Jizya Resurgence

John R. Houk

© July 8, 2011

Do you know what jizya is? Jizya is the name that Muslims use to extort money from non-Muslims (kafir) living under the political authority of a Muslim State. The jizya-poll tax is justified as protection money that the non-believing Muslim will be free from harm from other Muslims. Of course there is also a catch to the protection money. The kafir living in Muslim lands is also called a dhimmi. The dhimmi must pay jizya for protection; however if the dhimmi prays in public, acts in any many defined as insulting to a Muslim, if a dhimmi builds a Church, if a dhimmi attempts to marry a Muslim and does not convert then a crime has been committed and on and on and on. The point is the life a dhimmi in a Muslim nation is worse than what Black South Africans endured during White enforced Apartheid.

Now a Muslim apologist will tell a Westerner especially an American that jizya has not been enforced for years and years. Most Muslim nations indeed officially ended the imposition of jizya by the late 19^th and early 20^th century; however the spirit of jizya has not ended for the dhimmis in Muslim lands. Marks of humiliation are still exacted in Muslim nations to this very day. If the humiliation is not government sanctioned the government looks away as Muslim clerics lead Muslim mobs to acts of violence and destruction against the dhimmi (primarily Christians) according to the Islamic rules of jizya and dhimmitude.

The practice of jizya’s unofficial enforcement was less for protection and more to bring wealth to conquering Muslim Caliphs. The conquered Christian and Hindu areas of the world was the majority population. Once oppressive measures of dhimmitude took its toll on the Christian faithful, the jizya began to bring less revenue as more converted to Islam to escape the cruelty of dhimmitude.  

With a resurgence of Islamic purity sweeping the Muslim world which is quickly ending the Muslim apologist claim that Islamism is an aberrant practice compared to the majority of moderate Muslim, there is a clamor for the return of jizya and government sanctioned enforcement of dhimmitude as official policy in Muslim nations. The Egyptian government which is slowly becoming dominated by the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is publicly talking of the return of official jizya for that nation’s rather large Coptic Christian population.

Raymond Ibrahim writes about Egyptian talk of returning the jizya on Coptic Christians.

JRH 7/8/11