"Dhimmitude" is not an Islamic institution. It is a hoax cooked up by Islamophobes.

So says Stephen Schwartz on a comment thread at Little Green Footballs. I guess Bat Yeor might take issue with that statement. So is she an “Islamophobe” or simply misinformed?

Cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai, has also had quite a bit to say about this allegedly fictitious phenomenon, notably in the last book he published before his death, “Jadid al-Islam: The Jewish ‘New Muslims’ of Meshhed” (Wayne State University Press, 1998). Meshhed is a city in Iran where Jews were “relocated” in the early 19th century. Patai’s book is a testament to the struggle and survival of that Jewish community against all odds.

Following is a lengthy quote from the second chapter of the book, which describes Jewish life in that community around the time of the Allahdad (literally, "God's gift" -- the Muslim name given to the massacre, abduction and forced conversion of the surviving Jews of Meshhed by a mob in 1839).

The situation in which the Jews of Meshhed found themselves after the forced conversions of 1839 has been repeatedly described, so that quite a bit is known about it. Much less in known about the life of the Jews in Meshhed prior to the Allahdad, to which subject we now turn.

The first thing we have to keep in mind when trying to visualize the life of the Jews in Meshhed is that in Shi’i Persia in general, the Muslim attitude toward the Jews was more inimical and contemptuous than in the Sunni Muslim world. Shi’i Islam, whose major stronghold Iran has remained to this day, has always been much more intolerant of other faiths than Sunni Islam, and “other faiths” in its view quite emphatically included also the “people of the book,” Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, who were regarded with lively aversion, whose persons were considered unclean, and whose touch was avoided because it was defiling. ...

A dismal picture of the severe limitations imposed upon the Jews of Iran with the avowed purpose of humiliating them is conveyed by two surviving lists of prohibitions, one issued before the Allahdad, and the second some three decades after it, by Muslim religious authorities. The first, recorded by an anonymous chronicler who calls himself “One of the children of the ghetto,” is as follows:

1. The Jews who pay no taxes have no claim to safety.
2. A convert who returns to his Judaism is to be punished by death.
3. If Jews and Muslims have a quarrel, woe to the Jew who comes to the help of his bretheren: his punishment is death.
4. A Jew who calls upon Allah or his Prophet to help him against a Muslim will be put to death.
5. The Jews are forbidden to build prayer houses in cities where Muslims live.
6. The house of a Jew must not be higher than that of a Muslim.
7. A Jew must wear a badge on his coat, and his garb must be different from that of a Muslim.
8. When riding a donkey, a Jew must keep his two legs hanging down on one side of the animal.
9. A Jew is forbidden to purchase a horse for himself.
10. A Jew is forbidden to carry arms.
11. A Jew must walk at the very side of the street.
12. A Jewish woman must not dress like a Muslim woman: she is not allowed to wear a veil over her head.
13. The blood-price of a Jew is forty toman.
14. If a Jew converts [to Islam], all the property of his family passes to him.

A few points in this list need elucidation. Point 4 meant that Jews, who, when speaking Persian, referred to God as Allah, as did the Muslims, were not allowed to invoke the help of God when quarreling with a Muslim. On the other hand, this point can also be interpreted as showing that occasionally Jews did get involved in quarrels with Muslims, and could do so with impunity. Point 5 means that the Jews were forbidden to build new synagogues; however, they were allowed to maintain and use their old synagogues, built prior to this decree. Point 11 is a humiliating decree: the side of the street was usually full of refuse and also served as a sewer. In point 12, for a woman to appear with uncovered head (or face) was a humiliation. Point 13 sets the blood-price (the compensation to be paid to a murderer to the kin of his victim) much lower than that payable for the killing of a Muslim – another humiliation. Point 14 is intended to serve as an inducement to conversion: a Jew, by converting, could appropriate everything his relatives owned.

In 1870, a Muslim religious authority be the name of Mullah ‘Abdallah issued a decree containing further restrictions:

1. On a rainy day a Jew must not go out into the street.
2. The veil of a Jewish woman must be of two colors.
3. The Jews must wear coats of blue color.
4. A Jew must step aside to let a Muslim pass.
5. A Jew must not raise his voice when speaking to a Muslim.
6. A Jew must ask in a tremulous and submissive voice the payment of a debt by a Muslim.
7. He must not wear a matching pair of shoes.
8. He must listen to insults by a Muslim with a lowered head and without opening his mouth.
9. A Jew must wrap up thoroughly the meat he buys, lest a Muslim eye see the impurity.
10. A Jew must not dwell in a beautiful house.
11. He must not clean the furniture of his house.
12. The door of his house must be low.
13. A Jew must not take off his coat and carry it in his hands.
14. A Jew must not comb his beard.
15. He must not take walks outside the city.
16. A Jewish physician is not allowed to ride a horse.
17. If a Jew is found drunk in the street, his punishment is death.
18. A Jewish wedding must be arranged in secret and without any noise.
19. A Jew must not eat fruits, except rotten ones.

The purpose in all these prohibitions was clearly to humiliate the Jews. Similar restrictions, with the same purpose in mind, were imposed also upon the Jews of Yemen, another Shi’i Muslim country. The basis of point 1 in Mullah ‘Abdallah’s restrictions is the Shi’i Muslim view that a Jew is impure, and that impurity is transferred by wetness more than by contact between dry bodies or objects. Hence, when it rains, and the Jew’s body or clothes become wet, his impurity could be transferred to a Muslim who happens to touch him or his clothes. The intention in points 2 and 3 is to make Jewish men and women recognizable from afar. While point 6 intends to keep the Jew low, at the same time we lear that some Jews were sufficiently well-to-do to engage in the money business and make loans to Muslims. Point 14 bars a Jew from taking care of his beard, which was an important part of the Iranian male Muslim toilet. Point 15 keeps Jews from enjoying a walk outside the ciity – a favorite pastime and recreation in a Muslim city. Point 16 is interesting: since all Jews were forbidden to ride horses, the special mention of a Jewish physician as having to obey this prohibition shows that a Jewish physician, sought after also by Muslim patients, even though he occupied a privileged position, nevertheless had to obey this rule. Point 17 is related to the general Muslim prohibition of drinking alcoholic beverages: a Jew was not forbidden to take drinks, but woe to him if he offended Muslim sensitivities by appearing in the streets in an inebriated condition. From point 18, one can conclude that of all Jewish celebrations, that of a wedding was the most pompous, most public, and most noisy; hence, it was felt necessary to single it out for stringent restrictions. Point 19 is a restriction made purely for the purpose of humiliation.