Dhimmitude.org has made available the preface (in PDF form) of Bat Ye’or’s new book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.

Broad historical movements that profoundly transform human societies are difficult to discern in the short term. They extend over decades, often centuries, and affect the social fabric in multiple ways that are scarcely noticed by contemporary commentators but become perceptible in times of accelerated social change. This pattern of historical development applies to the dynamic of Islamic jihad. For over a millennium, jihad has been a potent political force that has subjugated and in some cases extinguished once powerful centers of Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other civilizations in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This historical process can be observed today on all three of these continents. In the 1970s, jihad reappeared as a powerful factor in European affairs but, for nearly three decades, the revival of jihad passed with little comment in both popular and academic journals. European statesmen remained silent. The murderous September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks in America broke the silence. President Bush’s war on terrorism forced Europeans to take sides, while investigations revealed the presence of extensive and well-established networks of jihad terrorists throughout Europe. The Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004 heightened awareness of this grim reality. However, constructive public debate has been hampered by profound ignorance of the jihad dynamic and by the tendency of Europe’s political elite to continue to appease jihadist driving forces.

This book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post–Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it. The new European civilization in the making can be called a ‘‘civilization of dhimmitude.’’ The term dhimmitude comes from the Arabic word ‘‘dhimmi.’’ It refers to subjugated, non- Muslim individuals or people that accept the restrictive and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death. The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunctional dhimmitude. Many have been completely Islamized and have disappeared. Others remain as fossilized relics of the past, unable to evolve.