One of the staples of the Islamic whitewashing industry is the claim that jizya — the extortion money subjugated Jews and Christians were required to pay (a la Koran 9:29) — actually “entitled them to Muslim protection from outside aggression and exempted them from military service,” to quote Georgetown University’s John Esposito.
By this widely held logic, Muslim invaders did not demand that the conquered infidel populations ransom their lives with money — as virtually all Muslim jurists explain it — but rather were kind enough to offer their non-Muslim subjects “protection” and exemption from military service for a small fee.
The irony, of course, is that this claim continues to be contradicted by the deeds of Muslims in the modern era. Most recently, on March 14, Matthew Samir Habib, a 22-year-old Coptic Christian in Egypt’s military was killed by his Muslim counterparts — simply for being Christian. He is merely the latest of about nine Christian soldiers to be killed in recent months and years by Muslim soldiers on account of their faith.
And in virtually every case, a similar pattern follows: despite all the evidence otherwise (such as physical bruises all over the bodies of the slain), military officials insist that — due to some sudden and inexplicable bout of depression — all these Christians supposedly committed “suicide”; meanwhile, the dead Christian soldiers’ families and those closest to them insist their slain sons and brothers were happy and healthy, that they were observant Christians, and that there was evidence that they were being persecuted by their Muslim “brothers-in-arms” for their evident Christianity.
For example, in this latest case from March 14, the murdered Copt was shot twice — and still authorities maintain it was suicide. (Click here for several more examples of military authorities offering strange reasons for the deaths, and Christian families rejecting them.)
Why these Christians were killed is not difficult to comprehend. For many Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere, war is synonymous with jihad — and it doesn’t do much for morale to have lowly infidels fighting alongside would-be jihadis.
From here we understand why Christians and Jews were truly “exempt” from military service: not because they paid jizya-tribute, but because, as conquered infidels, they themselves were the enemy and had to remain separate and subjugated — as Egypt’s Copts remain to this day. (As one example, their requests to open or renovate churches are always met with mass violence and upheavals, often enabled if not instigated by local Muslim authorities: as infidels, Christians are not allowed to build or renovate temples of worship that openly challenge the teachings of Muhammad.)
Apologists such as Esposito twist the facts around in another important way: while payment of jizya did indeed purchase “protection” (of a sort) for the conquered infidels, that protection was never against an outside hostile force, but against inside hostile forces — that is, Muslims themselves: sharia manuals make clear that failure to pay jizya made the lives of dhimmis forfeit.
Finally, that the Koran itself requires conquered non-Muslims “to give the jizya willingly while they are humbled” (9:29), puts to rest any claim that payment of jizya was a mere business transaction but rather a ritual show of Islamic dominance over — and contempt for — infidels.
mummymovie says
It’s just like the mob, street gangs, or the bully who steals your lunch money: the “protection” money you’re paying is only buying you “protection” from the one receiving your money.
VRWC member77 says
Exactly.
When explaining Islamic teachings to someone not familiar with them I always add that being a subject of Islam is like being a subject to the mob on steroids multiplied by 100,000.
Wellington says
I clicked on the link to John Esposito and up came Chapter Two, The Muslim Community in History, from his 1988 work, Islam: The Straight Path. It makes for amusing reading because throughout this chapter it’s essentially Islam good, Christianity bad.
Some specifics are a whitewashing of the word, “jihad,” little destruction by the Muslim conquests (and yet I have read where some 36,000 churches were destroyed by Muslims in the first century alone of the Islamic conquests, which are invariably described by many texts today as just Islam “spreading” as opposed to those nasty Westerners who “conquered”), Muslims were better to Christians than Christians were to Jews, the Crusades were mostly for profit and other non-laudable reasons, Richard III a killer and Saladin an Islamic gentleman, and, oh yes, the Muslims established a Pax Islamica where righteousness and goodness and fairness prevailed.
It really is worth reading to see how truth can be twisted in such a way that even intelligent persons will buy into what is proffered if they are not informed in the first place of what really happened. Instructive. Highly.
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
welligton,you are just a mithraist christian bigot, not atheist as you claim. Raymond Ibrahim is. descending too low basing his write ups on those myths of persecuting christians couched from mithraist bible. Assuming, not conceding, that incidence of muslim soldiers murdered their christian colleagues, was that in compliance with sharia on treatment of dhimmis? fools!!
Wellington says
Thanks, Jay Boo, for correcting Ibrahim’s assertion that I am a “mitrhaist Christian” (whatever the Hell this means, which I asked Ibrahim before to explain and he hasn’t to date; yes, what does Mithraism have to do with Christianity?; beats me) and also that Ibrahim thinks I asserted I’m an atheist when, in fact, as you noted, I am an agnostic. Big difference.
On another thread, I made the proposal to Ibrahim that he read a Gospel or two (my recommendation was to start with Mark since it is the earliest and shortest of the four Gospels and Matthew and Luke very much depend upon Mark), if for no other reason to better know the enemy. Besides, I also wrote to him it might make him become a Christian which would, I am certain, improve his life immensely respecting advancing as a human being.
Hope you are doing well in this very goofy world we live in. Take care.
elee says
I applaud mummymovie, above. Succinct statement Will we be ruled by thugs?
JawsV says
Who is that old lady in the pic above? Oh, esposito? I get it. He’s a groveler to Muslims and Islam. I wouldn’t send my doggie to Georgetown. He’s too intelligent.
mgoldberg says
The Jizya, according to a Sufi master of the 18th century is explained thus:
the 18th century Moroccan Sufi “master” Ibn Ajibah from his Koranic commentary. Describing unabashedly the purpose of the humiliating Koranic poll tax [6] (as per Koran 9:29 [6]) of submission for non-Muslims brought under Islamic hegemony by jihad, Ibn Ajibah makes clear the ultimate goal of its imposition was to achieve what he called the death of the “soul”, through the dhimmi’s execution of their own humanity:
[The dhimmi] is commanded to put his soul, good fortune and desires to death. Above all he should kill the love of life, leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely submissive. Thereafter nothing will be unbearable for him. He will be indifferent to subjugation or might. Poverty and wealth will be the same to him; praise and insult will be the same; preventing and yielding will be the same; lost and found will be the same. Then, when all things are the same, it [the soul] will be submissive and yield willingly what it should give. [Tafsir ibn ‘Ajibah. Commentary on Q9:29. Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn ‘Ajibah]”
—————–
Does that sound like the most abominable of concepts, morally inverted such that destroying the freedom, the integrity of ‘dhimmi’s is considered noble, laudable, and righteous according to the ‘ethics’ of Mohammed?
It is an abomination.
dumbledoresarmy says
Indeed it is.
Islam is one of the most purely *evil* belief systems that has ever existed, I am more and more driven to conclude.
It *normalises* and *sacralises* and *encourages* all the very worst, the basest, the ugliest and nastiest tendencies of human beings.
John Quincy Adams was right – the essence of mohammed’s teaching was “violence and lust”. Islam gives its males an unlimited ‘licence to bully’ all females and any Infidels; its females are allowed to bully infidel females. And Islam is set up such that Muslims very frequently prey upon *each other* as well. Want to get rid of someone? Accuse them of apostasy or blasphemy and watch the howling mob annihilate them.. and their family… and their neighbours. Except of course that *every* Muslim has to fear another Muslim deciding to either kill them off first and claim they had committed a capital crime, or else levelling the accusation and letting the mob from the mosque conduct the execution.
The lives of females are even more precarious than those of the males.
Females can be sentenced to death in the sovereign court of village gossip. Don’t like that pretty girl next door? – start a rumour she has commited ‘zina’, and presto! either her male kin will destroy her, or everyone will rally round to put her in a hole and throw rocks at her.
In any case, Muslim females from birth on up live under a llfe-long temporarily-commuted sentence of death, for the capital crime of being female. Aat any moment that sentence of death may be *activated*. No matter hOW perfectly meek and submissive and sharia-compliant they attempt to be, some programmed-to-be-uber-abusive male – very often, their own father, uncle, brother – will decide that she has committed zina, and annihilate her in an ‘honor’ murder. And very often it’s the same male kinsman who has *raped* her, who then howlingly accuses her of ‘zina’, and obliterates her.
The lot of dhimmis is even worse than that of Muslim females; the ‘protection’ that they buy with the exorbitant jizya and kharaj impositions is usually not worth spit, for the thing is: if *any* dhimmi breaches *any* of the draconian conditions of the Dhimma ‘contract’, then the Jihad – full-on murder, rape, arson, pillage, enslavement, the works – can be launched against their entire community.
And since Muslims are programmed to *hate and despise* Dhimmis and since the prospect of raping, robbing and murdering helpless people – with impunity, indeed with *social approval* attached – is very tempting to a large subset of humans, why then, history is FULL of fabricated accusations used by Muslims here or Muslims there, to justify unloosing the lynch mobs upon the dhimmi communities.
dumbledoresarmy says
That passage from Ibn Abijah reads like instructions for the use of a pimp… the kind of pimp who ‘breaks in’ a girl or boy so they can be used as playthings in a brothel for psychopathic sadists.
Pol Pot and the abominable Kim dynasty in North Korea would perfectly understand what Ibn Abijah is talking about.
Brenda says
All Muslims are lying sacks of sxxx.
KJW says
If you look up the Pact of Umar on Wikipedia, there’s a nice, tidy list of about 20 aspects of dhimmitude and humiliation aside from the jizya.