Jihadwatch and FrontPageMag review the new book Islamikaze and happen to give a really good look at dhimmitude.
The author summarizes elegantly the salient features of Bat Ye’or’s conception of dhimmitude as, ' …not only a subservient status…in political, social, economic, and judicial terms, conferred on Jews and Christians…from which they could not disengage unless they converted to Islam, but it also became a state of mind..which dictated caution, surreptitious maneuvering in order to survive and a self-humiliating sycophancy towards the Muslim ruler in the hope of gaining his favor…[amounting] in the final analysis, after many centuries of oppression and contempt by the rule of Islam, to self-diminution of the dhimmis…self-flagellation…and a total distortion of their self-image and the image of their oppressors. So much so that many Christians and Jews, years after being liberated from dhimmitude continued to think and act as dhimmis, namely to hold themselves grateful to their Muslim masters who beat, humiliated and mistreated them. What is more, the spirit of dhimmitude has been adopted, or taken over, by many Western societies today which for reasons hard to understand or explain, pretend not to hear or comprehend Muslim threats, smile and evince ‘understanding’ in the face of those threats, and seem to be marching foolishly towards spiritual and cultural capitulation and enslavement.'"