Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis

By Bat Ye'or

Book Overview

This book is about the transformation of Europe into "Eurabia", a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world. Eurabia is fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic. The institution responsible for this transformation, and that continues to propagate its ideological message, is the Euro-Arab Dialogue, developed by European and Arab politicians and intellectuals over the past thirty years.

'This is a provocative and disturbing book. With all the drama of a master writer, Bat Ye'or presents a wide range of historical and contemporary documents and facts to tell the story of how the European Union is being subverted by Islamic hostility to the very ethics and values of Europe itself. Readers who seek a fair resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict will be shocked by the evidence produced in these pages of unfair pressures and deliberate distortions. Europe's independence of spirit is shown in the process of being undermined. This book challenges the current demonization of Israel and should be essential reading (and re-reading) for everyone interested in true peace in the Middle East. It is also a waring to Europe not to allow the anti-American and anti-Israel pressures of Islam to subvert Europe's true values: vibrant democracy, humanitarian free thinking, and social fair dealing.'
Sir Martin Gilbert

'Bat Ye'or has traced a nearly secret history of Europe over the past thirty years, convincingly showing how the Euro-Arab Dialogue has blossomed from a minor discussion group into the engine for the continent's Islamization. In delineating this phenomenon, she also provides the intellectual resources with which to resist it. Will her message be listened to?'
Daniel Pipes

'No writer has done more than Bat Ye'or to draw attention to the menacing character of Islamic extremism. Future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term 'Eurabia' as prophetic. Those who wish to live in a free society must be eternally vigilant. Bat Ye'or's vigilance is unrivalled.'
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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1611473144
• ISBN13: 9781611473148
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 2.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

An Unholy Bargain

Bat Ye'Or has performed an invaluable service, by carefully documenting the history of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, the EU's agreement to accept Islamic colonization in return for security, oil, and the hope for power to rival America. The US stands, perhaps with only Israel at our side, as "The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave."

It Isn't Us; It's Them

Bat Yo'er provides an excellent historical overview of the systematic way in which Europe's elite (political, media, university, etc.) has conspired with the Arab world, especially since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The author points out that Europeans sought to align themselves with the Muslim world for two major reasons - (1) To form a counterbalance to USA influence, and (2) To assure the flow of oil and the availability of Muslim markets for European goods. In order to initiate this process, the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) was formalized. This agreement was essentially an alliance that would quickly prove to be anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Christian. It appears that when agreement was initiated, Europeans, especially the French, believed they would regain a degree of control over their former colonies. In fact, it appears those colonies, and the Islamic faith that propels them toward "uniting" with Europe, have gained control over Europe. The Islamic colonization of Europe brought with it darkness and foreboding, as Islam robs Europe of its tolerant and pluralistic culture. For years I wondered why my European relatives spoke more favorably of Islam than Christianity, and supported the "victim" Palestinians over the "oppressive" Israelis. Far from being an accidental consequence of open dabate, their views actually resulted from the conscious decisions made by European elites to allow massive immigration and cultural change. Because of those elite decisions, the citizens of Europe now face a frightening future, where demographic change favors an Islamic conquest of Europe. Bat Yo'er thoroughly documents the process whereby Europeans have surrendered, or submitted, to the Muslim world. Is it coincidental that Islam means "submission"? Europeans believe, for the most part, that any potential enemy or oppressor can be overcome with dialogue. But through the EAD, they are discovering instead that dialogue is not leading to multiculturalism, but to submission on their part. This submission to the more aggressive culture has already resulted in dhimmitude, where European "infidels" are rendered subservient to the dominant, more aggressive, Muslims. This book is a wake-up call to all Westerners. Hopefully, for Europe and also for the United States, it is not too late.

Excellent. Courageous. Essential reading.

The reader is provided with an excellent, well written, presentation which investigates how the European Union has allegedly become overtly anti-American and anti-Israel. Particular emphasis being placed on what is cited as the subversion of the European Union through Islamic hostility, towards what is described as the "Islamization" of the continent. Attention being drawn to the EU's perceived `need' of the Arab bloc of nations in order that the EU can "establish itself as a strategic rival to America". The reader is presented with a succession of international agreements revealing an inferred European agreement to support the Arab/Islamic world's political aims - particularly its anti-Israel stance - in exchange for favoured treatment in Arab/Islamic world markets. Indeed, whilst a plethora of related subjects are dealt with, perhaps the core issue revolves around policies, attitudes and politics pertaining to the Arab/Palestinian - Israeli issue. The book discusses how the EU has made Israel the `cornerstone' of it's relations with the Arab world and the US - and even matters pertaining to the continent's own security. What is adjudged in this work to be the resulting "Euro-Arab Judeophobia" is alleged to have permeated virtually all levels of West European society. Many questions are asked from the outset, that investigate such issues as the decision of the European Union to propose a constitution that renounces and denies it's Judeo-Christian roots. Not least of the issues dealt with is how the EU's perceived relations with the Arab/Islamic world have allegedly permitted the `dismissal' of what is described as a "voluminous historical record of violations" to enable the EU to engagement in fruitful business and diplomatic ventures with what are termed "dictatorial regimes". The book in essence discusses what is described as a creeping `Islamicization' of a "decadent European Christendom", where there is cited to have been a considerable shifting of European attitudes and politics into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence. Such being purportedly based upon a repeated policy of appeasement, accommodation, and cultural abdication before Islam which has allegedly been embraced with the intention of isolating Israel. EU involvement in the Middle East is discussed in the context of how there appears to follow a "well established pattern" whereby - to begin with - no interest is purportedly shown in calling on the Palestinian side to refrain from killing Israeli civilians and - secondly - the EU allegedly demonstrates no sympathy for the humanitarian and economic plight of Israeli civilians suffering from terrorism. The EU allegedly, instead, devoting itself to pronouncing extreme concern over the humanitarian situation in the "West Bank" and Gaza - but not in relation to the plight of the Israelis themselves. (Page 258). Some analysis is also given to the alleged effect that such EU/Arab alliances have had upon the religious realm,

The Dhimmitude of Europe

On a recent trip to Switzerland, I encountered a gigantic mural in the Zurich Airport which depicted a proto-typical Swiss goat and sheep herder leading his flocks over an Alpine mountain pass, meeting a fully cloaked and turbaned Arab camel herder. Below the mural, a caption read, "You never know who you'll meet in Switzerland". This bucolic image struck me as bizarre, not having been personally conditioned to Western Europe's deliberate sociopolitical transformation over the past 30 years. I was reminded of these prescient words, written a quarter century ago by the great historian of Medieval European Islam, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, who was concerned (even then) that historical and cultural revisionism might precipitate a recurrence of "...the upheaval carried out on our continent (i.e., Europe) by Islamic penetration more than a thousand years ago...with other methods." And Dufourcq characterized the original methods which facilitated the violent, chaotic jihad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, and other parts of Europe, indistinguishable in motivation from modern acts of jihad terrorism, like the Madrid bombings on 3/11/04: "It is not difficult to understand that such expeditions sowed terror. The historian al-Maqqari, who wrote in seventeenth-century Tlemcen in Algeria, explains that the panic created by the Arab horsemen and sailors, at the time of the Muslim expansion in the zones that saw those raids and landings, facilitated the later conquest, if that was decided on: `Allah,' he says, `thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants, to beg for peace.'" Within a decade after Dufourcq's death in 1982, the historian Bat Ye'or (from a 1991 French interview, published in English translation in 1994) echoed his intuitive concerns about Europe's re-Islamization, and warned more broadly, "I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years..." Bat Ye'or is the most informed and insightful contemporary scholar of those unique Islamic institutions which regulate the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims: jihad, and its corollary institution, dhimmitude, the repressive and humiliating system of governance imposed upon those non-Muslims (i.e., dhimmis) subjugated by jihad. Although she coined the term dhimmitude, Bat Ye'or's characterization of the salient features of this institution is entirely consistent with the views of seminal scholars from the early and mid 20th century, such as Sir Jadunath

Outstanding

Bat Ye'or is the world's preeminent historian of Islam, jihad and dhimmitude--the reduced state of non-Muslim peoples living under Islamic rule. Here, she has masterfully portrayed the means by which the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) unfolded over the past 30-plus years, and how that process relates to the World War II Axis--as well as the historical, 1,400-year jihad. "There are three forms of jihad," says Bat Ye'or today, "the military jihad, the economic jihad and the cultural jihad." The EAD between the European Union and the Arab League has been a means of spreading the economic and cultural jihads from the Middle East to Europe. The process outlined here began with Charles DeGaulle's 1967 pronouncement that henceforward, France would assume a pro-Arab policy. In 1971, France began selling arms to Qaddafi, a step from which the EAD flowed as naturally as it did from DeGaulle's policy initiative. Another factor, according to Bat Ye'or, was the French desire to regain a leading role in European history; Georges Pompidou furthered the process in October 1973, following the Syrian and Egyptian Yom Kippur war with Israel. At that time, the Arab world imposed an oil embargo on Denmark, Holland and the U.S., cut oil production and began to raise oil prices by five percent a month. These new global geopolitics terrified the leaders of Germany and France. Before it agreed to establish the EAD, the Arab League had demanded that Europe establish pro-Arab and anti-American policies in all their united political, cultural and economic endeavors. The oil embargo was the catalyst which finally moved the European Economic Community to action. Now, writes Bat Ye'or, EEC ministers enacted resolutions that met the Arab demands, and which at the same time reversed the true intent of United Nations Resolution 242. Only then was the Arab oil embargo to Europe lifted. Through this give and take, Europe was mostly on the losing end, for the EAD contained from the start a significant rider to its economic agreements concerning oil. Now, a process unfolded whereby Arab culture, politics and faith were imported into Europe along with a militant Muslim population that refused to assimilate into European culture. Arab culture did not change, while European universities and politics changed radically. Bat Ye'or also shows how the EAD renewed and fostered Europe's Axis ties to the Middle East: In the late 1940s and 1950s war criminals fled Europe to Egypt, Syria and other Arab nations. Now, Axis links to Europe were rekindled through the Middle Eastern policies imported into Europe. The new Europe was built on a unified anti-Israel and anti-American policy. As Bat Ye'or also suggests, America is the last frontier, and the American people should take it as their duty to avoid Europe's fate. Read this book for the depressing details. --Alyssa A. Lappen