Dhimmi Of The Millennium Award Winner?

Now, we don't want to jump the gun on this. It might be a little early to name a winner for Dhimmi Of The Millennium Award since there are 991 years left to go in the current millennium. But do read on - I just can't conceive of this one being beaten. It comes from Gateway Pundit via The Brussels Journal.

Most women who get repeatedly raped while being held captive might find that a tad objectionable. Not Joanie de Rijke, 43 year old left wing Dutch journalist who travelled to Afghanistan expecting to interview members of the Taliban. Taken captive by a Taliban commander, she was repeatedly raped by her Muslim captor while awaiting payment of a ransom. He even invited her to have a threesome with one of his three wives. After the ransom was paid and Ms. de Rijke was released, she defended her captor, saying she bore no animus: “I do not want to depict the Taliban as monsters. I am not angry with Ghazi Gul. After all, he let me live” and, she added, "they . . . respected me" and that they gave her "tea and biscuits.”

Dhimmi on steroids.

And, also, mentally unbalanced.

This points to a fascinating insight into the dysfunctional psychology of the left, particularly in Europe where the problem of Islamicization is severe. Dutch politician Geert Wilders explained it this way before the Dutch Parliament:

This story . . . is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. . . . Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims – that is the one thing they will condemn.”

Wilders really rattled the cages of the Netherlands' elite with that one. Denunciations have filled the airwaves. But Wilders is right. And to Mr. Wilders points, Thomas Landen at Brussels Journal adds:

Her reaction confirms precisely what Wilders was trying to say. In reality the Taliban are not monsters because they call themselves Taliban, but because they behave like monsters. People like de Rijke, however, no longer judge people by their behavior and their actions, but condone them for the noble motives which they imagine have driven them to commit their acts. As Wilders said, “They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth.”

This attitude led Joanie de Rijke to travel to Afghanistan in the first place, with the aim of interviewing Taliban terrorists who had killed ten French soldiers. This attitude leads her editor to question whether the Taliban who abducted and raped de Rijke are “real Taliban” because “real Taliban do not behave that way.” This attitude recently led an American woman in Bakersfield, California, to approach a man lurking in the parking lot where she had parked her car because, as she told the police, though the man looked like a thug she did not want to appear racist. The man held her at gunpoint, threatening to kill her 11 month old daughter, and robbed and raped her. This attitude has led Western Europe to open its doors to large scale immigration from Muslim countries. This attitude, and here Wilders does not take the argument far enough, is worse than the Stockholm syndrome.

Those who have been abducted and suffer from Stockholm syndrome usually have not placed themselves in danger willingly. They had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The phenomenon illustrated by the case of Joanie de Rijke is that of people who for ideological reasons deny the existence of danger and subsequently put themselves in danger. Unlike ordinary Stockholm syndrome sufferers they do not begin to shown signs of loyalty to the criminal while in captivity, but have already surrendered to the criminal before their captivity, and, indeed, have ended up in captivity as a consequence of their ideological blindness.

And so, in a way Joanie de Rijke is right. She did not develop Stockholm syndrome while in captivity. She had the syndrome even before she left for Afghanistan. It is natural that she should resent her state of mind being described as Stockholm syndrome, because she considers it to be the state of mind of a righteous and intelligent modern intellectual. It is the state of mind which she shares with almost the entire political and intellectual class of Europe today, that of the hostage to political correctness.

And Dr. Sanity adds her own thoughts on this issue, tying it in to Obama's approach to the "Muslim world" articulated in his Cairo address. According to the good doctor:

[W]ilders, whatever you may think of him, has nailed the fundamental problem with both Obama and de Rijke (and throw in Evan Thomas and most of the clueless left): they are desperate to deny reality.

The former enables and encourages the worse and most barbaric aspects of Islam by granting it moral equivalence with the West to maintain his own unrivaled grandiosity and self-delusion; the latter is willing to overlook being physically violated rather than confront her own cognitive dissonance and the delusions of her leftist ideology.

The leftist journalist raped by the Taliban is exactly the kind of person who worships the emptiness and vacuity of an Obama; and even depends on him to maintain her delusional world view, which habitually excuses the atrocities committed in the name of Islam while blaming America for all the evil in the world.

Islamoschmoozing is simply Obama's hopeychangey foreign policy strategy of appeasement. As hard as it is to believe, Obama and his denial of reality 'out-UNs' the UN and 'out-Europeans' the Europeans in taking the appeasement of Islam to new and greater heights of appeasementdom. . . .

Do read her entire post.

So is she Dhimmi of the Millennium? Or should we make it a group award to the entire Euroleft who are so upset with Geert Wilders for having the effrontery to pull back the curtains and shine some light on their incredibly dysfunctional society.