Stop the Jizyah

by Hugh Fitzgerald(May 2007)

Gaza or the Jordanians who had ruled the West Bank. As for the “Arab refugees” who began leaving in late 1947 and continued to do so through the pre-war period and then during the war, because they fully expected to return with the triumph of Arab armies, they moved in some cases just across the river Jordan, or across the Litani, and in the main lived among those just like them, who  shared the same language, religion, culture, worldview, and dreams of Muslim Arab conquest. If the governments of those countries deliberately refused to grant citizenship to those so-called  Arab “refugees” — those who for the past forty years, in a deliberate campaign to disguise the Lesser Jihad against Israel as a clash of two “nationalisms” have been called “Palestinians” – should they therefore have the right to

Iraq we all speak about Arabs, and Kurds. And we speak about Darfur, and Arabs and black Africans. And we speak about Morocco, or Algeria, and in those countries, about Arabs and Berbers. Why then, why only in the case of Israel, do we speak not of Arabs but of something called the “Palestinian people”? Are they special in a way that the Arabs of Iraq (as in “Arabs and Kurds”) or Arabs of Algeria and Morocco (as in “Arabs and Berbers”) or as Arabs in the Sudan (as in “Arabs and black Africans”) are not?

Israel as a Jewish, i.e., Infidel state, and differ only on matters of tactics and timing.

large bank accounts, in France and elsewhere in the Western world — the money coming from ordinary Infidel taxpayers who were not consulted on where their money should go.

Israel. All Western transfers of wealth to Muslims, other than those of necessity (oil and gas purchases) should cease. And again and again, publicly, Western governments should say that those rich Muslim countries, the ones that have “received ten trillion dollars in oil revenues” (this figure should be on every politician’s lips in the Western world, until everyone else knows what the rich Arabs have taken in), should be “sharing their wealth” with “fellow members of the Muslim community.” Keep embarrassing them. Force the “Palestinians” and others to go hat in hand to Riyadh, or to the Emirates. Or perhaps not hat in hand — perhaps a little more threateningly. It doesn’t matter.

Kuwait and Qatar nervous. And if some money is forthcoming, then it will never be enough, and there will be constant demands for more, and inevitably there will be resentments on the side both of those who give, and those who take. And those resentments will grow — why should not the Arabs generally, the poor ones will think, have equal shares “in Arab wealth” which is merely manna from Allah.

Middle East, it is not the Arabs and Muslims who should be the recipients of their support of any kind. But there is one tiny country, under permanent assault, with whatever weapons come to hand, by far more powerful, richer, more numerous fanatical enemies, in the Middle East, toward whom the countries of Western Europe have not only a right, but a duty, to feel guilty about –the very country they have been maligning (or allowing others in the media to freely malign and misreport about), and slowly abandoning, for the past forty years. And that tiny country, of course, is Israel.

Turkey. During the Cold War, many were willing to believe that Turkey was permanently on the road to ever more secularism, ever more Kemalism. The historic Turkish mistrust for, and hostility toward, Russia was misunderstood as stoutly pro-Western attitudes. But Turkey received much, by way of diplomatic, economic, and military support from the United States. And so those who made policy were content, content thinking that all Muslim states were necessarily “bulwarks against Communism” and nothing else needed to be known about Turkey, with its splendid generals (better than the meretricious Pakistan generals whom the Pentagon also favored). Kemalism, its systematic constrains on Islam, and the need to keep pushing the Kemalist effort and not allow for any backsliding, was not understood by Americans who made policy, and not sufficiently appreciated by the secular class of Kemalism’s beneficiaries.

But inside Kemalism, despite its being recognized as constraining Islam, it adoped, but did not do away with, Muslim systems of thought. For the Cult of Muhammad the Cult of Atatruk was substituted. It was his words and sayings that came to dominate Turkish life, not the words and sayings of a seventh-century Arab.

And  the old attitudes toward non-Muslims did not disappear. During World War II, the Turkish government under Inonu, Ataturks’ successor, imposed a special tax, the crippling Varlik Vergesi, that was in effect a kind of Jizyah imposed on non-Muslims (and on this, see the conclusions of a study by Faik Okte, who had been put in charge of collecting the tax).  And the Jizyah remains. It remains, in hidden or more open form, wherever there are non-Muslim populations that are not treated as equal citizens under the law. And that is true in almost every Muslim country. The most egregious example may be that of the disguised Jizyah in Malaysia that is imposed on the non-Muslim Chinese and Hindus, who are the engine for economic development, and who are required under the “Bumiputra” (“Sons of the Land”) system, to guarantee jobs and even equity in their enterprises to Muslims, for being Muslims. For more on the “Bumiputra” system, google “Jihad Watch” and “Bumiputra.”

 

And it remains in the behavior of all Muslim states that have received Infidel, and especially American, aid. They take it not gratefully, not in a spirit of thinking they might just possibly owe their generous donors something, even a change in attitude, but grudgingly, resentfully, arrogantly – and are furious if anyone ever suggests the aid be cut. Why that cannot be, they seem to be saying, that would not be right, that would be outrageous. And the same goes for the attitude of the donors, especially the American donors who seem fearful of doing anything that might make the government and people in Egypt (having received more than $60 billion), and Jordan (billions and a Most-Favored-Nation status that has merely allowed Arab textile owners to bring in and exploit non-Arab workers, in conditions that are now an international scandal), and the “Palestinians” who have killed American diplomats (including Ambassador Cleo Moore in Khartoum), and aided others to abduct and kill American intelligence agents (such as William Buckley and William Higgins), or helped – see Emad Mugniyeh – to bomb American Marine barracks in Beirut, or even to kill American government employees arriving in Gaza in order to announce the award of Fulbright scholarships. None of it appears to matter. Nor does anyone in the American government dare suggest that all aid to the “Palestinians” should stop, stop  because they are working for the destruction of our loyal ally, an ally that, furthermore, deserves the support of all Infidel nation-states, no matter how its reputation is cruelly blackened, in a drip-by-drip campaign of malevolence and clear antisemitism,  Fatah is the Slow Jihad, and Hamas the Fast Jihad; they differ not on ultimate goals, but merely on tactics and on timing. That should be clear, and clear, too, should be the inefficacy of all treaties made by Infidels, including Israel, with Muslims who take as their unalterable model for treaty-making with Infidels that made by Muhammad with the Meccans in 628 A. D. at Hudaibiyya.

 

End that Jizyah. It buys us nothing. It does psychological damage. It does damge to our energy policy, for the same attitude of obeisance toward the Jizyah recipients has carried over to our attitudes toward other Muslims and Arabs, especially the oil-rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia, which for more than 30 years the American government has assumed it must placate – when no placating at all need take place, in order to buy oil at market prices. The most resolute declared  enemy of Saudi Arabia can buy oil on the world market at the exact same price as the most fawning and appeasing of Western nations. The Jizyah mentality needs to end, and the best way to end it, is to end the payment of the disguised Jizyah.

 

Besides, we want to force the oil-poor Arabs and Muslims to go, when they can no longer get tens of billions from the Americans and Europeans, hat in hand to the rich Arabs and Muslims. Let them invoke Islamic solidarity, and the loyalty owed to fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya. Let them get something. It will never be enough, and they will resent the donors among the oil-rich Arab and Muslim states. And the donors will come to resent them, and possibly deny them their requests, or the full amount of those requests. This situation can only lead to good things for Infidels. First, it may force Saudi Arabia to use up some of its discretionary income that would otherwise go to paying for mosques and madrasas and campaigns by Tablighi Jamaat to spread Islam around the globe. Every dollar that is given for staples in Egypt or Gaza or Jordan is a dollar less to be spent spreading Islam in the Western world. Second, the intra-Arab and intra-Muslim resentments will build, and along with the sectarian and ethnic fissures, the third great fissure in the Camp of Islam is the economic one.

 

It is there to be exploited, by those who recognize such fissures, and believe they can and should be exploited.

 

Stop the Jizyah.

 

A catchy little t-shirt or bumpersticker motto. Three little words that if repeatedly used, will force the introduction into Infidel consciences of the Jizyah itself – the Jizyah as historically imposed, over 1350 years of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim lands, and the suppression of those non-Muslims, the forcing them to accept, to avoid death or immediate forced conversion to Islam, the permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity that was known as that of the “dhimmi.” The most important of the legal and economic disabilities placed on all non-Muslims, the one easiest to grasp, was that of the Jizyah.

 

That word is ready for its closeup.

 

Stop the Jizyah. In repeating that phrase, you will have smuggled it right on to the world stage, into the world’s consciousness, the consciousness of its Infidels. And done more to bring the “Jizyah” forward, but also raised, by implication, other disabilities imposed on non-Muslims under Muslim rule, and the largest question of all: how Islam divides the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel.

 

So keep saying it: Stop the Jizyah.

 

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Hugh Fitzgerald contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all his contributions, on which comments are welcome.