The US Embassy in Jerusalem and proleptic dhimmitude

Professor Richard Landes coined a wonderful phrase, "proleptic dhimmitude." It refers to the actions of Westerners who take what they believe to be pro-Muslim positions in anticipation of supremacist Muslim threats and demands.

Real dhimmis under Muslim rule live in fear that their Muslim leaders will target them if they do not act in a subservient manner. Proleptic dhimmis act as if Muslims are their leaders, too, and they go beyond Muslim demands in their zeal to appease them ahead of time.

There is no better example of proleptic dhimmitude than the gnashing of teeth over the possibility (which seems more and more likely) that Donald Trump will move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews sputtered on Tuesday:

 Why are we moving the embassy to — to Jerusalem at a time that the whole place over there could blow up? Why do we something that's right in the face of the Palestinians, right in the face of the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Egyptians. The one thing they say is leave you know, the Dome of the Rock alone, leave are — the hopeful capital of a Palestinian state alone. Don't desecrate it by saying it's the capital of Israel at this point? 

Matthews is not arguing that there is a legal reason not to move the embassy. He is not arguing that such a move would violate even Islamic law.

In fact, Matthews is showing incredible ignorance because any embassy move would occur in the part of Jerusalem that was under Israeli control since 1948.

(The only possible argument against it is if you accept the fiction that Jerusalem would become an international city in a final peace agreement, which was the official - if absurd - US position for the past 68 years. But Muslims cannot hold that position, because it would mean that they would not have control over Jerusalem either.)

Matthews, and other critics of the idea of moving the embassy, are not basing their objections on any rational reason. They are anticipating that Muslims will act like crazed animals if the US does this, and they want to appease these subhuman Muslims who cannot control themselves (by their estimation, not mine) ahead of time. They want to head off what they believe would be the inevitable Muslim riots and terror that would result from the US respecting Israel's right to define its own capital, a right that every other nation has.

I just did a quick search in Arabic news sites to see if there is any anger over this possible move of the embassy. There is very, very little. For the most part, this is not even a story, although some Arab news outlets are covering it dispassionately.

Of all the things for Arabs and Muslims to worry about in an impending Trump administration, moving the US embassy from one part of Israel to another part within the Green Line is not even on their radar.

But some Americans like Chris Matthews are proleptic dhimmis. They are worried about what they think Muslims might do, and therefore they are held hostage by their own predictions, even when there is precious little evidence that they are right.

However, the Muslims are very attuned to this phenomenon of Western anticipatory dhimmitude. If an American rants on TV about how angry Muslims are going to be when someone does X, then this creates an environment where some Muslims feel compelled to protest X - otherwise they lose political power. Muslim supremacists are being handed a gift by these dhimmis.  Their power in the West is due in no small part to the constant threat of terror when they don't get their way, and if the West is willing to give them leverage with that fear, they would be stupid not to take advantage of it. (Westerners have had a fear of Muslim jihad for a very long time.)

Matthews and those like him, without realizing it, are creating the exact situation that they believe they are trying to avoid. They treat Muslims like they are irrational, crazy people who must be handled with kid gloves or else they will turn deadly - and too many Muslims embrace that role because it gives them power over the dhimmis.

This same logic is used by some Western leaders to demand that Israel act in certain ways - because of the anticipatory violence of Muslims against Western targets if Israel doesn't adhere to the proleptic dhimmi demands. Don't build in Jerusalem, don't enforce zoning laws, don't perform archaeological digs - all of these are demands on Israel by proleptic dhimmis of the West in far greater volume than by Arab leaders in recent years.

And there are no dhimmis as dhimmified as proleptic dhimmis.

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