A baseless and particularly paranoid rumor about the Affordable Care Act (popularly known as “Obamacare”) is easily debunked, yet despite that has continued to make the rounds years after its passage:
The text of the chain email turned into an emotionally charged Facebook post claims — baselessly — that the word “dhimmitude” appears on page 107 of the health care law:
THIS MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL!!! I AM SO MAD!
What does this word mean? DhimmitudeThe word “Dhimmitude” is found in the new health care bill. So what does it mean? Thought this was interesting and worth passing on.
Obama used it in the health care bill . Now isn’t this interesting? It is also included in the health care law.
Dhimmitude . I had never heard the word until now, so I typed it into Google and started reading. Pretty interesting! It’s on Page 107 of the Obama healthcare bill. I looked this up on Google and,
yep, it exists…..it is a REAL word.Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-Muslin populations conquered through jihad (Holy War). Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-Muslims in exchange for tolerating their presenceAND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to Islam!
ObamaCare allows the establishment of Dhimmitude and Sharia Muslim diktat in the United States !
AND Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance and also from the penalty tax for being uninsured! Islam considers insurance to be “gambling,” “risk-taking,” and “usury” and is thus banned. Muslims are specifically granted exemption based on this.
How convenient. So I, as a Christian, will have crippling IRS liens placed against all of my assets, including real estate, cattle, and even accounts receivable, and will face hard prison time because I refuse to buy insurance or pay the penalty tax. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan will have no such penalty and will have 100% of his health insurance needs paid for by the de-facto government insurance.
Non-Muslims will be paying a tax to subsidize Muslims. This is Dhimmitude.
I recommend sending this on to your contacts. American citizens need to know about it…..
The post, as mentioned, it defines the word’s meaning as:
Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-Muslim populations conquered through jihad (Holy War). Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-Muslims in exchange for tolerating their presence AND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to Islam.
A search for the word “dhimmitude” in the healthcare law turned up no results. A search for the word in a companion bill to the healthcare law also yielded no results, so the claim is completely made up. Further, the word “dhimmitude” does not appear in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam.
However, a number of definitions for the word “dhimmi” can be found:
Dhimmi (Subject Entry)
Non-Muslim under protection of Muslim law. A covenant of protection was made with conquered “Peoples of the Book,” which included Jews, Christians, Sabaeans.
Dhimmī (Subject Entry)
In Islamic law, a non-Muslim who is under a covenant of protection (dhimmah) with the Muslim authority is considered dhimmī.
Dhimmī (Subject Entry)
In Islamic law one who is in the covenant of protection (dhimmah) with the Muslim power is considered dhimmī.
In the book Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, author Bat Ye’or (who originally popularized the word “dhimmitude”) describes it as a social system in which non-Muslims (or “dhimmis”) live under Muslim law. The term appears to have been adopted en masse in the last few decades by certain scholars and social commentators, but it does not specifically refer to jihad or taxing non-Muslims.
It is true that individuals can be exempted from penalties under the ACA for religious reasons, but no specific exemptions are listed for Muslims. The United States Supreme Court’s decision to exempt Hobby Lobby from the healthcare law’s contraceptive requirement based on the Christian beliefs of its owner demonstrates that religious exemptions do not apply solely to one religious group.
Update 10/15/2019 11:30am: This page has been updated and refurbished. You can find the original here.
Additional information, October 22 2019, 11:46am: A Facebook post about the “Dhimmitude” rumor, originally posted in 2013, spiked in popularity in October 2019 and generated new interest in the claim.