Dhimmitude

This article is about a neologism. For the traditional Islamic legal concept, see Dhimmi.

Dhimmitude is a neologism characterizing the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, popularized by the Egyptian-born British writer Bat Ye'or in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a portmanteau word constructed from the Arabic dhimmi 'non-Muslim living in an Islamic state' and the French (serv)itude 'subjection'.[1]

Bat Ye’or defines it as a permanent status of subjection in which Jews and Christians have been held under Islamic rule since the eighth century, and that forces them to accept discrimination or "face forced conversion, slavery or death". The term gained traction among Bosnian Serb forces during the Balkan wars in the 1990s and is popular among self-proclaimed counter-jihadi authors. Some scholars have dismissed it as polemical.[2]

  1. ^ Muslims, multiculturalism and the question of the silent majority, S. Akbarzadeh, J.M. Roose, Journal of muslim minority affairs, 2011, Taylor & Francis.
  2. ^ Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza (13 July 2018). "When the Elders of Zion relocated to Eurabia: conspiratorial racialization in antisemitism and Islamophobia" (PDF). Patterns of Prejudice. 52 (4): 314–337. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2018.1493876. S2CID 148601759.