I am speaking of those Muslims who intend or prefer the imposition of sharia law, or demand special treatment and rights by law that others are not to be allowed. And of their self-hating Western enablers: the dhimmis among us.

Islam is particularly… um… shall we say, RIGOROUS, in its domination of the Others. Jizya is merely one of the many, many codified ways in which Islam represses and destroys the identity and worth of all Others under its theocratic repressive domination.

I am, as a result, furiously opposed to anything that even hints at dhimmitude.

This is why the impulse to exalt all Eastern mysticisms, while simultaneously heaping scorn upon all Western religions - an impulse that flowered in the 60’s and remains prevalent today within the ACLU and many other groups - is so dangerous to me. It gives Islamic theocracy the upper hand.

Another case in point:
Bishop Martinus Muskens of Breda in The Netherlands has called upon Christians to begin calling God “Allah”. Bishop Muskens is confident this will promote better relations with Muslims and, after all, “God doesn’t really care how we address Him.”
See: http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/blog.cfm?id=161

This is disingenous. If he were calling for Christians to call God “Allah” while *simultaneously* calling for all Muslims to call Allah “God”, I might even consider his point. But he is NOT calling for that. What he has done is promote the eradication of our own Western word(s) for the deity in preference to the Islamic word. This is dhimmitude in its clearest form: An attitude, among the vanquished, of surrender and fawning servility towards the Muslim overlord.

I believe that the word we Westerners employ for Mark Steyn’s description of “jizya” is “parasitism”.

The challenge I like to throw out is for anyone to explain what exactly Islam’s historical accomplishments and innovations are supposed to have been. Can anyone answer that? And, please, don’t respond with “algebra”, which was largely developed by Hindu and Buddhist India).