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Bat Ye'or (meaning "daughter of the Nile " in Hebrew ; pseudonym of '''Giselle Littman''') is an Egypt ian-born British Jew ish author and historian specializing in the Middle East , Islam , and non-Muslims in Muslim lands. EARLY LIFE Bat Ye'or was born in in 1960 to continue her studies at the University Of Geneva . She describes how her life experience influenced her research interests: I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessnessāand I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience. RESEARCH Her first book, ''The Jews in Egypt'', appeared in 1971. She published it, along with her next study on Copts in Egypt, under the pseudonym ''Yahudiya Masriya'', meaning "Egyptian Jewess" in ''. She credits assassinated Lebanese president-elect and Phalangist militia leader Bachir Gemayel with coining the term. Ye'or regards dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation." [http://hss.fullerton.edu/comparative/islam.htm She believes that "the dhimmi condition can only be understood in the context of Jihad," and studies the relationship between the theological tenets of Islam and the sufferings of the Christians and Jews who, in different geographical areas and periods of history, have lived in Islamic majority areas. [http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-May-2004/msg00000.html The cause of jihad, she argues, "was fomented around the 8th century by Muslim theologians after the death of Muhammad and led to the conquest of large swathes of three continents over the course of a long history." [http://my.brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=100520&show_release_date=1] . She says: Dhimmitude is the direct consequence of Jihad . It embodie all the Islamic laws and customs applied over a millennium on the vanquished population, Jew s and Christian s, living in the countries conquered by jihad and therefore Islamized. [We can observe a return of the jihad Ideology since the 1960s, and of some dhimmitude practices in Muslim countries applying the Sharia law, or inspired by it. I stress[ the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude ideology, and the concept of Human Rights based on the equality of all human beings and the inalienability of their rights. [http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher102902.asp] in the "1990 Cairo Declaration On Human Rights In Islam " demonstrates that "a perpetual war against those infidels who refuse to submit" is still an "operative paradigm" in Islamic countries. {Link without Title} Bat Ye'or has focused on the rapid conversion of is an example of the long-term scars of dhimmitude, {Link without Title} where Christians were under that status for centuries. Usage of the term "dhimmitude" has increased in recent years: some scholars have used it both by itself and in association with Bat Ye'or's work, e.g. in undergraduate courses relating to the relationship Muslims have had historically with other peoples. [http://www.westmont.edu/~work/classes/theo353/islam.html Other issues Bat Ye'or has written on include:
"EURABIA" In Bat Ye'or's most recent book, 2005's ''" in this context; though the term was first used as a title of a journal initiated in the mid-1970s by the European Committee for Coordination of Friendship Associations with the Arab world, she popularized it as a term for Arab/Islamic influence over Europe. She explains the term's origins in the book: Eurabia is a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC) which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions. PUBLIC APPEARANCES Testimony before governing bodies:
She has appeared on U.S. television station C-SPAN . CONTROVERSY Works by Bat Ye'or have attracted both criticism and praise. Historian Victor Davis Hanson asserts: She is not a conspiracist at all, but an empiricist, whose work is based on observation, facts, and logic: look at the demography of Europe; look at the history of Christians living under Muslims (going to Church in Saudi Arabia is not the same as worshipping in a mosque in Madrid); and read not what Western elites say about Muslim clerics, but what Muslim clerics themselves say. So, yes, she is a scholar and should not be dismissed because her views bother us because they are largely insightful. Europe has a gut-check time coming very soon as it ponders Islamic populations in its own borders, the admission of Turkey into the EU (in some ways very good for the US, a disaster for Europe), and nuclear missile capability of Iran. We shall see whether it reawakens or not. {Link without Title} Esther Benbassa Director of Religious Studies in Modern Judaism at the Sorbonne , said in an interview for the French weekly '' Le Point '' that Bat Ye'or is not a professional historian and that, though restrictions on Jews in Arab countries existed, they were more symbolic than practical, with non-Muslim minorities enjoying protection, autonomy and freedom. [http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/document.html?did=160182 Bat Ye'or sued ''Le Point'' and won the right to respond to Benbassa on the pages of ''Le Point'' and EUR 2,000 in damages. [http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/document.html?did=169237][http://forums.france2.fr/france2/proche_orient1/Condamnation-hebdo-Le-POINT-cause-Benbassa-sujet-15332-1.htm] Sidney H. Griffith in the ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' writes of ''The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam'': "The problems one has with the book are basically twofold: the theoretical inadequacy of the interpretive concepts ''jihad'' and ''dhimmitude'', as they are employed here; and the want of historical method in the deployment of the documents which serve as evidence for the conclusions reached in the study. There is also an unfortunate polemical tone in the work." {Link without Title} BIBLIOGRAPHY
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