DHIMMITUDE IN OBAMACARE?!? Did You Get The Same E-mail I Did?
by James Rogers
Clash Daily Contributor
I received an email last week proclaiming that the word dhimmitude was on page 107 of the Affordable Care Act so I hurried to my search engine and started looking for the ACA to see for myself. I found a PDF file, 906 pages long (I thought I remembered someone reporting it to be 2000 plus pages when Nancy Pelosi said we have to pass it before we find out what is in it). The pages were not numbered so I don’t know if I ever found page 107 or not. In any case I did not find “dhimmitude” or anything remotely resembling dhimmitude or dhimmi on any pages from 102 down to 116 by the page numbering at the top of the file.
There were references to “conscientious” objectors for certain sects or religious groups such as Native American Indians, Scientologists, self-employed Amish. It requires such a person or to file a document allowing them to be exempt from the ACA. Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites who are employed and pay SSI are required to have ACA. Christians and Jews are not allowed such exemption because they have been participating in various kinds of insurance programs since before 1951. Christian Scientists also asked for an exemption proclaiming they would never use the ACA insurance due to their religious convictions.
RELIGIOUS CONSCIENCE EXEMPTION—Such term shall not include any individual for any month if such individual has in effect an exemption under section 1311(d)(4)(H) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which certifies that such individual is a member of a recognized religious sect or division thereof described in section 1402(g)(1) and an adherent of established tenets or teachings of such sect or division as described in such section.
To go a little further, dhimmitude is not even in the Qur’an. It is a French neologism created by adding the suffix “tude” to dhimmi which is in the Qur’an. It is the Arabic word meaning “protected”. It refers to a person or persons living in an Islamic state that is of some other religion who is given protected status and allowed to retain their original faith in exchange for payment of tax called the jizya tax. They are however exempted from the zakat tax paid by Muslims. As I understand it, even Muslims who would like be exempted from the religious requirements of Islam can pay the jizya tax.
Dhimmi was developed in the seventh century as a way of dealing with non-Muslims under Muslim rule. It was called The Pact of Umar.
After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion in the 7th century, Muslims leaders were required to work out a way of dealing with Non-Muslims, who remained in the majority in many areas for centuries. The solution was to develop the notion of the “dhimma”, or “protected person”. The Dhimmi were required to pay an extra tax, but usually they were unmolested. This compares well with the treatment meted out to non-Christians in Christian Europe. The Pact of Umar is supposed to have been the peace accord offered by the Caliph Umar to the Christians of Syria, a “pact” which formed the pattern of later interaction.
I must admit this was my first time ever to try to read and understand a law written by our lawmakers in Washington, D.C. and I have no intention of reading all 906 pages. Just trying to find dhimmi or dhimmitude was an eye-straining task. I had no problem with the paragraph and sub-paragraph structure but the wording and referencing back and forth to other sections and paragraphs and sub-paragraphs kept me scrolling up and down the document for several hours. I think I might go back to the congress dot gov website and take on a smaller bill sometime though.
As for dhimmi being in the ACA I am very sure that it isn’t. A liberal friend of mine said the email was probably circulated by a right-wing radical just to make President Obama look bad. I offered the same right back to him saying it could have been circulated by a left-wing radical to make right-wing radicals look bad. I don’t know who started the letter, I only know that it was started in April 2010. Whoever is doing things like should just quit because in the long run it makes us all look bad.
Image: http://solectwochroscice.pl/read-your-emails
James Rogers is retired from 37 years of Newspaper/printing and publishing and has written and edited a lot of copy during those decades. He currently blogs and writes short stories for his entertainment and to keep his mind sharp.