Super dhimmitude

Declaring that some of the words used by Orianna Fallaci in her book about Islam were “without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith,” an Italian judge has ordered her to stand trial for defamation. Yet the Saudi government distributes anti-American hate literature at U.S. mosques—and the Saudi Crown Prince, far from being indicted for spreading defamation of Christians and Jews, is invited to President Bush’s ranch. The main cleric of the Palestinian Authority issues Hitlerian calls over Palestinian tv for the utter destruction of America and the Jews—and Secretary Rice praises the Palestinians for their march to peace and democracy and the U.S. government pledges them more hundreds of millions.

People have written to me calling the Fallaci indictment an instance of dhimmitude. But looking at the total pattern described above, I wonder if dhimmitude is an adequate description of it. Dhimmitude is relatively straightforward: you don’t have any power, you’re in a defeated, subordinate position, and you simply must accept whatever harsh treatment and humiliation the Moslems mete out to you. But what we have now is in a sense worse than dhimmitude, beyond dhimmitude. After all, we are the more powerful party. We are the ones who bestride the world like a colossus. We are the country that arrogantly or idealistically claims to be setting standards for all the nations of the earth. And yet, from our superior position of unquestioned military power and insufferable moral pretentiousness, we engage in this vicious double standard against ourselves, in which we punish our fellow Westerners for using strongly critical language about Islam (let us remember that Americans as well as Europeans have been indicted for condemning Islam), while we reward our Moslem enemies who are openly engaged in a war of vilification and civilizational destruction against us.

Such florid madness, such hideous injustice, cannot continue. It only continues because people don’t expose it and don’t speak up against it and don’t demand that it stop. But, of course, that only suggests that psychologically we are already in a state of dhimmitude, does it not?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 26, 2005 01:57 AM | Send