Our Dhimmi Daze

Below is some of the smartest and most honest discussion of jihad and dhimmitude I've encountered in many years, an interview by Jamie Glazov from Frontpage Magazine of David Kupelian, managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com. Some excerpts follow, interspersed with my interruptions:

Why do we in the modern world suck up to Muslims? They often rob, rape, randomly assault, shoot, burn, commit murder, bomb, and generally act like animals in the Western world, and most people either turn a blind eye to it, pretending it's not happening; or we get "sophisticated" types who blame America, Israel, or the Modern world for the violence demanded of Muslims by Islam itself. Who do these fools think they're foolin'? Well, let's look at some of that according to Kupelian:

Everyone’s heard of the Stockholm syndrome, named after the Swedish bank robbery when two escaped convicts terrorized four hostages in a bank vault for five and a half days, during which time the hostages grew increasingly sympathetic toward their captors and antagonistic toward the police who were risking their lives to rescue them. The hostages, who had been tied to chairs, had nooses around their necks and guns trained on them day after day, ended up siding with their captors wholeheartedly, later raising money for their defense and refusing to testify against them at trial.

[....]

When we’re seriously intimidated, in a life-threatening way, some of us start to side with whomever or whatever is intimidating us. I don’t mean just cooperating and “agreeing” with a captor as a survival strategy, which makes perfect sense. Extreme intimidation has a way of sometimes flipping our sympathy and loyalty in favor of the people doing the intimidating.

[....]

Radical Islam is extremely intimidating – by design. The more crazy it acts, the more powerful it becomes.

If you wonder why people convert to Islam after they have survived Islamic conquest, that is in large part your answer. It's not pretty, and most would never admit their motivation.

This is how it spreads, by traumatizing people. Many, just to survive, join the religion.

Islam, to those who come looking for a definition of dhimmitude, is clear enough in the ideas above: dhimmitude is one option among the very few that a people or person has if and when conquered by Muslims. If Muslims conquer, which is the general history of Islam, the conquered have these choices: They can die. If they do so, their goods are forfeit to the Muslim conqueror.

A second option for the conquered non-Muslim is to convert to Islam and become "one of them." It's not a free pass: many Muslims practice slavery, even against fellow Muslims, in spite of the lofty rhetoric about the universality of the Muslim brotherhood, i.e. the umma. Don't believe that just 'cause they say so.

And a third option for those conquered by Muslims is the soon to be famous condition of "Dhimmitude." It's limited to those who are "People of the Book," al-Ahl Kitab, meaning monotheists, e.g. Jews, Christians, some few like Chaldeans and occasional Zoroastrians. It's less than pretty. If you are killed, your possessions go to he who killed you, minus 20 per cent to Mohammed, in his day, or the successor to Mohammed, the Caliph. If you live, and if you are a monotheist, and if you won't convert to Islam, then you have to give what could have easily been taken from you if you'd died. You, as a "dhimmi," a living lesser being, are in bondage like a dead person forever made to pay for your life. The payment is jizya. Normal folk would call it a permanent shake-down, an extortion tax. It's more than that: it has to be paid "in a state of humiliation." Imagine if a school bully tells you that forever and forever in the lives of your descendents you and they can live only if you hand over your lunch money. Act that out in the adult world. That's dhimmitude.

Some people in the Modern world, and many of them, are so brainless and so deluded that they seem to think that aggressively acting out as dhimmies is a cool thing, an act that shows the world how smart and sensitive and "moral" they are for atoning for imaginary past sins of capitalism and imperialism or any fancy term from post Marxist jargon they pick up without understanding much of it. For Muslims, for the history of Islam, dhimmitude and conquest are the life's blood of the religion, such as it is. Many Westerners, knowing nothing of the history or values of Islam, think it's cool to play at handing over their lunch money, their very lives, and the lives of others, to play this nasty game with serious bad-guys. Some might have Stockholm syndrome, but many are just stupid and conformist and say and do what those around them say and do. Our leaders play this game. Our intelligentsia play this game. Many follow along, stupidly, and demand of the rest of us that we do so as well.

Dhimmitude. Here we say, "NO DHIMMITUDE." Can't have my lunch money, can't make my life miserable, ain't putting up with it. Muslim reaction to that resistance? Jihad. Our right reaction?

"Their madness is neutralized only by strength."

I think this longing for dhimmitude is more than Stockholm syndrome, and so does K. I think it has to do with a deep masochism in Humanness. K. writes of anti-Americanism:

[T]he Left’s very identity and sense of righteousness are tied up in hating America for all its supposed wrongs, arrogance, injustices, exploitations and wars of oppression. And since, as we all know, “the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” cultures that hate and revile America are therefore respected and even admired by the Left, which also hates America. This is one reason Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court; he secretly – maybe unconsciously – has a certain amount of sympathy for the 9/11 mastermind. The logic of this is straightforward and incontrovertible: KSM hates and blames America, and because leftists like Holder also hate and blame America, leftists “understand” and even sympathize on some level with terrorists, no matter how despicable their crimes.

I have a lengthy manuscript on this subject, a story for another time and place. As you will guess, I prefer my thesis to that of others. However, K.'s insights are interesting and valuable in this field. for the whole of the interview, turn to the link below. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/20/how-evil-works/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=90210ff1b0-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email