose mental abilities are flawed out of fear for the Muslim dominance. I do not know enough about ‘dhimmi’ in the history of muslim societies and communities. Probably more is to be said about it, so I’m waiting…