Uncle Boutros and Uncle Tom…A Lesson In Arab Tolerance 

 by Gerald A. Honigman

2006/02/12

     My friend  and scholar, Jerry Gordon, sent me a note the other day alerting me to Diane West’s great article in the The Washington Times referring to the essential historian, Bat Ye’or’s, writings on dhimmitude. 

     Having written somewhat myself on the subject of the forced Arabization of much of the region’s lands and peoples since Muhammad’s successors burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E. and spread Islam by their imperial Caliphal sword in all directions, events of late sired in Denmark also had me thinking anew on this subject. 

     How deadly ironic, hypocritical, and worse that Arabs and their lackeys--who habitually demonize both Jews and their religion in the media, religious sermons, and elsewhere--explode in world-wide rage because some Danes suggested that since many, if not most, of the conflicts going on in the world today involve Muslims, that their religion might just have something to do with this. And as if the age-old concept of the Dar ul-Islam versus the Dar al-Harb was just a Zionist concoction or such. 

     A listening to or a reading of even the so-called “moderate” Arab media in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia routinely appears as if it has been lifted right out of Hitler’s Der Sturmer. The same goes for the land of the Arabs’ Iranian stooges. 

     While dhimmitude primarily refers to the plight of conquered, native Christian and Jewish populations, the People of the Book, keep in mind that Arab racist attitudes also extended to those who--to jump on the winning bandwagon, escape taxation, and so forth--became Muslims. And those who were not ahl al-Kitab either usually converted or were massacred. 

     The Abbasid Revolution in the 8th century C. E. largely occurred because of the disgust of the converted Mawali populations with the blatant Arabism of the Umayyads. And in the age of nationalism centuries later, hundreds of thousands of Muslims--but non-Arabs--would continue to be slaughtered in the name of the Arab nation…Berbers, Black Africans, Kurds, and so forth. 

     Keep in mind that these are the same folks who like to lecture about Zionist racism…you know, those same Jews who made Arabic the second official language of their state, have Arab representatives in the Knesset who routinely side with Hamas (which denies Israel‘s right to exist), and so forth. 

     All of this made me think about some famous quotes I had come across during my own doctoral study days. 

     In Amos Elon’s Flight Into Egypt (New York, 1980), he reviewed his encounters with the late President Sadat’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The latter would later become Secretary General of the United Nations. 

     A Copt--i.e. a descendant of Egypt ’s now subjugated, ancient, pre-Arab Christian people--it was largely believed that Boutros-Ghali was chosen for this post precisely because of his unquestioned, assured loyalty. Centuries of dhimmitude could be expected to have done its thing. And it did. 

     Listen carefully to some excerpts regarding  this Copt’s advice to Elon, a prominent Israeli journalist:

     In his office, there is a map of the Middle East on which Israel is still blacked out…Israel must integrate by accepting the nature of the area…that nature that is Arab…In a tape of a long discourse delivered in 1975 to Professor Brecher he proclaimed that…in the vast area between the Persian Gulf and the Atlantic Ocean everyone had to be Arab or risk continuing strife…Still, Boutros-Ghali felt that there might be a solution. How?…Well, Israel could become an Arab country. Most Israelis were (Jewish) immigrants from Arab countries anyway ( pp.84-91).

     While this might be a great answer to Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who likes to claim a European origin for all of Israel‘s Jews, please pardon my nausea anyway.

     But now think about what’s going on all around the Middle East…the subjugation and at times outlawing of fellow Muslim--but non-Arab--Kurdish, Berber, and so forth languages and cultures ( i.e. Kurdish kids being forced to sing songs praising their “Arab” identities today in Syria and such), continuing slaughter of  both Muslim and non-Muslim black Africans in the Sudan and elsewhere, etc.

     Meanwhile, the Arabs’ oil-addicted sycophants and/or  fellow anti-Semites look on and act as if they’re all deaf, dumb, and blind. If Israel was involved , there would be trials in Geneva , United Nations hearings, and so forth…and with the United States State Department  likely joining the chorus.

     To learn more about all of this, other scholars, besides the Egyptian Jewess Bat Ye’or, have also made important contributions. One, in particular, Professor Albert Memmi, a Tunisian-born Jew at the Sorbonne, wrote a short but powerful work also exposing firsthand, like Bat Ye’or, dhimmitude…and what needs to be done about it. Memmi supported Tunisia’s struggle for independence from France, and the mere four lines on the opening page to his book, Jews And Arabs, say it all…

     To my Jewish bothers
     To my Arab brothers
     so that we can all
     be free men at last…

     Compare this to Boutros-Ghali’s pathetic advice.

     In fairness, in contrast to Copts who daily fear for their very lives in Egypt , a reading of what they have to say about these things when they flee abroad is telling as well. Ditto for Christian, pre-Arab Lebanese, Assyrians, Armenians, and others.

     In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe authored a famous antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which she wrote of the blacks’ expected servile behavior towards their white masters.

     Indeed, this is the Arabs’ predominant idea of “tolerance”…a whole region of Uncle Boutroses.

     So, the recent explosive episodes regarding the cartoons in Denmark should  really  have not been unexpected.

     Arabs and too many of  their non-Arab, but fellow Muslim wannabes typically believe that others may not indulge in what they routinely do to others, often many times worse.

     The litmus test for the Muslim non-Arab too often becomes out-Arabing the Arab in hatred of the Jew, subjugation of the dhimmi, and/or defense of the faith…a faith which, after all, was shoved down their own throats, either directly or indirectly, centuries earlier by the imperial conquests of the Arabs.

     Hopefully, the eyes of even the most naïve will at last open to the consequences of continuing to allow Arabs free reign with their hypocrisy and double standards.

     And that thorn-in-the-side state of the scorned kilab yahud “Jew dogs”--as Arabs like to call it--is on the front lines for all the rest of the Dar ul-Harb…the realm of war in Islam’s eyes.

     While there are Muslims who disagree with the jihadists, the sad fact is that the militants are in the ascendancy, forcing all but a relatively few brave souls into silence or to cower behind them.

     Wise up, World, before it’s too late.