Editing Bat Ye'or (section)

===Reception===
According to journalist [[Adi Schwartz]] from ''[[Haaretz]]'', the fact that she is not an academic and has never taught at any university, but has worked as an independent researcher, has, along with her opinions, made her a controversial figure. He quotes professor [[Robert S. Wistrich]], head of the [[Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism]], who notes:{{blockquote|Up until the 1980s, she was not accepted at all. In academic circles they scorned her publications. Only when [[Bernard Lewis]] published the book 'Jews of Islam' with quotations from Bat Ye'or did they begin to pay any attention to her. A real change toward her emerged in the 1990s, and especially in recent years.<ref>Adi Schwartz from Haaretz.com [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=728863 'The protocols of the elders of Brussels'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090430230408/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=728863 |date=30 April 2009 }} "Bat Ye'or's opinions have made her a controversial figure, as has the fact that she is not an academic and has never taught at any university. She conducts her research independently. Since the 1970s, Bat Ye'or, who is now 71, has published about 10 books, most of which deal with the life of the Christian and Jewish minorities in Muslim countries. "</ref>}}
Lewis on another occasion, called the notion of Jewish ''"dhimmi"-tude'', i.e., of their "subservience and persecution and ill treatment" under Islamic rule, a "myth", which, just as the myth "of a golden age of equality, of mutual respect and cooperation", "contain[s] significant elements of truth," with the "historic truth" being "in its usual place, somewhere in the middle between the extremes."<ref name=Lewis>Bernard Lewis, [https://theamericanscholar.org/the-new-anti-semitism 'The New Anti-Semitism'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208140302/https://theamericanscholar.org/the-new-anti-semitism/ |date=8 December 2015 }}, ''The American Scholar Journal''&nbsp;– Volume 75 No. 1 Winter 2006 pp. 25–36.</ref>

British historian [[Martin Gilbert]] in his book ''A History of the Twentieth Century'' has called her "the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands" who "brought the issue of [their] continuing discrimination to a wide public."<ref>Sir Martin Gilbert, ''A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume III: 1952–1999'', p. 127: "Most of those who went elsewhere did so as 'stateless refugees, among them Gisele Orebi (later Gisele Litrman), who was to become the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands, and their vigorous champion: her book ''The Dhimmi''. Jews and Christians under Islam, written under the pen name Bat Ye'or, brought the issue of continuing discrimination to a wide public."</ref>

[[Hans Jansen]], Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at [[Utrecht University]] and [[Member of the European Parliament|MEP]] for [[Geert Wilders]]' [[Party for Freedom]], wrote in ''[[Middle East Quarterly]]'' that "In 1985, Bat Ye'or offered Islamic studies a surprise with her book, ''The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam'', a convincing demonstration that the notion of a traditional, lenient, liberal, and tolerant Muslim treatment of the Jewish and Christian minorities is more myth than reality."<ref>{{cite journal|date=1 March 2005|title=Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis|url=http://www.meforum.org/article/1288|journal=[[Middle East Quarterly]]|author=Johannes J.G. Jansen|access-date=6 December 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071019232725/http://www.meforum.org/article/1288|archive-date=19 October 2007|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Mark R. Cohen]] said that Bat Ye'or "has made famous" the term ''dhimmitude,'' which he says is "misleading". He states that "[w]e may choose to employ" it keeping in mind that it "connotes protection (its meaning in Arabic) and that it guaranteed communal autonomy, relatively free practice of religion, and equal economic opportunities, as much as it signified inferior legal status."<ref name=cohen1>{{cite book|title=Muslim Attitudes to Jews and Israel: The Ambivalences of Rejection, Antagonism, Tolerance and Cooperation|last=Cohen|first=Mark R.|publisher=[[Sussex]] Academic Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1845195274|pages=33–36|chapter=Modern Myths of Muslim Anti-Semitism|author-link=Mark R. Cohen|editor=Ma'oz, Moshe}}</ref><ref name=cohen2>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W_AR3BksrUcC&pg=PA31|title=Muslim Attitudes to Jews and Israel: The Ambivalences of Rejection, Antagonism, Tolerance and Cooperation|last=Ma'oz|first=Moshe|publisher=Sussex Academic Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1-84519-527-4|access-date=27 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170329054704/https://books.google.com/books?id=W_AR3BksrUcC&pg=PA31|archive-date=29 March 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Michael Sells]], John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the [[University of Chicago]], argued that "by obscuring the existence of pre-Christian and other old, non-Christian communities in Europe as well as the reason for their disappearance in other areas of Europe, Bat Ye'or constructs an invidious comparison between the allegedly humane Europe of Christian and Enlightenment values and the ever-present persecution within Islam. Whenever the possibility is raised of actually comparing circumstances of non-Christians in Europe to non-Muslims under [[Islamic governance]] in a careful, thoughtful manner, Bat Ye'or forecloses such comparison."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_zcNMoTYgkC&q=Bat+Ye%27or|title=The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy|last1=Qureshi|first1=Emran|last2=Sells|first2=Michael Anthony|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|year=2003|isbn=9780231126663|location=New York|page=364|author-link2=Michael Sells|access-date=4 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140101100427/http://books.google.com/books?id=n_zcNMoTYgkC&q=Bat+Ye%27or#v=snippet&q=Bat%20Ye'or&f=false|archive-date=1 January 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>

In a review of ''The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude'', the American historian Robert Brenton Betts commented that the book dealt with Judaism at least as much as with Christianity, that the title was misleading and the central premise flawed. He said: "The general tone of the book is strident and anti-Muslim. This is coupled with selective scholarship designed to pick out the worst examples of anti-Christian behavior by Muslim governments, usually in time of war and threats to their own destruction (as in the case of the deplorable [[Armenian genocide]] of 1915). Add to this the attempt to demonize the so-called Islamic threat to Western civilization and the end-product is generally unedifying and frequently irritating."<ref>{{cite journal|date=September 1997|title=The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (review)|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19995282.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106074935/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19995282.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-11-06|journal=[[Middle East Policy]]|volume=5|issue=3|pages=200–203|doi=10.1111/j.1475-4967.1997.tb00274.x|author=Robert Brenton Betts|access-date=4 August 2012|url-access=subscription}} {{subscription required}}</ref>

Sidney Griffith, the head of the department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the [[Catholic University of America]] wrote in a review of ''Decline of Eastern Christianity'' that Ye'or has "raised a topic of vital interest"; adding, however, that the "theoretical inadequacy of the interpretive concepts of jihad and dhimmitude, as they are employed here", and the "want of [[historical method]] in the deployments of the documents which serve as evidence for the conclusions reached in the study" serve as dual barriers. He goes on to say "[quotations] are presented out of context, with no analysis or explanation. One has the impression that in their bulk they are simply meant to undergird the contentions made in the first part of the book", concluding that thus Ye'or has "written a polemical tract, not responsible historical analysis."<ref>Griffith, Sidney H., "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude", ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'', Vol. 30, No. 4. (Nov. 1998), pp. 619–621.</ref>

In a review of ''The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam'', [[City University of New York]] Distinguished Professor of History Chase F. Robinson writes,
{{blockquote|[R]eaders interested in a dispassionate account of confessional relations or a nuanced discussion of the widely diverse experience of Jews and Christians in the ''dar al-Islam'' will need to look elsewhere: [...] this is a work of polemic -- scholarly polemic, but polemic just the same. To list errors of fact would probably fill this entire number of the Bulletin.<ref>Chase F. Robinson. Review of "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, from Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Centuries by Bat Ye'or, Miriam Kochan, David Littman". Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. Vol. 31, No. 1 (July 1997), pp. 97-98.</ref>}}

According to the American scholar [[Joel Beinin]], Bat Ye'or exemplifies the "neo-lachrymose" perspective on Egyptian Jewish history. According to Beinin, this perspective has been "consecrated" as "the normative Zionist interpretation of the history of Jews in Egypt."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ENfjCk1IZBcC&q=Bat+Ye%27or|title=The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, And The Formation of a Modern Diaspora|last=Beinin|first=Joel|publisher=[[American University in Cairo Press]]|year=2005|isbn=9789774248900|page=15|author-link=Joel Beinin|access-date=4 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140101091216/http://books.google.com/books?id=ENfjCk1IZBcC&q=Bat+Ye%27or#v=snippet&q=Bat%20Ye'or&f=false|archive-date=1 January 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Robert Spencer (author)|Robert Spencer]], an American [[islamophobia|anti-Islamic polemicist]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/robert-spencer|title=Robert Spencer|website=Southern Poverty Law Center|access-date=29 July 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160601140218/https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/robert-spencer|archive-date=1 June 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> described her as "the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, of the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law". He argued that she had turned this area, which he believed the "Middle East studies establishment" has hitherto been afraid of or indifferent to, into a field of academic study.<ref>Brian Lamb: [http://www.c-span.org/video/?193778-1/qa-robert-spencer Robert Spencer interview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141109043825/http://www.c-span.org/video/?193778-1%2Fqa-robert-spencer |date=9 November 2014 }} (transcript), C-SPAN, 20 August 2006</ref>

[[Irshad Manji]] describes her as "a scholar who dumps cold water on any dreamy view of how Muslims have historically dealt with the 'other'."<ref>Irshad Manji, ''The Trouble with Islam'', pg. 61</ref>