Promo for an interesting book, which I’m about to read… Rowland.

In The Third Choice Mark Durie examines the most crucial challenges of this new century. In clear language, free from political correctness, and backed by an impressive scholarly knowledge, he unfolds step-by-step the basic foundations of Islam and exposes their inner correlations with jihad and dhimmitude, two theological and legal Islamic institutions that shape traditional Muslim behaviour toward non-Muslims. Bat Ye’or Author of Islam and Dhimmitude and Eurabia.

This extraordinary book shows how the behavior of violent Islamic groups, and even of many moderate non-Muslim spokesmen in the West, follows a discernible and consistent pattern deriving from the directives of Islamic law for the treatment of non-Muslims. What makes it all the more remarkable is how willing and even eager non-Muslim leaders can be to comply with the Sharia’s supremacist demands. The Third Choice shows clearly that the strictures of dhimmitude are oppressive, that they are by no means antiquated relics of the past, and that non-Muslims are in peril globally from Muslims laboring to implement them anew. As such it stands as a vital wake-up call for an increasingly drowsy Free World. Robert Spencer, author of the New York Times best-sellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.

Over the past three decades, the experience of Christians in Muslim-dominated communities has been getting steadily worse. This has been directly linked to Islamic revival and the reinstatement of Sharia law across the Muslim world. I salute the courage of Mark Durie and the scholarship exhibited in The Third Choice, which offers solutions to difficult problems hindering the peaceful co-existence of two major world religions. Archbishop Peter Akinola Primate of All Nigeria.

The Third Choice could have hardly come at a better time, due to the urgent need to illuminate many minds in today’s troubled world, where Islam is not only being imposed into the Western world as an aggressive and intrusive ideology, but is backed up by an immense demographic invasion. Durie’s book has come not a moment too soon to provide a wake-up call to the slumbering West, and prepare it to confront the gathering challenge of Islam. Raphael Israeli Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese History, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

To say something worth reading about the relationship of Islam to other faiths an author needs a huge and broad amount of knowledge in different fields of expertise, needs to know how to integrate research findings from religion, sociology and humanities, and needs to be brave, politically incorrect and peace-minded all at the same time. Few people can offer all of this, but, as all of this is true for Mark Durie, I can recommend The Third Choice to everyone interested in the future of world politics. Thomas Schirrmacher Professor of the Sociology of Religion (Germany, Romania, India) and Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (Bonn, Cape Town, Colombo).

Mark Durie has written a wise and remarkably compendious study inspired by the urgent question W. Montgomery Watt posed in 1993: ‘…does the Sharia (Islamic Law) allow Muslims to live peaceably with non-Muslims in the one world?’ The Third Choice challenges non-Muslims and Muslims alike to lift the shroud of silence and reject the steady revival of Islam’s ancient, discriminatory system of dhimmitude. Although Durie demonstrates unabashedly how Islam’s doctrines have led too many Muslims to impose intimidation and self-rejection upon others, his ultimate message is one of hope: that truth, applied with love will release a deep-seated compassion and healing between peoples. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

Durie’s profound work offers enormous historical, social, and psychological insight into the complexities of life in the face of rejection, evil, and suffering. Echoing the prophet Zechariah, he makes an impassioned plea to all to ‘love truth and peace’, and to seek the truth and healing. Ravi Zacharias Bestselling author and speaker.

Those who want help discerning the truth amidst the myriad of contradictory reports about Muslim-Christian relations, should read this book. Those who want to understand why Christians in Islamic states frequently present as energetic propagandists for those who repress and persecute them, should read this book. Dhimmis and former dhimmis who want deliverance from the deep and captivating, psychologically and spiritually crippling spirit of dhimmitude – a spirit that remains even if the threat is removed – should read this book. The insights in The Third Choice will equip many with the understanding they require if they are going to face the world’s information deluge with discernment; and enable many who are crippled by fear, hate or remorse to find freedom, healing and restoration. Mark Durie’s book is a book for our times. Elizabeth Kendal, religious liberty researcher, analyst and writer

Mark Durie’s new book, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom, is highly recommended reading. It insightfully throws light on Islam and its theological, political and legal ideology towards non-Muslims, especially Christians and Jews. The concept of dhimmitude, with its humiliation and subjugation of ‘non-believers’, needs to be understood if we want to uphold universal human rights and religious liberty in our day and age. Not politically correct appeasement policies, but truthful and above-board information, along with critical analysis of historical and current realities concerning Islam, will help us to face the challenge of this ideology with its consequences for church and society. This book encourages us to face this challenge squarely and choose the truth in freedom and dignity. Albrecht Hauser, Canon of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Wurttemberg and a Trustee of the Barnabas Fund

Islamic revival is the greatest challenge to Christianity this century. It is fuelling an upsurge of violence against non-Muslims throughout the world as Islamists, emboldened by a righteous sense of entitlement, aspire to institute Sharia worldwide. Mark Durie astutely observes that institutions such as jihad and dhimmitude, arising from this Islamization movement, threaten spiritual freedom: unless Christians resist the hatred and discrimination of dhimmitude, they too will become its victims. Exposing the oppressive nature of the dhimma system, Durie offers the reader tools to confront this challenge. The Third Choice is an important reference to help Christians and others overcome the fear and violence that defines the legacy of dhimmitude. Keith Roderick, Secretary General, Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights; Canon for Persecuted Christians, Diocese of Quincy; and, Washington Representative, Christian Solidarity International.

With The Third Choice, Mark Durie has introduced real Islam in a scholarly manner, from its foundational doctrines to its political, social and moral philosophies –  from its root to its branches. He aims to inform people that Islamists will not only be unable to tolerate freedom themselves; they will follow the model of their prophet to put an end to the freedom of others. The Third Choice emphatically calls on all to study Islam personally and understand its quest for dominance. Daniel Shayesteh, former Iranian Republican Guard, co-founder of Hezbollah and author of Escape from Darkness.

Ideas have consequences. Some powerful ideas and views of the world have been in circulation for centuries, yet they have been hidden from sight, their true implications concealed. Mark Durie’s excellent book not only unveils the history of an influential set of ideas; it shows their application and outworking both in the past and for the present. The Third Choice is a must read for anyone interested in Islam and for all concerned with human flourishing. This book will disturb, inform, educate and challenge. I hope you will read it, reflect on it, and pass it on to others. Stuart McAllister, Vice-President of Training and Special Projects, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Foreword by Bat Ye’or Since 9/11 the concept of dhimmitude – first elaborated in the 1970’s and initially known only to a handful of specialists – has become widely recognized as its complexities and implications have been investigated and popularized. The first path breaking, iconoclastic presentations of dhimmitude as an aspect of history are being transformed into rich and diverse analyses of modern history and sociology. Mark Durie’s book belongs to this new trend, but has the added distinctive that it seeks the healing of those affected by dhimmitude.

Although conceived and written with a profound Christian sensitivity, Durie’s book can be read with the greatest profit by people from all persuasions, including atheists. In The Third Choice, the author examines the most crucial challenges of this new century. Today, whoever does not have a clear understanding of the complexities of the word dhimmitude can be considered an illiterate in matters of modern international policy, and blind to present and future realities.

Durie exposes in clear language the multidimensional aspects of dhimmitude, a concept that pertains to a fourteen-centuries-old civilization, birthed through jihad, and structured in accordance with the strict requirements of the Sharia. Dhimmitude has produced endless wars and suffering, and left its mark on countless historical and literary documents. Dhimmitude is the captive history of captive non-Muslim peoples, conquered by jihad and distributed across Africa, Asia and Europe. The author examines with rigorous precision the basic foundations of Islam – the Quran, hadiths, sira and Sharia – and exposes their inner connections with the political, economic and social system of dhimmitude for which they are the basis, and over which they exercise religious guardianship.

The strict scholarly rationalism of the author is particularly evident in the chapter on the theological significance of jizya, the head tax paid by non-Muslims under Islamic rule. Here Durie brings numerous and irrefutable sources illustrating the meaning, implications and religious justification of the jizya, which is the cost paid by non-Muslims for the right to live, albeit in humiliation. The jizya ritual, writes Durie, forces the dhimmi subject – through his participation in it – ‘to forfeit his very head if he violates any of the terms of the dhimma covenant, which has spared his life’. The author sheds new light on the jizya ritual, which he calls an ‘enactment of one’s own decapitation’. His discussion of this virtual beheading brings new depth to the Muslim-non-Muslim relationship. Still today – in the jihad wars throughout the world, or the jihadists’ threats against the West – the jizya’s symbolism expresses a fundamental dimension of the theological and political relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Too few Westerners grasp that the concept of dhimmitude is crucial to understanding the relationship between Islam and non-Islam. As Durie argues, through a conspiracy of silence, the heads of state, church and community leaders, universities, and media smother its reality under a blanket of ignorance. With numerous examples, the author denounces this intimidated concealment, which, he affirms, is undermining Western Judeo-Christian civilization and is contrary to human freedom and dignity.

While the author’s study encompasses a wide register of political and legal areas, he does not neglect the human impact of dhimmitude, with its painful manifestations of moral abjection, self-destruction, fear, denial and loss of dignity. Durie reminds us, with compassion and empathy, that scholarly studies on dhimmitude should not mask the physical and moral sufferings of populations living in perpetual denial of their most basic rights and personhood. The dimension of this human tragedy, perpetuated through generations, is a predominant concern of his mission, since he dedicates his book ‘to the healing and freedom of all those who have fallen within the reach of dhimmitude, whatever their religious convictions, non-Muslim and Muslim alike.’  His purpose is ‘to offer resources for understanding these subjects and the links between them. The ultimate purpose of the book, to which the chapters take the reader in stages, is to offer resources for securing freedom from the legacy of dhimmitude.’

If Durie goes so deeply and consistently to confront dhimmitude, it is because this specific type of evil is not something of the past, something that its promoters have renounced or agreed to relinquish; rather, this violation of human psychological and physical rights continues to develop freely in local and international politics, whether by violent jihadist threats and terrorism, or through entrenched and chronic religious discrimination.

For Durie, liberation from dhimmitude requires the rejection of the gratitude and admiration of victims toward their oppressors. Consequently, the author considers it imperative that non-Muslims know Islam. In clear language, free from political correctness, and backed by an impressive scholarly knowledge, he unfolds step-by-step the basic foundations of Islam and exposes their inner correlations with jihad and dhimmitude, two theological and legal Islamic institutions that shape traditional Muslim behavior toward non-Muslims. Moreover, the concealment of dhimmitude confronts us with the moral and political consequences of denying evil. There is a danger, Durie points out, that undiscerning acceptance of a narrative of Muslim victimhood, brought into focus by a doctrinal necessity of Islam, is used as the moral validation of jihad. The appeal to Muslim victimhood as incitement to jihad and dhimmitude against non-Muslims needs to be unmasked, as a step toward world peace. In wondering how to dismantle dhimmitude, the author provides a discussion of its ideologues and its deniers, and a detailed classification of its diverse manifestations in Muslim countries today, by examining it at different levels. Being a pastor, he is concerned with healing the souls and bodies of numerous present-day victims of jihad; but the more complex wounds also worry him, those that internalize resignation and engender self-debasement.

This book by an Anglican minister brings many innovative views. Durie takes his place among the handful of Christians who have not hidden the common bondage of Jews and Christians in dhimmitude – he even underscores the central significance of Muhammad’s wars against the Jews of Arabia for the development of the jihad-dhimmitude strategy, which was later to be directed against Christians and others. Durie’s book is a milestone in overcoming a long overdue lack of awareness of Christian martyrdom under Islam, as linked to and mirrored in a twin Jewish ordeal still denied by many Christians.

Durie not only provides a strong denunciation of dhimmitude and, thereby a forceful confrontation with its reality, he also offers a path to escape from the tyranny of evil and recover one’s freedom. Throughout this reflection on dhimmitude, the reader is confronted with the question of how to recognize evil, how to live with it while preserving one’s own moral probity, and how to overcome it by developing inner spiritual forces. And while drawing nearer to the oppressed, one also draws nearer to the oppressor and may ask: can victims be healed if they do not go toward their oppressors and try to heal them also? Is this not the existential meaning of suffering, to bring about the healing of the world?

The Author’s Preface

See to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.  Letter to the Hebrews 12:15

Rejection is one of the most disturbing and destructive of human experiences. It forms the bitter root of many ills, defiling its victims with anger, hatred of others, self-hatred, a wounded spirit, and despair. Rejection is a tear in the fundamental fabric of human identity, a gouge in the divine image. Overcoming rejection is the core of spiritual healing, leading to restoration, freedom, new hope, and a reclaimed destiny.

Rejection can be manifested in individual lives. It can also be expressed in the collective historical consciousness of communities and societies, where one group has been demeaned by another.

One of the most profound and least-understood manifestations of rejection in human history is the Islamic institution of the dhimma, the theologically-driven political, social, and legal system, imposed by Islamic law upon non-Muslims as an alternative to Islam (i.e. conversion) or the sword (i.e. death or captivity). The dhimma is the ‘third choice’offered to non-Muslims under jihad conditions, and those who have accepted it are known as dhimmis. Their condition, dhimmitude, forms the subject of this book, which describes the challenge posed by Islam’s treatment of non-Muslims, exposes the spiritual roots of this challenge, and offers a solution.

Whereas rejection is an expression of the power of evil to damage, overwhelm and ultimately destroy human beings, the triumph of grace is the defeat of rejection, ushering in love and reconciliation where once there had been bitter despair. An invitation is issued here for the reader – whatever his or her faith background – to walk along a road through understanding, and ultimately to freedom from dhimmitude and its demeaning spiritual effects.

The resources offered here include a truth encounter with the Islamic doctrines of jihad and dhimmitude, informed by the life and example of Muhammad. Together these have imposed rejection upon non-Muslims under the Sharia down through history to the present day.

Renouncing enmity In the current atmosphere of fear and uncertainty concerning religious differences, there is a tendency to divide the world into two camps of ‘enemies’ vs. ‘friends’. Tolerance, we find, has its limits, and it comforts us to think that we are of the ‘right’ party.

We must steadfastly seek to resist such a divisive understanding of people. Although there are some who might call people of one faith or another their ‘enemies’, Jesus’ instructions are pertinent: ‘Love your enemies’. We can also be mindful of the wise counsel Abigail gave to David, when he was on his way to wreak vengeance on her husband Nabal, not to ‘have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself’.

In this context, recourse to the language of marginalization or retribution is a needless spiritual defeat. We must be prepared to call bad ideas evil if that is what they are. Yet, in doing this, it is not up to us to condemn people as evil, let alone to issue declarations of hatred and enmity against them.

When Jesus was advising his followers of the inevitability of their future suffering, he warned them against allowing bitter experiences of rejection to fuel enmity in their hearts. Instead, looking upon persecution as a blessing, they should aim to do good to their persecutors, blessing them and interceding on their behalf.

In this struggle, the dividing line between good and evil is not something that separates one person from another. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn learned in the Soviet gulags, it runs through each and every human heart:

In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart -and through all human hearts.

Statement of purpose, and a dedication

The Third Choice has been written to meet three main purposes:

1. To explain the nature of the dhimma pact;

2. To enable non-Muslims to withstand the dhimma and find freedom from it;

3. To help people understand the nature and impact of Islamic politics in the world, both today and in the past, and especially its impact upon the human rights of non-Muslims.

People of many faiths and none need to find freedom from the age-old legacy of the dhimma, and Muslims too, for dhimmitude degrades oppressors and oppressed alike. This book is therefore dedicated to the healing and freedom of all those who have fallen within the reach of dhimmitude, whatever their religious convictions, non-Muslim and Muslim alike.

For millions today, dhimmitude is not only an all-too-familiar lived daily reality; it is also a personal inheritance, extending back in the generational line beyond memory. Whether dhimmitude is a part of the reader’s personal history or not, my desire is that this book will help equip him or her to live as a free person, able to renounce and reject the dhimma’s false and demeaning claims.