Eurabia

Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. 

Europe the Victim of Arab Antisemitism

During the years after World War II most Europeans were sympathetic to the Jews and Israel. This is still true. What has changed is that now the political leaders of Europe have turned against Israel. This change did not come from the European people, and it came only secondarily from European intellectuals and politicians. 

It came mainly from pressure from the Gulf Arabs and their use of oil as a political weapon.

Yom Kippur War

It started in 1973 with the Arab oil cartel withholding its supply, as an act of defiance following the Yom Kippur War, which Israel won.

Arab Demands

In exchange for access to Arab oil, the Arab nations made a large number of demands upon the western Europeans and the European Union: 

• To delegitimize Israel as a Jewish nation

• To replace the term “refugees” with “Palestinian people”

• To legitimize the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat

• To recognize the PLO as the sole representative of Palestinian Arabs

• To allow the PLO to join some United Nations organizations

• To give large sums of money to the Palestinian Authority

• To establish a homeland for Palestinian Arabs

• To acknowledge the (false) assertion that Western Civilization is based upon Islam

• To teach Arabic in European schools

• To admit large numbers of Muslim immigrants into Europe

• To allow Muslim women in European schools to be veiled

• To transfer Western technology to the Arabs

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise

The Arabs who are trying to Islamize Western Europe give a romanticized description of medieval Muslim Spain. In reality, the peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in Muslim Spain was achieved by forcing the Christians and Jews to live as second-class citizens.

Dhimmitude

The author calls this second-class citizenship dhimmitude, after the Arabic word dhimmi, which means protected. Dhimmis are protected from jihad, because they have surrendered and agreed to submit to Islam. Being a dhimmi is above being a slave, but below being a Muslim. Dhimmis were not allowed to own land or own weapons. Dhimmis were required to pay a tax (jizya) for not converting to Islam. Dhimmis were allowed to ride donkeys, but not horses or camels. Dhimmis were required to always treat Muslims deferentially. Dhimmi men were not allowed to marry Muslim women, but Muslim men could marry dhimmi women. 

False Historical Narrative

Radical Islamists are trying to change the foundation of Christianity from Judaism to Islam. According to Islam, Islam was the first religion, and the Old Testament is a distortion of the original religion of Islam. God told Muhammad that Judaism and Christianity as reflected in their Bible were corruptions of his original teachings, and Muhammad’s mission was to correct these deviations and bring all the Abrahamic believers back to Allah’s true religion, which is reflected in the Quran. This reinterpretation of Christianity is called the Islamization of Christianity. It appeals to those Christians in the Middle East who are antisemitic. 

France

Of all the countries in Western Europe, France is the one most interested in closer ties with the Arab world. One reason is that the French see such ties as a replacement for the French empire that was lost when Algeria became independent in 1962.