Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, spoke to an April 13 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes her comments:
Miller’s recent Tablet Magazine interview with Bat Ye’or profiles an author and activist whose two books prophetically forecast the “consequences of Muslim migration into Europe.” The translation of Ye’or’s nom de plume is “Daughter of the Nile,” which refers to Ye’or’s experience as an Egyptian-born Jew who was “thrown out of Egypt, property confiscated, like so many other Jews in Arab countries, [and] had to flee to places unknown.”
“It is less well known that over a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries, people who had lived there for centuries.”
Palestinian Arabs frame their failed attempt to destroy the Jewish state at its birth with the word “nakba,” or “catastrophe.” While it is well known that the term conveys their perception regarding the 750,000 of them who were either expelled, voluntarily left or left under pressure during Israel’s War of Independence, “it is less well known that over a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries, people who had lived there for centuries.”
After fleeing to Britain, where she lived for several years, Bat Ye’or relocated to Switzerland, where she authored the French edition of The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (1980). In 1985, the English edition was published. In the book, she introduced the concept of “dhimmitude” to convey the second-class citizenry of Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule. As “dhimmis,” the root of which means “contract” or “protected,” Christians and Jews were subjected to a poll tax for the privilege of being tolerated in Islamic society. As an independent researcher, Ye’or was not afforded the respect from academe that she deserved. Nonetheless, her book as well as the term she coined became popular.
In 2005, she contributed further to the increasing debate over migration with her book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. In it, she warned that Europe’s permissive policies vis-`a-vis Muslim migration significantly altered the “character and identity” of European countries to the extent that they would become more Islamized, anti-Western, and antisemitic.
Ye’or’s controversial contention was that these policies transforming Europe were the result of a deliberate alliance between European officials and Arab leaders. However, the reality was that, with the declining demographic in Europe, large numbers of Arabs and Turks flooding Europe were needed to do the work the Europeans did not want to do. Ye’or presciently predicted that the entire transition unfolding across the continent would result in a backlash in the areas of European countries where Muslim communities dominated.
In a response to political pressure exerted by Muslim communities, the British and French governments have made concessions that have chilled free speech and impeded law enforcement’s ability to counter rising Islamism. In the U.K., the Pakistani grooming gang sex scandal that over decades victimized thousands of primarily white girls from impoverished neighborhoods was suppressed. British police and prosecutors turned a blind eye to the perpetrators, fearing a violent response in Muslim enclaves and accusations of “Islamophobia.”
French schools are pressured to “no longer teach the Holocaust” as antisemitic attacks have increased in that country. Rather than teach the historical accuracy about Islam’s spread as a conquering religion across the centuries, teachers are pressured to portray Islam as “the religion of peace.” Although France banned the wearing of hijabs in classrooms, it was conditional on the French government’s submission to Muslim community demands for representation on many important government councils from which its members previously had been excluded. In Germany, a high percentage of Muslim migrants have been involved in knife stabbings, some 14,000 of which have occurred in the past two years alone. Christmas festivals in Germany are now blandly referred to as “winter festivals” so as not to “offend Muslim sensibilities.”
Ye’or presciently predicted that the entire transition unfolding across the continent would result in a backlash in the areas of European countries where Muslim communities dominated.
Antisemitism and antisemitic attacks, largely perpetrated by Muslims, increased across Europe following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis and Israel’s response in bombing Gaza. Hostilities against Europe’s Jewish communities were further escalated by the war in Lebanon and with Iran. “There were so few European Jews who would stand up and say, ‘This is unacceptable.’”
Despite a sense of doom among many that Europe cannot be pulled back from the brink, “governments in Europe have been forced to respond to the pressure of ordinary citizens who say, ‘We don’t want to live this way.’” Ye’or’s predicted backlash is slowly rippling across European locales. Hungary’s newly elected prime minister is threatening to expel foreigners with temporary work visas. Left-leaning Denmark, with a generous social welfare system that draws migrants, is deporting migrants in the country with temporary status if they have committed even a minor crime. Although it has taken time for Europe to mobilize, “in democracies, that tends to be part of the pattern.”
The U.S. is subject to similar pressures Europe has faced, but the numbers of Muslim migrants are much lower. Even in Minnesota, Michigan, or New York, which have higher numbers of Muslims, the Muslim population is not as concentrated as those in Europe. Zohran Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, was elected with the support of 30 percent of New York City’s Jewish population despite his anti-Israel statements and his wife’s blatantly antisemitic social media posts. For Mamdani, the ameliorating circumstance is that he is coping with running a city versus running for office. He has retained the female Jewish police commissioner from the prior administration, and the mayoral pressures of governing “bring a dose of reality to people who wish to govern.”
In terms of antisemitism, “I am less worried about the United States than I am about Europe,” given the higher level of Jewish activism in the U.S. and America’s democratic tradition of “robust debate.” Mobilizing Christian and non-Christian allies to join the Jewish community in fighting antisemitism is a worthwhile use of effort and energy.
The explosion of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations on American campuses has been the most noticeable aspect of academe’s failure. Middle Eastern studies programs are dominated by those who unfairly malign Israel as an occupying power with no right to exist in the Middle East. “What was being taught was not correct, and not honest, and not accurate.” In light of the failure of university presidents to tackle campus antisemitism, it is long overdue that organizational and government institutions address this “longstanding problem.”
America’s educational stewards, for the sake of future generations in their charge, would do well to heed Bat Ye’or’s warning to the West.
The failure in Europe is attributable to the unwillingness of its political class to take a stand against outrages, a prime example of which is Britain’s grooming gangs. While many Muslim women in France and Britain want to integrate and enjoy a different life in the West, social pressure to conform to Muslim strictures is the greatest challenge they face within their communities.
The key problem in the West writ large is the failure of our educational system to teach about the gifts that Western civilization gave the world, in particular its greatest contribution—democracy. “Western democracy is a precious thing, but it won’t survive” unless its roots and the philosophers who made it possible are taught and studied for the purpose of understanding, transmitting, and sustaining Western identity. “You have to be very certain about who you are, what you are, and what you represent.” America’s educational stewards, for the sake of future generations in their charge, would do well to heed Bat Ye’or’s warning to the West.
