You Work, Give Us the Money, Allahu Akbar!’ The Fake History of Jizya

Raymond Ibrahim, 11/29/24

In an editorial titled “Jihad in Congo,” this summer ISIS boasted of its “recent operations, in which the blood of dozens of Christians was shed, and where many fled, leaving behind their money to be seized as spoils or to be ruined by fire set by the mujahideen.”

The Islamic terror group also offered “good news” to the Christians of the Democratic Republic of Congo:

To the Christians, their institutions, and their community organizations [that] search for long-term solutions that will rid them of a life surrounded by death in every direction we give them the good news that the only solution is for them is to convert to Islam or to pay the jizyah and remain submissive. Otherwise, the invasions will continue against them, as will the killings, burning their homes and shops, and seizing their money.

This is not the first time this word, jizya — so strange to Western ears — is mentioned in connection to Muslims slaughtering Christians. Earlier this year, in Mozambique, after jihadists murdered a Christian bus driver, a note was left at the scene:

We declare war on all Christians in the world for three things: either to be a Muslim or pay Jizya. If you haven’t pay Jizya it’s a war until final earth, Qiyama. [In other words, war to the ends of the earth until Resurrection Day.]… If you [Christians] refuse [to convert to Islam] then you will pay Jizya and if you refuse to pay Jizya you will be killed.

Religious Ransom

We have already explored the meaning of jizya in an earlier article. To recap, the word is derived from Koran 9:29:

Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

In other words, conquered Christians and Jews were to purchase their lives, which were otherwise forfeit to their Muslim conquerors, with money. As one medieval jurist succinctly put it, “their lives and their possessions are only protected by reason of payment of jizya.”

Incidentally, the Koran’s call for infidels to pay jizya while “feel[ing] themselves subdued” is precisely why the ISIS editorial urges the Christians of the Congo “to pay the jizyah and remain submissive.” Payment of jizya was never limited to extorting money from “infidels”; it was also a reminder for them to “know their place.” Some of Islam’s jurists mandated several humiliating rituals at the time of jizya payment. The presiding Muslim official could slap, choke, and/or pull the beard of the paying Christian or Jew — who might also be made to approach the official on all fours.

Although direct European intervention in the nineteenth century brought an end to jizya exactions, today — whether institutionalized as under the Islamic State and its offshoots, or as a “vigilante” rationale to plunder infidels, as was reported from Mali — jizya is back.

Shakedown, Breakdown, Takedown — You’re Busted

That said, there is a reason the perennial institution of shaking down infidels for money is so completely unknown or misunderstood in the West. In keeping with a theme recently addressed — how Fake History of Islam undermines the modern West’s ability to comprehend the dangers of Muhammad’s creed — the academics have utterly warped the meaning of jizya.

Consider the following excerpt from John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University:

In many ways, local populations [Christians, Jews, and others] found Muslim rule more flexible and tolerant than that of [Christian] Byzantium and [Zoroastrian] Persia. Religious communities were free to practice their faith to worship and be governed by their religious leaders and laws in such areas as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In exchange, they were required to pay tribute, a poll tax (jizya) that entitled them to Muslim protection from outside aggression and exempted them from military service. Thus, they were called the “protected ones” (dhimmi). In effect, this often meant lower taxes, greater local autonomy (emphasis added)

Despite the almost gushing tone related to Muslim rule, the idea that jizya was exacted in order to buy “Muslim protection from outside aggression” is an outright lie, as is Esposito’s assertion that jizya was paid to “exempt them [non-Muslims] from military service” — as if conquering Muslims would even want or allow their conquered and unclean “infidel” subjects to fight alongside them in the name of jihad (holy war against infidels) without first converting to Islam.

Debunking the Myths

Yet these two myths are now widely accepted. In “Nothing ‘Islamic’ About ISIS, Part Two: What the ‘Jizya’ Really Means,” Hesham A. Hassaballa recycles these fabrications on BeliefNet by quoting Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain, Sohaib Sultan, who concludes: “Thus, jizyah is no more and no less than an exemption tax in lieu of military service and in compensation for the ‘covenant of protection’ (dhimmah) accorded to such citizens by the Islamic state.”

In reality, and as seen via the words of a variety of authoritative Muslims, past and present, jizya was and remains protection money — not from outsiders, as Esposito and others claim, but from surrounding Muslims themselves. Whether it is the first caliphate from over a millennium ago or the latest, the Islamic State, Muslim overlords deem the lives of their “infidel” subjects forfeit unless they ransom it with money. The subjugated infidel is a beast to be milked “until it gives no more milk and until it milks blood,” to quote the memorable words of an early caliph, Suleiman Abdul Malik.

There is nothing humane, reasonable, or admirable about demands for jizya from conquered non-Muslim minorities, as the academics claim. Jizya is simply extortion money. Its purpose has always been to provide non-Muslims with protection from, not by Muslims: pay up, or else convert to Islam or die.

More generally, the concept of jizya has led some Muslims to believe that all infidels “owe them.” As Anjem Choudary, a Pakistani cleric and welfare recipient in England, once boasted:

We take the jizya, which is our haq [Arabic for “right”], anyway. The normal situation, by the way, is to take money from the kafir [infidel], isn’t it? So this is the normal situation. They give us the money — you work, give us the money, Allahu Akbar! We take the money.

As jizya continues making its way — most notably in an incident in Egypt where Muslims recently dismembered an innocent Christian man because his family could not meet their ransom demands — the West, thanks to the “lessons” of Fake History, remains oblivious.

‘You Work, Give Us the Money, Allahu Akbar!’ The Fake History of Jizya