In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, Robert Spencer entitles chapter four “Islam: Religion of Intolerance.” On p.47 he summarizes the chapter in three points, as follows:
*Islamic law mandates second-class status for Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims in Islamic society.
*These laws have never been abrogated or revised by any authority.
*The idea that Jews fared better in Islamic lands than in Christian Europe is false. [1]
This article will rebut the last point. (A follow up article will refute the first two.) Before we begin, a clarification of Spencer’s line of argumentation is in order. He dedicates page after page to describe how oppressive Islamic rule has been towards infidels, in order to bash the Muslims (and Islam) over the head with. Of course, Spencer’s line of argumentation would be nullified if it were pointed out that Western Christianity–of which he is a self-proclaimed defender of–was even more oppressive towards infidels. That is why he states his third point above, and argues that “the Muslim laws were much harsher for Jews than those of Christendom” [2] and that “in Christian lands there was the idea, however imperfect, of the equality of dignity and rights for all people.” [3]
This is my rebuttal of his argument.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
The Pact of Umar
An Apocryphal Document
The More Discriminatory Laws Were Optional and Therefore Ignored
Discriminatory Conditions Rarely Enforced
This is a Secular Historical Issue, Not an Ideologically Driven Religious One
Mainstream Muslims Did Not Generally Enforce the Discriminatory Conditions in the Pact of Umar
Inspiration for the Pact of Umar
The Perpetual Servitude of Infidels
Jizya
Symbolic Acts of Humiliation
Distinctive Clothing (Ghiyar) and the Yellow Badge
Names
Exclusion from Public Office
Houses of Worship
The Freedom to Practice Religion and Public Displays
Proselytizing
Blasphemy
Occupational Opportunities and Right to Own Land
Forced Ghettoization and Freedom of Movement
Expulsions, Forced Conversions, and Massacres
Summary
Conclusion
———————–
Preface
Ahl al-Dhimma (dhimmi for short) translates to “the protected people” and was the historical word used to refer to non-Muslim peoples (such as Jews and Christians) living under Islamic rule. Arabist ideologues and Muslim apologists perpetuate the myth that the Islamic world was an idyllic “interfaith utopia” which epitomized religious tolerance; some seem to go as far as to claim that dhimmis “had it better” than Muslims under Islamic rule.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, anti-Islam ideologues argue that not only did Muslims historically persecute dhimmis, but that nonbelievers in the Islamic Orient were treated much worse than their counterparts were in the contemporaneous Christian Europe of the Middle Ages. To bolster this claim, one anti-Islam “researcher” by the pseudonym of Bat Ye’or coined the concept of “dhimmitude.” A counter-myth is now propagated on various websites, blogs and forums, namely that Islamic rule over non-Muslims had been characterized by an unparalleled brutality and wickedness. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies calls out Bat Ye’or by name:
[One must] explain acts of Islamic oppression that did occur, without exaggerating them selectively into a ‘countermyth of Islamic persecution,’ as recent revisionism has done (e.g. Bat Ye’or 1985). [4]
These two sides (proponents of the interfaith utopia theory on the one hand and the Islamic persecution myth on the other hand) peddle their diametrically opposed paradigms, selectively quoting from various sources in order to “prove” their side. Of course, the truth lies in between this myth and counter-myth: dhimmis did not live under an idyllic interfaith utopia under Islamic rule–far from it: discrimination against nonbelievers was a prevalent phenomenon. Dhimmis were clearly treated as second-class citizens.
On the other hand, the counter-myth is equally dishonest and fails to contextualize the situation of dhimmis in the Islamic Orient with that of their counterparts in Christian Europe. We are always reminded by anti-Islam ideologues of the dhimmitude, a catch-all phrase which has caught on very well in recent times; the term is used as a stick to beat Muslims over the head with, as well as one to incite feelings of paranoia and xenophobia. This article will however recount what they–perhaps in their ignorance and zeal–have neglected to mention: there was in fact a direct corollary to the dhimmitude in the Christian West. It too has a catchy name: the Christian belief in the Perpetual Servitude of infidels, a concept which was in fact much more oppressive than the so-called dhimmitude.
Mark R. Cohen, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, is arguably considered to be the world’s leading scholar of Jews living in the Middle Ages under Islamic rule. He decided to write a book that contrasted the treatment of Jews living in the Islamic Orient with their counterparts in the Christian West. This book, Under Crescent and Cross, is the first of its kind, as it analytically compares the treatment of Jewish dhimmis (pejoratively called dhimmitude by ideologues) with that of the Perpetua Servitudo (Perpetual Servitude) of Jewish infidels. Cohen’s magnum opus is remarkably balanced, neutral, and analytical: it rejects both myth and counter-myth, but concludes that while dhimmis were certainly not living under any sort of interfaith utopia, they did have better living conditions than nonbelievers in the Christian West. This article will use Professor Cohen’s book as a general template, but will cite other sources as well in order to cater to the online environment, taking into consideration the “internet chatter” and tailoring the arguments accordingly.
Introduction
In Arab lands, the “minority communities” (so to speak) consisted primarily of Jews and Christians. In Europe, it was Jews alone. Hence, the Jewish population is the common denominator and remains the best population to study; how then did their lot differ in the Christian West and the Islamic East?
Professor Cohen opens his book by saying:
When I began studying medieval Jewish history thirty years ago, conventional wisdom held that Jews living “under the crescent” enjoyed substantially greater security and a higher level of political and cultural integration than did Jews living “under the cross.” This was especially true of the persecuted Ashkenazic Jews of northern Europe. The fruitful Jewish-Muslim interfaith “symbiosis”…contrasted sharply with the sorrowful record of Jewish-Christian conflict in the Ashkenazic lands…[There was a] lachrymose conception of [European] Jewish history…
Recent decades have witnessed an effort to alter this picture. Toward the end of the 1960s–or, or more precisely, following the Six-Day War of June 1967–factors stemming from the Arab-Israeli conflict gave birth in some quarters to a radical revision of Jewish-Arab history. The new notion first appeared mainly in the writings of nonspecialists publishing in popular forums… [5]
I interject just to point out the keywords “nonspecialists” and “forums.” This drive to radically revise history is clearly an ideologically driven endeavor, devoid of academic integrity. Going on, Cohen says:
According to this [revised] view, the “Golden Age” was actually an era of hardship and oppression… [characterized by] discrimination and persecution. Some went so far as to suggest that the fate of Jews of Islam was at times as doleful as the lot of the Jews in Europe. I have chosen to call this view “the neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history.” [6]
Notice that Professor Cohen considers it a stretch to say that the Jews of Islam were treated as poorly as they were in Europe (hence his usage of the phrase “some went so far as to suggest…”). Imagine his surprise if Cohen were to read the works of populist nonspecialists such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller who go even farther and argue that not only was it equally bad, but far worse. Such is the profound degree of revisionism inherent in the writings of these two anti-Islam ideologues, and those with similar ideological bents.
Cohen then criticizes Arab apologists:
It is a “countermyth” that emerged in dialectical opposition to the twin challenge of modern Arab propaganda and Arab antisemitism. In the wake of the defeat in June 1967, Arab apologists…embraced the “myth”…that Muslims and Jews had for centuries enjoyed utopian relations. This harmony had been shattered by the Zionist movement and, in particular, by the creation of the State of Israel. Remove the Zionist-Israeli threat, so the argument implied, and the old harmony would be restored, with Jews and Arabs living side by side in an interfaith utopia under Arab-Muslim protection. [7]
Cohen concludes:
The polarization of views that has thus dominated discussion of medieval Islamic-Jewish relations in recent years has made it increasingly difficult to write on the subject without getting involved in apologetics and polemics. I remain convinced that the “myth of the Islamic-Jewish interfaith utopia” and the “countermyth of Islamic persecution of Jews” equally distort the past. How might we address the underlying historical question in a way that avoids both extremes and, at the same time, deepens understanding of why, as most reasonable observers will agree, the Islamic-Jewish relationship bred so much less violence and persecution than relations between Christians and Jews [in Europe]? The comparative approach has seemed the most useful one…
When all is said and done, however, the historical evidence indicates that the Jews of Islam, especially during the formative and classical centuries (up to the thirteenth century), experienced much less persecution than did the Jews of Christendom. [8]
The Pact of Umar
The anti-Islam ideologues tend to focus on a document known as the Pact of Umar, from which the entire theory of dhimmitude is extracted. For example, Robert Spencer, the admin of the xenophobic website JihadWatch.org, explains:
The notorious Pact of Umar, an agreement made, according to Islamic tradition, between the caliph Umar, who ruled the Muslims from 634 to 644, and a Christian community.
This Pact is worth close examination, because it became the foundation for Islamic law regarding the treatment of the dhimmis. With remarkably little variation, throughout Islamic history whenever Islamic law was strictly enforced, this is generally how non-Muslims were treated. Working from the full text as Ibn Kathir has it, these are the conditions the Christians accept in return for “safety for ourselves, children, property and followers of our religion” – conditions that, according to Ibn Kathir, “ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.” The Christians will not:
1. Build “a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk”;
2. “Restore any place of worship that needs restoration”;
3. Use such places “for the purpose of enmity against Muslims”;
4. “Allow a spy against Muslims into our churches and homes or hide deceit [or betrayal] against Muslims”;
5. Imitate the Muslims’ “clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names”;
6. “Ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons”;
7. “Encrypt our stamps in Arabic”
8. “Sell liquor” – Christians in Iraq in the last few years ran afoul of Muslims reasserting this rule;
9. “Teach our children the Qur’an”;
10. “Publicize practices of Shirk” – that is, associating partners with Allah, such as regarding Jesus as Son of God. In other words, Christian and other non-Muslim religious practice will be private, if not downright furtive;
11. Build “crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets” – again, Christian worship must not be public, where Muslims can see it and become annoyed;
12. “Sound the bells in our churches, except discreetly, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims, nor raise our voices [with prayer] at our funerals, or light torches in funeral processions in the fairways of Muslims, or their markets”;
13. “Bury our dead next to Muslim dead”;
14. “Buy servants who were captured by Muslims”;
15. “Invite anyone to Shirk” – that is, proselytize, although the Christians also agree not to:
16. “Prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so.” Thus the Christians can be the objects of proselytizing, but must not engage in it themselves;
17. “Beat any Muslim.”
Meanwhile, the Christians will:
1. Allow Muslims to rest “in our churches whether they come by day or night”;
2. “Open the doors [of our houses of worship] for the wayfarer and passerby”;
3. Provide board and food for “those Muslims who come as guests” for three days;
4. “Respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them” – shades of Jim Crow;
5. “Have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist” – these are so that a Muslim recognizes a non-Muslim as such and doesn’t make the mistake of greeting him with As-salaamu aleikum, “Peace be upon you,” which is the Muslim greeting for a fellow Muslim;
6. “Be guides for Muslims and refrain from breaching their privacy in their homes.”
The Christians swore: “If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.”
Of course, the Pact of Umar is a seventh-century document. But the imperative to subjugate non-Muslims as mandated by Qur’an 9:29 and elaborated by this Pact became and remained part of Islamic law.
As one can see, Spencer has given a great deal of importance to this document, the Pact of Umar. It is, in his own words, the “foundation” of his argument against Islamic treatment of non-Muslims. Supposedly the pact was signed by Umar ibn al-Khattab, a disciple of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. In it, a series of Jim Crow laws were stipulated, and the Christian community was forced to agree to them. According to the adherents of the counter-myth, the Pact of Umar typifies the miserable experience of the dhimmis.
However, there are certain important nuances which “mitigate” the Pact of Umar and make it less persuasive of a proof-text for the neo-lachrymose theory of the Jewish-Islamic experience.
An Apocryphal Document
The first point that must be taken into consideration is that most experts agree that the document is itself a forgery:
Umar is attributed with the authorship of the “Covenant of Umar” or the “Pact of Umar”…The first western research done on the “Covenant of Umar” was initiated by T.W. Arnold in The Preaching of Islam, and A.S. Tritton in “Islam and the Protected Religions.” They both asserted that the “Covenant” was an apocryphal document. [9]
The historicity of this document is called into question by modern scholars, who hold that it is a product of later generations who mistakenly attributed it to Umar:
A later generation attributed to ‘Umar a number of restrictive regulations which hampered the Christians in the free exercise of their religion, but De Goeje and Caetani have proved without a doubt that they are the invention of a later age. [10]
The document appears hundreds of years after Umar’s death:
No text of the document can be dated earlier than the tenth or eleventh century. [11]
Historians refer to it as a “spurious” document:
The so-called Pact or Covenant of ‘Umar, [is] a spurious treaty ascribed to the Caliph ‘Umar I. [12]
And:
…the spurious Covenant of Umar, the terms supposedly granted to the Christians by the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab… [13]
Interestingly, Robert Spencer cites A.S. Tritton as a source in his book (chapter four of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades), but fails to mention that Tritton himself viewed the document as an outright forgery:
The covenant is not the work of ‘Umar. [14]
Omer Subhani pointed out the spurious nature of the document to Spencer in an online debate. The point was uncontested by the latter, but its relevance was downplayed. Spencer countered the argument by stating that the historicity of the document is of little more than a “matter of historical interest;” in other words, the Muslim jurists of that era viewed it as authentic and subsequently enforced it. He then quotes from various medieval Islamic texts to prove the latter point.
Both Subhani and Spencer have improperly understood the issue. Subhani’s approach is flawed because he invests too much of his argument on proving the inauthentic nature of the document; but as Spencer points out, this would not be sufficient to “nullify” the effects of the pact, which could be enforced regardless. But at the same time, Spencer is hasty in concluding that the spurious nature of the pact has no relevance whatsoever.
As Professor Mark R. Cohen and other historians point out, the document seems to have been forged long after the early classical period of Islam, and certainly only came to prominence much after that; it was the work of latter day Muslims that found its way into the jurisprudential texts. This explains why the early classical period of Islam was characterized by a state of relative tolerance towards dhimmis. Umar ibn al-Khattab himself was known to be considerably mild with unbelievers. Therefore, Omer Subhani’s point mitigates but does not erase the effects of the Pact of Umar altogether; in other words, the Pact cannot be used to define the entire Islamic experience, especially not the theologically crucial early period (such as the time of the Rashidun).
Furthermore, the spurious nature of the Pact of Umar has theological implications, which I will discuss in a follow up article.
The More Discriminatory Laws Were Optional and Therefore Ignored
The conditions of the Pact of Umar were divided into two: those which were considered mandatory and those which were understood to be optional (and therefore generally ignored). The Christian scholar and professor Nabeel Jabbour of Columbia International University writes:
[There were] the Required Rules, which were compulsory, including:
1. Not to criticize or slander Islam.
2. Not to criticize or slander the Quran.
3. Not to mention the name of the prophet in contempt or falsification.
4. Not to commit adultery with a Muslim woman.
5. Neither to proselytize a Muslim to another religion, nor entice the Muslim to consider changing his religion.
6. Not to attempt to kill a Muslim or take his money.
7. Not to take the side of the house of war against the house of Islam.
The Favorable or Desired Rules:
1. A specific dress code for Christians to identify them as non-Muslims.
2. Not to beat the bells of churches loudly, nor raise their voices in chanting Christian songs or scriptures.
3. Not to build the houses of Christians higher than those of the Muslims.
4. Not to display idolatry, crosses, nor display freedom in drinking wine or eating pork.
5. Not to display Christian funerals or mourning for the dead.
6. Not to ride horses.
Muslim rulers who were moderate put into practice the required rules and ignored the favorable rules. [15]
One notes that the more discriminatory laws–such as the dress code, the prohibition to build houses higher than those of the Muslims, the prohibition to ride horses, and the like–were amongst the optional (and generally unenforced) laws. This division between the required and the favorable rules was recognized by the very same conservative clerics which the anti-Islam ideologues use as a proof. Islamic jurists held that the Pact of Umar was considered valid so long as the required rules were adhered to, in which case the lives, property, and well-being of the dhimmis was considered sacrosanct.
For example, Imam al-Mawardi (died 1058 A.D.) placed only six of the conditions in the obligatory category (wajibat), as follows:
1. Not to abuse the Quran.
2. Not to abuse the Prophet.
3. Not to abuse the religion of Islam.
4. Not to fornicate with (or marry) a Muslim woman.
5. Not to harm a Muslim.
6. Not to help the enemy or spies. [16]
Imam al-Farra (d. 1061 A.D.) had a similar list of obligatory conditions:
1. Not to fight the Muslims.
2. Not to fornicate with a Muslim woman.
3. Not to marry a Muslim woman.
4. Not to undermine a Muslim’s faith in Islam.
5. Not to commit highway robbery.
6. Not to support a spy.
7. Not to write to the enemy about the situation of the Muslims to aid them in battle.
8. Not to kill a Muslim. [17]
Ibn Qudama (d. 1233 A.D.) had a similar list, including jizya and only one discriminatory condition in his classification scheme. [18]
Interestingly, the book Robert Spencer himself quoted says this:
Before going into details there is one general remark to be made. In theory the dhimmi had to fulfill all the conditions of the covenant if he would claim protection. In practice only a few actions put him outside the protection of Muslim law…Malik, Shafe’i, and Ahmad b. Hanbal hold that failure to pay the poll-tax deprives them of protection. This was not the view of Abu Hanifa. Ahmad and Malik hold that four things put the dhimmi outside the law–blasphemy of God, of His book, of His religion, and of His Prophet.
Abul Kasim said that eight deeds made a dhimmi an outlaw. They are [1] an agreement to fight the Muslims, [2] fornication with a Muslim woman, [3] an attempt to marry one, [4] an attempt to pervert a Muslim from his religion, [5] robbery of a Muslim on the highway, [6] acting as a spy for unbelievers or [7] sending them information or acting as a guide to them, [8] and the killing of a Muslim man or woman.
Abu Hanifa taught that they must not be too severe with dhimmis who insulted the Prophet. Shafe’i said that one who repented of having insulted the Prophet might be pardoned and restored to his privileges. Ibn Taimiya taught that the death penalty could not be evaded. [19]
As can be seen, the required rules revolved around preventing the non-Muslims from “harming” the Muslims, physically or even verbally. Naturally, some of these required rules would be objectionable in today’s context, but one must understand that it was the norm back then. Certainly in medieval Europe it was not permissible to attack Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity. (More on this point later.)
The division of the conditions into obligations and recommendations “mitigates” the effects of the Pact of Umar quite considerably. The anti-Islam ideologues attempt to characterize the entire Islamic experience by the stipulations in the document which were in fact rarely enforced, as we shall discuss below.
Discriminatory Conditions Rarely Enforced
Robert Spencer claims that the discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the Pact of Umar were generally enforced–at least most or the majority of the time. Says Spencer:
These laws largely governed the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic states for centuries…[even though] here or there they were relaxed or ignored for various periods. [20]
Spencer explicitly says that conditions in the Pact of Umar were “generally how non-Muslims were treated,” and that these conditions were enforced “with remarkably little variation”:
This Pact is worth close examination, because it became the foundation for Islamic law regarding the treatment of the dhimmis. With remarkably little variation, throughout Islamic history whenever Islamic law was strictly enforced, this is generally how non-Muslims were treated.
This is actually the key to the debate, not the historicity of the document nor the words of medieval Islamic clerics. The question is: were the “Jim Crow” laws generally enforced or not? Spencer says: yes “generally” they were, “with remarkably little variation.” It is this manifest lie that buttresses the entire dhimmitude concept.
The truth is that the discriminatory conditions in the Pact of Umar were rarely enforced; they were generally ignored and unenforced:
It is a well known fact that the Muslim authorities generally ignored the provisions of the Pact of ‘Umar. [21]
And:
The so-called ‘Pact of ‘Umar’…[decreed that] Non-Muslims could not erect new houses of worship nor repair old ones; they had to observe their religious rites indoors and quietly, so as not to insult the superiority of Islam; they could not take Arabic honorific names (Abu ‘Imran, for instance); they were required to dress in distinctive garb, notably with a belt called the zunnar; they could not own captive slaves [etc]…
With the exception of the fiscally important poll tax, the sources at our disposal indicate that, especially during the classical centuries (seventh to thirteenth), the restrictive laws of the dhimma, including the ban on office-holding, were enforced irregularly and sporadically. Moreover, moves to make the laws more severe, or to enforce their provisions when thought to have been violated, generally had to pass juristic reasoning and on-scene investigation of Muslim religious scholars. Loyal to divinely inspired text, Muslim jurists and judges (like Jewish halachic scholars) were more likely to stick to tradition and to exercise due process of law than to expand, arbitrarily, the humiliating laws of the dhimma. When the ‘mad’ Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim ran amuck persecuting Christians and Jews in the first two decades of the eleventh century (one of the few serious persecutions affecting Jews), Muslims themselves realized that his excesses outrageously violated the Pact of ‘Umar, ‘the stipulations which al-Hakim “added” to the ‘Umariyyan ones’, in the words of a medieval Arab historian.
…From the earliest period of Islam, Jews and Christians encountered little opposition when constructing new synagogues and churches…They established or enlarged communities and erected new houses of worship without opposition…
Jews assumed Arabic honorific names-Abu ‘Imran is the by-name of Moses Maimonides-and, and as the Genizah shows, and as sources describing repeated renewal of the dress regulations attest, Jews and other dhimmis usually dressed like everybody else. Jews held slaves, mainly household domestics, but also as financial agents, and both Jews, and, in greater numbers, Christians continued to hold government posts long after Arabs mastered the art of bureaucracy, and even during the late Middle Ages, when anti-dhimmi sentiment increased. [22]
And:
However, it must be said that these restrictive laws were not generally enforced. [23]
And:
By and large the restrictions of the Pact of ‘Umar were very unevenly and sporadically enforced. [24]
And:
Many of the restrictions stipulated by the Pact of Umar, the code of conduct imposed…[on the] Jews, were oftentimes ignored by the rulers. [25]
And:
The discriminatory regulations of the Pact of Umar were often disregarded in the first centuries of Islam or only loosely applied. [26]
And:
In any case, the Pact of Umar’s restrictions were not rigidly enforced. [27]
And:
We know that the restrictions of the “Pact of Umar” (except for the collection of the progressive poll-tax) were only very rarely enforced in early Islam, usually by an especially fanatical ruler such as the [Ismaili Shi'ite] Fatimid Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (d. 1021). [28]
And:
The regulations contained in the Pact of Omar were…not enforced too strictly. [29]
And:
[The] law that dhimmis remain subordinate in partnerships formed with Muslims was often ignored, as proved by the documents of the Cairo Geniza. Even when observed, the restriction may have represented little more than a minor irritant to the dhimmi partner. [30]
And:
In practice, though, this dhimmi legislation-including the dress code-was not enforced consistently. New churches continued to be built. [31]
And:
[The Jews] were subject to discriminatory laws, although these were seldom enforced. [32]
This is a Secular Historical Issue, Not an Ideologically Driven Religious One
The question of how Muslims should treat non-Muslims is a religious issue, no doubt. Muslim apologists, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Maher Abu-Munshar will point to various religious texts–verses of the Quran, hadiths, and words of their clerics–in order to prove that Islam enjoins Muslims to treat non-Muslims with respect and kindness. Anti-Islamic critics such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, on the other hand, will also point to Islamic texts–other verses of the Quran, other hadiths, and other words of Islamic clerics–in order to prove that Islam enjoins Muslims to treat non-Muslims in an oppressive manner.
But the question of how Muslims have treated non-Muslim minorities historically is not a religious issue but a secular historical one. The flawed logic–of both the Muslim apologists and anti-Islam ideologues alike–is that they will look at the scriptural texts and then argue that because it ought to be this way, then it was. In other words, a Muslim apologist would argue that because Islam itself commands kindness, then historically Muslims must have acted kindly; consequently, he will cherry pick instances in history in which that was the case. On the other hand, the anti-Islam ideologues have the idea that because Islam itself advocates intolerance, then historically Muslims must have acted intolerantly; and again, they will cherry pick events in history to “prove” that assumption.
But the reality is that just because the Islamic texts (be it the Quran or Tafsir Ibn Kathir) advocate kindness (or intolerance), it does not mean that Muslims acted that way. This logic is better understood if one thinks about Christianity; just because a Christian today believes that it is a religion of love, this does not mean that Crusaders acted in a loving manner. So there is not necessarily a one-to-one relationship between what the religious texts say and what actually happened. Yes, there is certainly some connection (and maybe even a lot), but it is not simply a matter of showing religious texts and then assuming that everything went exactly according to the religious scripture.
Muslim apologists for example will argue that the Muslims were so tolerant that they created a social welfare program like medicare for elderly non-Muslims. To back this claim, they will cite religious texts which detail how Umar ibn al-Khattab would give from the state treasury to elderly dhimmis. But the reality is that there were no large scale programs as such, even if Umar commanded it. Likewise, just because there is a document that is found in certain religious texts like Tafsir Ibn Kathir which says that dhimmis should wear certain distinctive clothing (or the other discriminatory policies in the Pact of Umar), it doesn’t mean that this was actually the case. As multiple historians have said about the Pact of Umar:
Practice must have differed widely from theory. [33]
In Robert Spencer’s writings on the topic, he cites various works of medieval Islamic clerics and their works, such as Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveler), Ruhul Ma’ani, and the like. In his debate with Omer Subhani, he tries to impress the reader with these Arabic sounding names, and how respected these scholars and their works are in traditional Islamic circles. Yet, this does not satisfy the burden of proof at all. These books were written by Islamic clerics/jurists (Ulema/Fuqaha), who were independent of the government altogether. Unlike Christianity, the church (mosque) was separate from the state under Islamic rule; there was no equivalent to the pope. So these religious texts do not at all prove that this was the way that the Muslim rulers treated dhimmis.
The latter generations of Muslim jurists who alluded to the Pact of Umar cannot be used as a measuring stick for what the reality was on the ground (emphasis is mine):
The so-called Pact or Covenant of ‘Umar, [is] a spurious treaty ascribed to the Caliph ‘Umar (634-644). Its terms are quite harsh and it contains proscriptions of dress and behaviour, which no doubt reflect the ideals of the jurists who formulated it rather than the actual conditions in which non-Muslims typically lived. [34]
So all this razzle-dazzle that Robert Spencer engaged in–trying to impress his readers by citing religious manuals written by clerics–does not prove his case that non-Muslims were generally treated that way. At most, it proves that this is how those specific Muslim clerics wanted non-Muslims to be treated. Nothing more, nothing less.
Interestingly, Spencer’s article itself gives proof for this; there were many conservative Muslim clerics who lamented that the Islamic state did not enforce the Pact of Umar and its conditions; Spencer says:
Indian Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Ilahi Bulandshahri laments that “in today’s times, the system of Atonement (Jizya) is not practised at all by the Muslims. It is indeed unfortunate that not only are the Muslim States afraid to impose Atonement (Jizya) on the disbelievers (kuffar) living in their countries, but they grant them more rights than they grant the Muslims and respect them more. They fail to understand that Allah desires that the Muslims show no respect to any disbeliever (kafir) and that they should not accord any special rights to them.”
In fact, many of the conservative Islamic clerics complained that the dhimmis were being honored too much, rising to high positions in the government and in other fields. This proves that the reality was different than what these specific clerics wanted. Professor Mark R. Cohen explains:
Success tempted some Jews (and Christians) to feel so much at home outside the niche assigned them by their lowly religious rank that they frequently ignored the sumptuary restrictions of the dhimma. Seeming to acquiesce, many a Muslim ruler overlooked these flagrant violations of the stipulations of the Pact of ‘Umar. This combination of circumstances often created resentment in Muslims, exacerbating latent religious contempt and leading to acts of oppression.
The double-edged sword in Muslim-dhimmi relations is exemplified in the highest-status category in which Jews and Christians had visibility: government service. In this domain divergence between theory and practice was considerably more pronounced than in commerce. As katibs (government clerks), not to speak of the higher-status position of chief minister, dhimmis commanded authority over Muslims in a way that grossly flouted the rules of proper subordination. Many of the most painful episodes of oppression and persecution Jews and Christians experienced were triggered by Muslim exasperation of the prerogatives of their category in a manner totally at variance with the limitations imposed by their religious rank. [35]
So there is some positive here along with the negative. The downside is of course that there were short periods of oppression and persecution. The upside though is that there were generally longer periods of laissez faire during which time dhimmis climbed the ladder of success, even rising to positions in the government over the Muslims. It was this fact that brought out the bigoted response of “them damn immigrants are taking our jobs!”
The Islamic rulers generally were soft on the non-Muslims, which was what prompted populist discontent that then manifested in the clerical establishment responding in a xenophobic fashion. The situation was not helped by the fact that some of these clerics lived in a time when great destruction and devastation was taking place at the hands of the infidel Mongols on the one side and the Christian Crusaders on the other. This is the case with Ibn Kathir (and his teacher Ibn Taymiyyah), for example, which no doubt influenced his more intolerant views towards non-Muslims.
The bottom line is that the conservative backlash of the clerics cannot be used as a source proof for the general status of the non-Muslim populations, since the Islamic rulers tended to treat them in a different way than those conservative clerics wanted. Robert Spencer citing Tafsir Ibn Kathir does not prove anything other than the fact that Ibn Kathir was intolerant towards non-Muslims. Ibn Kathir’s insistence on the subjugation of non-Muslims was no doubt a reflection of his exasperation of the Islamic government’s accommodation of non-Muslims, and cannot therefore be used as a proof of their dire condition.
Throughout Islamic history, the most conservative elements have been found within the clerical class, not unlike Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, it is of no surprise that their views towards unbelievers may not be representative of the entire community.
Of course, there is a very important caveat here: This does not mean that all clerics were intolerant. In fact, there were other classical Islamic jurists who opined that non-Muslim dhimmis ought to be treated kindly, with mercy and due respect and consideration, etc. (I will quote a few of these in a follow up article.)
Professor Cohen concludes:
Inevitably, there is a gap between theory and practice; and this was certainly true for the Jews in the Middle Ages.[36]
Mainstream Muslims Did Not Generally Enforce the Discriminatory Conditions in the Pact of Umar
The discriminatory conditions in the Pact of Umar were generally unenforced throughout Islamic history. Even those rare instances in which it was put into full practice, this was usually done in periods of extremist (Ghulat) Shi’ite rule, not orthodox (Sunni) Muslim rule; as such, the actions distinctive to one sect can hardly be generalized to another (despite the fact that most anti-Islam bigots think “they’re all brown, wear turbans, and are thus the same!”) It should be noted that there are several branches of Shi’ism, and the actions of the extremist (Ghulat) Shi’ite sects should not be seen as indicative of Shi’ism as a whole, let alone all of Islam.
We read:
The notorious pact ascribed to ‘Umar specifies the conditions by which non-Muslim minorities living under Muslim rule would be granted protection…
It should be noted, however, that the degree of enforcement of these restrictive regulations in the vast and rapidly growing Muslim empire varies widely with time and region. Generally speaking, the Sunni countries of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa were tolerant towards non-Muslim minorities…The humiliating measures [of the Pact of Umar]…were generally disregarded, or at least not rigidly enforced…Despite the occasional outbreaks of fanaticism and spasms of intolerance, as in the period of [the Ghulat Shi'ite] al-Hakim in Egypt (996-1021), it can be safely concluded that…dhimmis in Sunni Muslim countries were generally able to enjoy a broad religious and social freedom and lead a relatively secure life…
In contrast to the countries dominated by Sunni Islam, the Jews in Shi’i Muslim countries, Iran and Zaydi Yemen, were subjected to far more severe dhimmi regulations…The religious restrictions which were enacted by [Shi'ite] Islam against non-Muslim minorities were generally rigorously enforced, often given a local twist for the worst. [37]
And:
Sunni Islam…the orthodox and dominant form of the religion, is the source of Islamic “policy” toward the Jews and others considered infidels. Heterodox Shi’ism was usually harsher in its view of how the infidel should be treated; but, for most of the period considered in this study, Jews did not live under Shiite regimes…Sunni Islam is also the appropriate counterpoint for comparison with the Christian world, where orthodox Christianity held power. [38]
And:
When the Shi’ite Moslem sect [under Shah Ismail I] came into power in Persia during the 16th century, the Pact of Umar was enforced to the extreme. [39]
Both al-Hakim and Shah Ismail I were Ghulat (extremist) Shi’ites who claimed divinity for themselves, and were thus considered non-Muslims by Sunnis and more mainstream Shi’ites. It is thus not appropriate to take their examples as being representative of Islam itself. These two tyrants thought they were God (which is anathema to traditional Islamic belief) and they not only persecuted non-Muslims but Muslims as well, especially Sunnis.
In 1005, al-Hakim decreed that the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) must wear distinctive turbans and shoes. In an even more draconian move, he ordered that Jews must wear wooden calf necklaces (or bells) and Christians iron crosses. But these regulations only remained in place for some nine years. It would be as faulty to generalize nine years of al-Hakim’s rule to all of Islamic history as it would be to generalize the twelve year rule of the Nazis to all of Christian history.
Al-Hakim was an extremist (Ghulat) Shi’ite, rejected by mainline Shi’ism (and of course Sunni Islam). Arab historians and chroniclers consistently referred to al-Hakim as a “madman”:
Al-Hakim ibn Aziz, who became caliph in 996, the same year Otto III became emperor, inherited tremendous wealth and power. In the end it was, along with other pressures perhaps, more than he could bear. He went mad, declared himself a god, and died. [40]
Al-Hakim killed many of his own officials, including those of high-ranking stature, such as viziers, judges, intelligence officers, and even cooks and poets. The people trembled with fear in his presence, and would kiss the ground before him, imploring him for forgiveness and bidding him not to listen to rumors, which he in his paranoid state was very fond of doing. Descriptions of al-Hakim sound a lot like the self-declared deity Kim Jong-il, the current ruler of North Korea. Not only did al-Hakim heavily persecute non-Muslims, but he also mercilessly persecuted orthodox (Sunni) Muslims, and paradoxically his own Shi’ite coreligionists. (Well, maybe not so paradoxical considering he is rejected as heretical by mainline Shi’ites.) In fact, his last phase of life was characterized by more lenience towards non-Muslims than towards Muslims:
[Al-Hakim] became more tolerant toward the Jews and Christians and hostile toward the Sunnis. Ironically he developed a particularly hostile attitude with regard to the Muslim Shiites. It was during this period, in the year 1017, that the unique religion of the Druze began to develop as an independent religion based on the revelation (Kashf) of al-Hakim as God. [41]
Indeed, it is al-Hakim who is credited for “adding” the more discriminatory conditions into the Pact of Umar:
When the ‘mad’ Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim ran amuck persecuting Christians and Jews in the first two decades of the eleventh century (one of the few serious persecutions affecting Jews), Muslims themselves realized that his excesses outrageously violated the Pact of ‘Umar, ‘the stipulations which al-Hakim “added” to the ‘Umariyyan ones’, in the words of a medieval Arab historian. [42]
In any case, the rule of the madman al-Hakim was an aberration, and not indicative of the Shi’ite Fatimids in general, and certainly not of the orthodox (Sunni) Muslims:
The reign of the Shia Fatimid Caliphs (969-1171) was marked by relative tolerance, except for the rule of the insane caliph al-Hakim (996-1021). [43]
As for Sunni rulers, only a handful of them–such as al-Mutawakkil, al-Muqtadi, and Ismail Abu al-Walid–ever enforced the Pact of Umar in any meaningful way. Of the numerous Sunni dynasties that emerged, only the Seljuks and Almohads implemented such discriminatory laws. Interestingly, the persecuted non-Muslims–such as those living in Almohad territory–fled not only to Europe but also to more tolerant Muslim lands in the Middle East, which indicates that it would be unjust to generalize the Almohad persecution to all of Islamic history. Furthermore, these two empires–the Seljuks and Almohads–were short-lived and overthrown by more tolerant Muslim empires, which subsequently reversed the discriminatory laws against Jews and Christians.
The anti-Islam ideologues use these exceptions to the rule in order to characterize the entire Islamic experience. Robert Spencer, for example, cites the example of al-Hakim in his writing, giving the reader the impression that all of Islamic history was this way, even though his nine year tyrannical rule was considered truly exceptional even by the Muslims of that time period. Spencer also quotes Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), a Jew who lived under the oppressive rule of the Almohads. Professor Mark R. Cohen writes:
The favorite authority of the revisionists was none other than Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), the great Spanish-Jewish philosopher, physician, legal scholar, and communal leader, the acme of the so-called Golden Age. Living in Islamic Egypt, Maimonides wrote, in an epistle of comfort and consolation to the persecuted Jews of Yemen, as follows:
“You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of the people, the nation of Ishmael [the Arabs], who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us…No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us.”
Maimonides, it would see, is rendering a harsh judgment about Muslim-Jewish relations: that Islam has always oppressed the Jews and that Islamic hatred and persecution surpass the enmity of any other people among whom the Jews have lived. Indeed, the young Maimonides had survived the violent and terrifying persecution wrought by the fanatic Muslim Almohads…While these circumstances seem to offer sufficient explanation for Maimonides’ extremely unfavorable generalization about Islamic-Jewish relations, his statement in the “Epistle of Yemen” was taken out of context and hoisted as the banner or “prooftext” of the new train of thinking. [44]
Inspiration for the Pact of Umar
As discussed above, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies cites al-Hakim as being the originator of the more discriminatory conditions in the Pact of Umar. The inspiration for these conditions can be found in Christian and Zoroastrian sources, including Christian law codes (the Codex Theodosianius and the Code of Justinian) and the Sassanian Zoroastrian laws (emphasis is mine). Fordham.edu says:
The Middle Ages, for the Jew at least, begin with the advent to power of Constantine the Great (306-337). He was the first Roman emperor to issue laws which radically limited the rights of Jews as citizens of the Roman Empire…As Christianity grew in power in the Roman Empire it influenced the emperors to limit further the civil and political rights of the Jews. Most of the imperial laws that deal with the Jews since the days of Constantine are found in the Latin Codex Theodosianius (438) and in the Latin and Greek code of Justinian (534). Both of these monumental works are therefore very important, for they enable us to trace the history of the progressive deterioration of Jewish rights.
The real significance of Roman law for the Jew and his history is that it exerted a profound influence on subsequent Christian and even Muslim legislation. The second-class status of citizenship of the Jew, as crystallized in the Justinian code, was thus entrenched in the medieval world, and under the influence of the Church the disabilities imposed upon him received religious sanction and relegated him even to lower levels.
And:
These restrictions are enumerated in many different versions of the so-called “Pact of Umar.” …Many of these restrictions themselves stemmed from pre-Islamic Byzantine Christian anti-Jewish legislation. [45]
We read further:
It has recently been suggested that many of the detailed regulations concerning what the ahl al-dhimma were and were not permitted to do come from an earlier historical precedent, namely the regulations which existed in the Sassanian Persian Empire with reference to religious minorities in Iraq. Here there was a highly developed Jewish community, and…Christian communities…So the detail of the agreements between the Muslims and the conquered Christian population was therefore not completely novel and original. [46]
The Code of Justinian, written in a very similar manner to the Pact of Umar, expounds:
The Emperor Justinian to John, Praetorian Prefect, Twice Consul and Patrician…
Jews, Samaritans, Montanists, and other men deserving of contempt…shall enjoy no honors, but must remain in the baseness of their condition to which they are devoted. [47]
Just to give one such example to elucidate the point, a provision in the Justinian Code says: “We forbid that any synagogue shall rise as a new building,” remarkably similar to the Pact of Umar: “We will not erect in our city or the suburbs any new monastery, [or] church.” The Theodosian Code dedicated the entire Title 9 of Book 16 to the subject: “No Jew Shall Have a Christian Slave,” a violation which was punishable by death; similarly, the Pact of Umar decreed that dhimmis “could not own captive slaves.”
Anti-Islam ideologues–the self-proclaimed defenders of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition–cite the Pact of Umar claiming that it typifies the oppressive nature of Islamic history, yet ironically the document itself was inspired from Christian sources. Indeed, we will see how the Christian belief of the Perpetual Servitude of infidels not only contained the same discriminatory policies of the Pact of Umar, but in fact went much further.
The Perpetual Servitude of Infidels
Now that the Pact of Umar has been properly contextualized, we can compare the so-called Islamic “dhimmitude” with the Christian belief of the Perpetual Servitude of infidels. Professor Cohen notes that whereas the Islamic Orient was pluralistic (with many different minority faiths, including a large proportion of Jews and Christians), Christian Europe was more monolithic, with only one significant minority group: the Jews. (The pagans had largely been converted to Christianity.) The rules that dictated the lives of Jews were then applied to the few remaining pagans (which included Muslims) and heretics; indeed, the Christians considered it to be the Jewish-pagan-heretic axis. We will thus study how the rules came about for Jews, and then see how they were extended to other groups.
The position of the Jews in Christian society was based on the Doctrine of the Witness. This belief stipulated that Jews ought not to be killed but allowed to live in a state of “perpetual servitude” to Christians; their continued existence as dejected serfs served as a continual proof of the triumph of Christianity over those who rejected the Messiah:
Augustine and the other Church Fathers wrestled with this question of why Judaism continued if it had apparently lost its purpose? Augustine’s answer lay in the “Doctrine of the Witness.” This doctrine suggested that the continuing physical presence of the Jews was desirable because the Jews themselves provided testimony to the truth of Christianity in two ways: First, the Jews possessed Scriptures, thereby proving that Scriptures were no means invented retrospectively by Christians to predict the coming of Jesus…
Secondly, the physical status of the Jews provided testimony to the truth of Christianity. The Jews existed in a subjugated, second-class status as a defeated people…The perpetual servitude of the Jews reminded the world that the Jews are being punished for their rejection of Jesus. Therefore it was desirable that the Jew remain in Christian society. As long as Jews retained their second-class status, they would remind the world of their crime in rejecting Jesus and their validity of Jesus’s teachings…
Although the Jews’ status would always be second-class, the Church Fathers decreed that the Jews must be protected and not eliminated. In this context medieval Christian anti-Semitism provided a protective mechanism against the elimination of the Jews. Or, as Duns Scotus, a thirteenth century Christian theologian, put it, the Jews could be persecuted and virtually eliminated, but some of them would have to be kept alive on a deserted island until the Second Coming. [48]
This attitude towards Jews–of not slaying them but subjugating them to Perpetual Servitude–prevailed in Europe from the seventh century up until “the modern period”:
The official church position on the Jews guaranteed their existence, but as a pariah people…The concept of a “witness people” received its clearest and most influential expression in the writings of Augustine, one of Christianity’s foremost theologians. He wrote that the Jews were dispersed over the world to bear witness through their Scriptures, as proof “that we have not fabricated the prophecies about Christ…the Jews are our attendant slaves, who carry, as it were, our satchels…” The Augustinian witness-people formula, which prevailed in Christendom up until the modern period, allowed the Jews to survive but never to thrive, since their misery was to serve as proof of the truth of Christianity. Like Cain, they were to carry a sign signifying their damnation, but they were not to be killed.
Over the centuries, the teaching of contempt of the Jews as a reprobate people knew no pause, and continued to be taught and preached in mainland Christendom, in Catholic as well as Protestant churches. Leading theologians continued to castigate the Jews…The principal Catholic theologian of the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas, wrote that it was permissible “to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime…with the sole proviso that they do not deprive them of all that is necessary to sustain life.” …The French Catholic theologian Jacques Bossuet allowed the Jews to continue to exist, but denounced them as “stamped by their reprobation…slaves everywhere they are, without honor, without freedom…” [49]
The belief of Perpetual Servitude was not limited to the Catholic Church, but was adopted by the Protestant movement from the very beginning of its existence. Martin Luther, whose antisemitic work was touted by the Nazis centuries later, was an ardent believer in this degrading position for Jews; indeed, Lutheran Germany outdid their Catholic brethren in their institutionalized oppression of the Jews.
Jewry laws (discriminatory rules) were applied in such a way as to reduce Jews to a life of Perpetual Servitude in order that they may be a Witness People to the triumph of Christ:
The Jews, said the popes, were to live in a state of Perpetual Servitude (Perpetua servitudo), a term first enunciated in the bull Etsi iudaeos. [50]
The Jews were to be punished with a life of misery in order that they confess Christianity:
St. Jerome warned, “Jews are congenital liars who lure Christians to heresy. They should therefore be punished until they confess.” [51]
The concept of Perpetual Servitude led the state to claim ownership of the Jews, taking away their freedom and declaring them servi camerae nostrae (serfs of our royal chamber):
[The] monarchy took the final–in a sense, regressive–step. It declared Jews servi camerae nostrae, terminology which was inspired by the recently revived papal doctrine of servitus Judeorum (servitude of the Jews). Kisch believes that this church-inspired idea marked the beginning of Jewish unfreedom. From then on, he says, Jews were no longer part of the organic legal structure…Henceforth, the legal status of Jews was governed by special legislation designed specifically for them, a jus singulare…The honor of the Jews fell to a new low…reflected in the large-scale persecution of the Jews…Jewish “serfdom of the chamber” constituted an abasement of the legal status of the Jews. [52]
Jews became the property of the Church and/or the state:
The Siete Partidas offers the best glimpse we have of consolidated Jewry law as it was envisioned by a learned Christian monarch at the height of the Middle Ages…Jews are permitted by church and state to live among Christians, but only “that they might live forever as in captivity and serve as a reminder to mankind that they are descended from those who Crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ.” [53]
In the words of the “influential abbot of the time, [the] Venerable Peter of Cluny,” the Jews should be punished but not killed:
They should not be killed, but “like Cain, the fratricide, they should be made to suffer fearful torments and prepared for greater ignominy, for an existence worse than death.” [54]
The Church and state competed with each other over ownership of the Jews:
This happened, for instance, when the papacy exerted its own “ownership” of the Jews, under the cover of the old church doctrine of the “perpetual servitude of the Jews” and in competition with secular rulers, who asserted that the Jews were “serfs of the royal chamber.” [55]
Jews were traded as chattel:
The crown laid claim to them as serfs of “the imperial chamber,” servi camerae…The attachment to the imperial chamber reduced Jews to the status of pieces of property that could be–and were–bought, loaned, and sold as any other merchandise. Kings paid off barons and barons paid off creditors with Jews. Kings would, for a consideration, transfer to nobles or townships the right to possess “his” Jews. [56]
The concept of the Perpetual Servitude of Jews was extended to other religious groups. Following the Crusades, the number of Muslims (called “Saracens”) under Christian rule increased, thereby prompting jurists to pass legislation specific to them. Despite being considered “worse than Jews,” the Saracens were placed in the same legal category:
The doctrine, therefore, was one of long standing: if Saracens living among us conform as do the Jews, they are to be treated in the same way…There were large numbers of Muslims in the West–in Sicily, for example, where despite mass emigration and slaughter there were many sunk in a life of servitude…In brief, the Muslim who accepted the position of the Jew, who gave no trouble, caused no scandal, and was “prepared to serve everywhere,” could enjoy the same legal protection. [57]
Muslims, as Jews, were subject to the same discriminatory legislation:
Accompanying the polemical association between Jews and Muslims was an increasing judicial association. There was indeed, from the thirteenth century onward, a growing volume of law restricting the legal status of Jews and Muslims and limiting the “polluting” contacts between Catholics and infidels. Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Church legislation and legal commentaries tended to confirm this trend: for judicial purposes, Muslims were treated as Jews (rather than as pagans or heretics). The principle aim of this legislation was to prevent “contamination” of Christendom through contact with the infidel: sexual contact, social ties, religious contamination…and so on. The Muslim or Jew, like the leper, needed to be marked, isolated, quarantined, in order to protect the Christian. [58]
David Abulafia’s The Servitude of Jews and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean: Origins and Diffusion describes how the Muslims, like the Jews, became “serfs of the royal chamber,” owned as chattel by the Christian monarchs.
Muslims, like Jews, were royal property:
The [Muslim] Lucerine colonists, like other Muslims and Jews living in Christendom, had a protected status under canon laws long as they did not pose a threat to Christians, they were to be allowed to live in peace. Defining them as servi camerae [serfs of the royal chamber], [Christian] rulers considered the Muslims of Lucera to be royal property. [59]
And:
The Muslims were in certain important respects in a similar position [to the Jews]. Their status as royal servi [serfs] was ruthlessly exploited by a government anxious to possess their goods. Islam was suppressed, in the sense that those who survived in southern Italy were denied the use of mosques; but forcible conversion seems not to have occurred. The crown sought the conversion of the Muslim leaders, and generally did not release from slavery those who converted after their capture…Enslavement was a punishment for generations of obstinate commitment to Islam, just as expulsion and the threat of massacre was a punishment against Jews who for centuries had supposedly maligned Christ…The royal court harnessed Roman law to argue the state had the power and right to enslave its Muslim subjects. Indeed, they were already slaves before they were sent into slavery. The importance of the literal interpretation of the term servus, in servus camere regie, to mean “slave” in the sense understood by Roman law, cannot be underestimated. [60]
Perhaps this is what Robert Spencer meant by: “In Christian lands there was the idea, however imperfect, of the equality of dignity and rights for all people.” One also recalls his claims that Muslims are religiously obligated to conquer non-Muslim lands and subjugate them to dhimmitude; in 1452, the Pope gave a carte blanche to Christians to conquer the infidels of the world and reduce them to Perpetual Servitude:
The papal grants of the fifteenth century…bestow[ed] upon the named Christian monarchs the right to conquer non-Christian lands…[as] is reflected in the language of the Bull of Nicholas V, issued in 1452…which accorded to Alphonse of Portugal the right to ‘invade, conquer, storm, attack and subjugate’ and ‘reduce into perpetual servitude [perpetuam servitute] the Saracens [Muslims], pagans, and other enemies of Christ.’ [61]
This infallible papal bull gave the King
the full and free capacity to invade, conquer, take by storm, defeat, and subjugate any Saracens and other Pagans as well as whatever dominions, possessions, movable and immovable property are detained or possessed by them: and to seize and appropriate for himself and for his successors their own persons in perpetual servitude, as well as their kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and property, and to convert these to his own use and utility and to that of his successors. [62]
In contrast to the unfree Perpetual Servitude operative in the Christian West, the dhimmis were considered free citizens. According to Islamic law, it was forbidden to enslave them or to reduce them to servitude of any kind. Professor Cohen cites a hadith from the Prophet Muhammad, who said:
If you take the poll tax from them, you have no claim on them or rights over them…[D]o not enslave them and do not let the Muslims oppress them or harm them or devour their property except as permitted [kharaj, i.e. land tax], but faithfully observe the conditions which you have accorded to them and all that you have allowed to them. [63]
Jizya
Perhaps the most criticized aspect of “dhimmitude”–a point raised over and over by anti-Islam ideologues–is the payment of the jizya, a tax that infidels were expected to pay. Islamic apologists respond to this in a variety of ways, often arguing that Muslims were expected to pay the zakat, another tax. However, it seems clear–at least from my research–that non-Muslims were indeed taxed more than Muslims, often considerably more.
Yet, what anti-Islam ideologues–such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller–fail to mention is that the Christian West taxed infidels in their lands at a much, much higher rate than the Islamic Orient did. We have the example of the Jews, for instance, who lived in both Europe and the Islamic lands; there is no question that the Jews of Europe paid much heftier tithes than did the Jews of Islam.
According to the philosophy of the Perpetual Servitude of the Jews and their capacity as Serfs of the Royal Chamber, their wealth was considered the property of the church or the state. Therefore, the church leaders argued that all the possessions of a Jew could be seized, except that which was the bare minimum required for his survival (in order that he may endure as Witness):
In the thirteenth century, [Pope] Innocent III (1198-1216) spoke of the “perpetual servitude” of the Jews, and the Third Lateran Council (1179) of the “subjection” of Jews to Christians. St. Thomas Aquinas (1125-74), adhering to the feudal conceptions of his time, validated the principle of Jewish “servtitude” to both Church and State, but added certain limitations. “It would be licit, according to custom,” he wrote, “to hold Jews, because of their crime, in perpetual servitude, and therefore the princes may regard the possessions of Jews as belonging to the State; however, they must use them with a certain moderation and not deprive Jews of things necessary to life.” A little later this principle was established by law. The great English jurist Bracton wrote: “The Jew cannot have anything of his own. Whatever he acquires he acquires not for himself but for the king.” [64]
The dhimmis, on the other hand, were not considered state property; their property was considered protected under law, and could not be seized from them, based on the prophetic command “do not…devour their property,” which was applied quite consistently throughout Islamic history.
According to the Islamic law, the jizya could only be taken from the dhimmis once a year. On the other hand, Jews (and Muslims) under Christian rule were taxed repeatedly throughout the year. Although there were certainly exceptions (which the anti-Islam ideologues selectively cite), the general rule was–as Professor Cohen mentions–that the Muslims levied reasonable taxes (a graduated tax based on the capability of the dhimmi), whereas Christians crippled the Jews with unreasonable taxes. In fact, we have a primary text of a Jew who lived in Europe and then moved to the Muslim world; he compares the taxes between the two places:
In the thirteenth century, Jacob b. Elijah of Venice, a Jew, left his home in France for Venice and later settled in the Muslim East. Blaming Christians for the concentration of Jews in moneylending, Jacob compared the Jewish plight in Christian lands to their more favorable economic situation in Muslim countries. In a well-known polemical letter…Jacob wrote:
“Among the Orientals, each [Jewish] person makes his livelihood from whatever is his occupation. And, while Arab rulers may be wicked and sinful, they do possess reason and understanding. They take a prescribed tax each year, from the older ones according to his security and from the young according to his youthfulness. It is not this way in our [European] lands nor is it done in our place that way. Our kings and princes think only how to assail and fall upon us, in order to take away our gold and silver.”
Jacob thus tells us that Jews living in Muslim lands enjoyed occupational diversification and that the taxes Oriental Jews paid were fair rather than arbitrary and exorbitant. Though simplistic, his comparison is accurate, and it shows that, even in the Middle Ages, Jews sensed that the contrast between Jewish well-being in East and West had much to do with economics. [65]
Furthermore, unlike in the Christian West, Islamic law exempted women, children, and the infirm from the tax:
According to most jurists, since the poll tax represented a monetary payment in lieu of military service, logically those disqualified for army service did not have to pay. This category included women, the prepubescent young, slaves, and the infirm. [66]
Another major difference between the taxes levied upon the infidels of the Muslim world and of Christian Europe was the fact that the jizya was in exchange for state protection of life, liberty, and property, whereas the tithes of Europe did not guarantee this. In other words, at least the jizya bought something crucial to the well-being of the Jews, whereas the Jews of Europe would pay extra taxes but be afforded no protection based upon it.
In the Latin West, the state would not only tithe the Jews throughout the year, but once the Jews were impoverished because of it, their utility was no more, their protection lifted, and they were then expelled. In order to prevent such a fate, Jews were forced to pay bribes to obtain protection, with no promise that these would be accepted of them. The anti-Islam ideologues berate the Muslims for the historical use of the jizya, but neglect to mention the shohad (bribery) prevalent in Christian Europe–which the Jews had to pay for their protection–and unlike the jizya, it was arbitrary and often rejected:
For a greater appreciation of the perception of security that the Jews of Islam associated with payment of the jizya, consider the more unstable situation of the Jews of Europe. The Jews there paid numerous and often unreasonably high and arbitrary taxes to the ruling authority, but–until 1342 in the Holy Roman Empire–no regular poll tax in return for official protection…
When physically threatened (which happened much more frequently than in the Islamic world) the Jews of Europe routinely resorted to bribery to purchase or restore protection. This reliance on bribery created uncertainty, instability, and collective anxiety, for one never knew when a payoff might be required or whether the sum afforded would be sufficient.
A sign of the widespread utilization of bribery in Jewish life in Latin Christendom is the regular use of the verb le-shahed (from the biblical noun shohad, “bribery”), rare in mishnaic Hebrew, to express the action. In Islam, as in Christendom, many a ruler discovered that the threat to enforce the sumptuary laws among the dhimmis was a convenient ploy to raise cash as a substitute. But by contrast, I know of little evidence from the classical Islamic period that bribing officials to prevent violence against persons became a regular Jewish practice. Carrying the comparison further, in the Latin West, Jewish residential security was often linked to their economic utility. Thus, in England in 1290, when tallages had ceased to yield significant sums from the increasingly impoverished Jews, King Edward I canceled their right of residence and expelled them, confiscating what little remained of their property.
Despite the humiliating connotation and the financial burden, the Jews of Islam had in the jizya a surer guarantee of protection from non-Jewish hostility than their distant brethren had in the Latin West. The “testament” of Caliph ‘Umar, the purported originator of the Pact bearing his name, stipulates regarding the Protected People, that Muslims must “do battle to guard them, and put no burden on them greater than they can bear, provided they pay what is due from them to the Muslims, willing or under subjection, being humbled.” This principle was not always upheld, but it remained a steadfast cornerstone of Islamic policy toward the non-Muslims even into late medieval and early modern times. [67]
Because Jews were considered the possessions of the state, they were taxed to the limit; arbitrary tallages were levied upon them, and they were eventually expelled anyways:
The very principle of possessory rights…that were exercised by secular authorities over Jews with increasing vigor as the Middle Ages wore on included the right to tax Jews to the limit. Because of their vulnerability, Jews proved compliant prey for royal and baronial tax collectors. With variation from place to place, the tax obligations of Jews might include annual levies on households or communities, fees connected with loans, tolls, and most, most vexingly, periodic “unscheduled” arbitrary exactions or confiscations to meet various pressing financial needs of an overlord. Because they needed protection, Jews had no choice but to pay.
By the thirteenth century, Langmuir says, “as a result of the efforts of ecclesiastics, kings, and barons to exploit Jews, each for their own ends, Jews had been given a degraded legal status that set them apart from all others in European society and denied them even the protection usually accorded serfs…It can be said that Jews came to know what medieval people called “the yoke of servitude,” to experience loss of the “honour of liberty,” and to fear the “arbitrariness” of absolute dependence on the will of their overlords. The many arbitrary, burdensome tallages levied upon the Jews during the later Middle Ages, and, much more oppressive, their expulsion–from England in 1290; from France in 1306, 1322, and 1394; from Spain in 1492; and from dozens of German principalities and towns during the latter Middle Ages–constituted for the Jews a more severe outcome of “enserfment”…namely, their effective exclusion from lands where they had dwelt for centuries. [68]
Arbitrary taxes were routinely levied upon Jews, such as:
Finally, Jews were to make two annual payments to the Church…as recompense to the Church for the harm done to it by Jews. [69]
The tallages not only impoverished the Jews in Europe, but forced them into debt:
A tallage was an arbitrary tax, by definition, which the Crown declared that it was going to levy, ordered officials to collect, and then simply took from its Jewish subjects and transferred to royal coffers…This particular tallage collection must have had great impact on Jewish wealth…[and] broke the financial backbone of the English Jewish community, and permanently reduced its financial value to the crown…In his study of the York Jewry, Professor Dobson observed: ‘The corrosive effects of excessive tallage on the one side and of increased anti-Jewish propaganda and blood-libel accusations on the other seemt o have made the mid-1250s a real watershed in the history of Anglo-Jewish relations.’ Certainly, the 1250s can be seen as a watershed not only for Gentile-Jewish relations but also for Jewish wealth. It is the 1250s which probably mark the start of a catastrophic decline in Jewish wealth…
The actual payments show that in 1272 there was considerable financial hardship amongst the Jewish community…[Another] tallage is aptly named ‘the Great Tallage’ not only because it…[seized] a third of all Jewish goods…That many Jews were imprisoned for failure to pay the tallage serve[s] as reminders of the pressure put upon the Jews to fill the royal coffers. [70]
And the book goes on to discuss how the Jews were eventually expelled anyways, due to their dwindling economic utility.
Similarly, Saracens (Muslims) paid extra tithes under Christian rule:
…The Pope…ordere[d] Saracens to pay tithes. [71]
And:
Under the Franks [Crusaders], there was an annual tax on land that was similar to to the Muslim kharaj and was sometimes known in a latinized form as carragium or terraticum. It took the form of a portion of the harvest of arable lands, olive groves and vineyards, sometimes a quarter or a half but generally one-third (Richard 1985:256). According to Ibn Jubair, the Muslim peasants surrendered half of their crops to the Franks at harvest time and paid a poll-tax of one dinar and five qirat per person (Ibn Jubair 1951:316). Taxes were levied not only on arable land but also on bees and honey, on livestock, and on certain trees, most notably the olive (usually one-third of the olive). Ibn Jubair mentions a small tax on the fruit of trees (Ibn Jubair 1951:316). The portagium was a tax levied on transporting grain to granaries or on the use of threshing floors (Prawer 1972: 376; Richard 1985: 257). There were payments for pasture rights. Muslim villagers were required to pay a tithe or dime to the Church (Runciman 1952(vol.2): 298-9); for example, tithes were paid to the bishop of the fief of Margat from villages, mills and olive presses, gardens and demesne lands (Delaville Le Roulx 1894-1906: no. 941). The tithe of xenia or exenia (a Greek term meaning gifts) was a payment in produce such as eggs, fowl, cheese or wood that was paid to the clergy at festivals (Tafel and Thomas 1856-57: 371). The military orders could also receive tithes… [72]
In conclusion, the jizya was considered by dhimmis to be discriminatory, even a source of humiliation. But the tax itself was taken one time a year and generally (although not always) reasonable, constituting a significant financial burden but not crippling in nature; once paid, the dhimmis were considered a protected population, and the state was duty bound to protect their lives, property, and freedom. On the other hand, the infidels of Europe suffered from multiple taxes and bribes throughout the year, which were often unreasonable and exorbitant in nature, that decimated the Jewish wealth to such an extent that the Jews were eventually expelled due to their insolvency.
Symbolic Acts of Humiliation
The Pact of Umar decreed that dhimmis must show respect for Muslims, mandating what Robert Spencer calls “shades of Jim Crow.” For example, dhimmis were required to rise in the presence of Muslims and not to build their houses higher than that of Muslims. Another onerous regulation forbade them from riding horses, forcing them instead to use donkeys. However, Professor Mark R. Cohen explains that these rules “fell into disuse.” [73] There was, as we have discussed earlier in this article, a significant difference between theory and practice.
In any case, such laws (”shades of Jim Crow”) were not unique to the world of Islam, as anti-Islam ideologues seem to imply. In Christian Europe, laws were passed which required Jews to step out of the way of Christians, take off their hats, and even bow to them (Jim Crow?); Jews were not permitted to walk on sidewalks, or carry walking sticks, or to walk two abreast at a time; they were forced to enter the back doors of town halls (Jim Crow?) and forbidden from public gardens (Jim Crow?); they were banned from entering Christian quarters except on business (Jim Crow?); and so on and so forth:
Jews were allowed to enter the Christian quarters only on business, never for leisure. Inside the Christian quarters, no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast, and for some reason they were not entitled to carry walking sticks. Nor could they use the sidewalk. At the cry “Jud, mach mores“–roughly, “Jew, pay your dues”–they would have to take off their hats, step aside, and bow. They were banned at all times from the vicinity of the cathedral and could enter the town hall only through a back entrance. Not all these restrictions were enforced and some were observed only sporadically. But until the French Revolution, all public gardens were closed to Jews. [74]
And:
Anti-Jewish laws [were] passed…designed to make them objects of scorn and derision, to deprive them of any symbol of dignity…First, he was given the yellow badge. Then he was isolated in the ghetto. He could not own land. He was forced to wear special clothing. He had to step aside when a Christian passed. He could not build synagogues. He could not strike friendships with Christians. He could engage only in a restricted number of professions and trades. [75]
And:
Jews had to step aside before Christians who ordered them to “Obey, Jew,” Jewish marriages were limited so that the Jewish population would not increase, Jews were barred from the law and public office, and Jewish passports were stamped with the word Jew. A public promenade was posted, “No Jews and no pigs,” and the Jews were confined to a ghetto. [76]
And:
Any street urchin could say to a passing Jew, “Jew, do your duty,” and the Jew then had to step aside and take off his hat. [77]
However, it should be noted that such laws were sporadically enforced, as was the case in Islamic lands. Furthermore, although such laws seem especially distasteful to the postmodern mind, they had less practical effect than other laws which significantly curtailed the safety and economic vitality of the minority groups, as we shall discuss shortly.
Coming back to the issue of the poll tax, there was a difference of opinion amongs
Take a look at the comments section as well which Spencer claims is moderated. It shows the deep Islamophobia that is instilled in the hearts of Spencer’s followers and echo’s sentiments that Spencer himself holds but won’t dare to verbalize. According to them this is all “taqiyyah,” “stealth Jihad,” “fake.”
Some of the comments by luminaries on JihadWatch:
For so many reasons and for so many years Muslims have made me so deeply skeptical of Islam that I can’t help but look upon this relief effort as being prompted first and foremost not by noble compassion but rather by the desire to insure conversion. If this sounds too cynical, I plead innocent here and direct guilt towards the Islamic world, whose motives no person of sense should ever trust.
Taqiyya at best, looks like humanitarian aid, but disguised as making over the world for Allah’s supremacy and Sharia. Beware of Islamics bearing gifts. Cynical with cause.
Muslims dont help = Evil Muslims
Muslims help = Evil Muslims
A day or two ago, I mentioned that if Muslims were finally going to help with the relief effort in Haiti, then good for them.
I’m not usually so clueless—not anymore, anyway—but I have to admit, this being an opportunity for Da’wa did not really occur to me at the time.
Here’s a generally good article on the subject from Debbie Schlussel:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/15625/haiti-islamic-relief-the-scientologists/
There is, however, a fair bit of silly moral equivalence between Islam and Scientology presented here. I *am not* a fan of Scientology, but there’s no death for apostasy with them if you decide you no longer want to hang out with Tom Cruise. I wish I could say the same about Islam.
From Hermit, above:
In my city in England, squads of muslims with islamic posters are out in force - stading outside shopping centres with buckets collecting for Haiti.
………………
I wonder how much of that money is actually going to Haiti, and how much will just be considered “Zakat”, and go for whatever Muslim cause—including Jihad—that the “charities” see fit?
Off you go back to Iran parasite, and stop sponging off us, workshy Mohammedan troll.
“Off you go back to Iran parasite, and stop sponging off us, workshy Mohammedan troll.”
Its good to see you disagree with what I said, so you think the Muslims who are helping haitians are not evil and are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, right?
I dont expect you to be able to put together a proper coherent reply which doesnt involve ad hominems and strange assumptions about my birthplace…but what the hell?
It just goes to show that charity is not a primary virtue.
It may be a secondary or tertiary virtue, or perhaps a value, but not a primary virtue as such.
Thugs and thieves are often fond of charitable giving as a way of making a respectable face in public and/or providing themselves with some ego grats for their material magnanimity.
In this particular case, Haiti is an open wound for the maggots to dig into and feed on.
By the way, why aren’t those bastards being run off?
Oh, oh … I forgot. Our Dear Leader, Red Hussein, has made a comittment to combating negative stereotypes of mohammedanism.
What do you want to be that he knows about this and possibly even had a hand in it.
Well, what do you expect? Followers of any totalitarian ideology when they are seemingly showing compassion should never be taken by sensible people as engaging in only charitable behavior. Sensible people know that ideologues (and yes, Muslims are as much ideologues as Marxists and Neo-Nazis) most always are motivated by a hidden agenda, i.e., the promotion of their belief system. Hey, this ain’t rocket science, just simple math, like your equations in your 12:16 P.M. post.
They are collecting in my city in England too. Same buckets and posters.
I wonder if they have registered with the UK authorities as a “charity”? Fake “charities” occur all the time. Perish the thought that those whom the Qur’an describes as the “best of people” would even think of doing such a thing.
I too, wonder where the money is actually going. Buckets with cash in them would be just too easy to “divert” to another cause.
“Hey, this ain’t rocket science, just simple math, like your equations in your 12:16 P.M. post.”
Exactly, if Muslims hadnt sent money they would have been trashed on here as evil Muslims and now that they have sent money they are trashed on here as evil muslims.
You are determined to remain clueless, aren’t you? Endeavor next time taking my full comment into account before commenting on it. Go ahead, try and rip my ENTIRE 3:37 P.M. post apart. Address all of it, not just a portion of it.
What’s so humorous here is that the equations you put forward are valid but you think they confirm narrow-mindedness by those who despise Islam, when, in fact, it is you who is the intellecutally diminutive one possessed of an insouciance that is risible in the first degree. My strong guess is that you’ll never get it. You haven’t to date, now have you?
“A few on the fringes” are all it takes.
“Well, what do you expect? Followers of any totalitarian ideology when they are seemingly showing compassion should never be taken by sensible people as engaging in only charitable behavior.”
Muslims, as followers of a totalitarian ideology, cannot be expected to exhibit purely altruistic behaviors.
“Sensible people know that ideologues (and yes, Muslims are as much ideologues as Marxists and Neo-Nazis) most always are motivated by a hidden agenda, i.e., the promotion of their belief system.”
Muslims. as ideologues, are assumed to be motivated by proselytism, including in instance when they exhibit altruistic behavior.
What’s the deal with the Pepsi and Guinness banners?
Thank you for confirming my overall point which is that any Muslim generosity to non-Muslims is not motivated by a kind of Mother Teresa love but rather by an agenda. See why Islam is becoming more and more despised by more and more non-Muslims with each passing year?
Islam has had a run of it for a few decades now, whereby most ordinary Western folk were prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, but those days are almost over (even a majority of the extremely tolerant Dutch are sick of Islam). 9/11, tedious Muslim arguments about the importance of “context,” Muslim word games with terms like “innocent,” actual reading of the Koran by non-believers (which has not only putrid sentiments in it but clearly erroneous ones such as Alexander the Great living to an old age (Sura 18) and the Jews believing that Ezra is the Messiah (Sura 9), Muslim terrorism worldwide on virtually a daily basis, and revelation of just how psychopathic and sexually perverted Mohammed actually was (confirmed by Muslim sources which stupidly brag about it) have all insured with each passing year that more millions of non-Muslims are aware of just how fucked up Islam really is.
And that’s why I think that Islam is eventually headed to oblivion, but not before it does a lot more damage, just as other totalitarian ideologies have before they have finally become the stuff for fringe human beings and for no one else. Islam’s final legacy is to be assigned to that collection pile which contains the greatest and stupidest of human errors. It’s so deserved.
After the initial earthquake in Haiti i’m not sure which of the two following aftershocks were the more harrowing for the survivors.
The inevitable : Part 1
The luminaries of Film, Stage, Music rush forward to the first available TV network and tell us unaffected lay-abouts that we aren’t doing enough to help the poor souls of Hawaii (or where ever that AWFUL thing happened) so give money and lots of it and you might save many floundering careers into the bargin.
Have these people never heard of anonymous donations ? - Of course not !
The inevitable : Part 2
The luminaries of the Muslim world, albeit slow off the mark, get in on the act by swapping bottles of water in return for a quick lecture as to why infidels have been so misguided all these years.
Stepping on and over females to find a nice area to pray in, one does ask, who’s water were they giving out anyway ?
Some of them must have been watching the news, oh yea ! and the Jihadist’s.
Sorry, i forgot, a special thanks to Islamic Relief USA for the quite deliberate extended footage of the Guinness Beer Tent amidst the carnage.
“Islam doesn’t have a ghost of a chance establishing itself
in the Caribbean.The Christian faith goes too deep.
Maybe a few on the fringes may be persuaded.”
I would not be so quick to think that the scourge of Islam could not gain a strong foot hold in Haiti.
The Nation of Haiti has been infected with other demonic teachings, Voodoo.
An estimated 80 percent of Haiti’s 8.8 million people practice Voodoo to some extent, including many who claim to be Catholic or another religion.
“Muslims noticeable in cities”
“But followers of Islam have recently stepped into the
public eye. Muslim men distinctive in their kufi
headwear and finely groomed beards, and women in
traditional scarves, are now seen on the streets of
several cities.”
“Nawoon Marcellus, who comes from the northern city of
San Raphael, recently became the first Muslim elected
to the Chamber of Deputies, Haiti’s lower house of
parliament.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nygus/3684374231/
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/islam.htm
http://www.islamawareness.net/Fastest/haiti.html
Voodoo and Islam both originate from the same source, the Devil himself.
baest wrote:
What’s the deal with the Pepsi and Guinness banners?
……………………..
A lot of companies helping with the relief effort have sent tents and trucks and other items emblazoned with their logos. Some people consider this a bit tacky, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. It’s not as though they are only helping victims who have been past customers or anything.
Often these are already existing items—like the tents—that the companies normally use for concerts and festivals.
“Voodoo and Islam both originate from the same source, the Devil himself.”
Agreed, CS.
Here is an interesting article concerning Haiti and voodoo.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message965211/pg1
Islamic Rituals Voodoo
By Abul Kasem
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message493957/pg1
For some reason the previous post with this link has a problem.
This one should be ok
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message493957/pg1
“When Muhammad finished ablution, Gabriel sprinkled water on Muhammad’s private parts.”
Yeah, in your DREAMS I did that, Muhammad!!
Angrily,
Gabriel
He should have sprinkled hydrochloric acid.
That would have ended Mohammed’s career as a child raping pedophile.
There is nothing untoward about criticizing Islamist groups using disaster relief to their own advantage.
Many have commented on this in the past.
Other concerns include: recruiting orphans for the jihad, weapons smuggling, misallocation of funds, money laundering, and harassment of other relief workers.
This is a feature of Islamist operations that has been remarked on by the former President of Pakistan, among many others, but you, mp11, don’t know about it?
Twit. Muslims are there to spread Islam, not help. The only thing they’re supplying is Korans. Nothing else. They’re trying to spread the wicked teachings of Islam to Haiti and create there the sort of Saudi or Pakistani society you’d obviously like to see in the West. So off you go to Pakistan, Sharia-loving barbarian d**khead.
http://www.avraidire.eu/2010/01/fitna-version-francaise-geert-wilders-part-12/
Fitna, version française Geert Wilders part 1/2
sITE EVANGELIQUE FRANCOPHONE VIDEO
At least you undertsand.
Muslims going in to “hekp” while promoting Islam are like the Ku Klux Klan going in to “help” wearing hoods and brandishing burning crosses.
Indeed! …lol
Avraidire wrote:
Fitna, version française Geert Wilders part 1/2
……………….
It’s good to know that Fitna is now available in French.
Avraidire, Robert Spencer is currently having his “Blogging the Qu’ran” series translated into Spanish. Perhaps you—or someone you know—could have the series translated into French?
Izloom’s propagation and proliferation strategy makes perfect sense, logistically. If there is one thing that these a-holes can think clearly about its about how to spread there message of submission to an ideology of barbarism.This might sound perverse but when these barbarians try to procreate with the Haitian natives they will be easy candidates for HIV themselves. This is the only redeeming quality to this invasion.
BTW, I personally do not subscribe to the theory that Voodoo is about the “Devil”; the religion is not about this, but the bottom line here is that the “Devil” is a Christian concept so that negates the understanding that followers of voodoo are conjuring the “Devil”. I would say that if there is anything inherently “evil” about Haiti it is the evil of believing that political demagogues will somehow save the masses from their wretched lives. I would say that Haiti’s lack of up-to-par civilized modes of existence has to do with its subscribing to a belief system that says it is OK to be continually at the mercy of leaders whose only purpose is to use them as scapegoats and pawns for their own agendas. Now, izloom will be the next group of con-artists and whore-masters.
Christian Soldier, thanks for the above. I pasted it into the comments section of one of “Hijab” Heageny’s articles about Rifqa over at the Columbus Dispatch online. One guy already red it and thanked me for it. If we can expose the idiocy and super control of Islam in a way that makes people laugh, we may be onto something. This was superb. Again, thank you.
As you can see being a Muslim is not so easy. Many intricate rules to follow.
Except for bathing. Some simple dirt will do just fine.
“In Islam, it is not compulsory to bathe every day. It is quite all right not to bathe for the six days of a week. The only recommended bath is the bathing on Fridays, to attend the juma prayer, although a perfect ablution might do, in case there is shortage of water, or due to inconvenience. When no water is available tayammum will do. This procedure (tayammum) consists of rinsing oneself with dirt or dust. Imam Nasai (1.316) writes that a Muslim can bathe in dirt and dust simply by rolling his body as a camel or a beast does.”
For all the liberals out there that keeping saying “Islam is a religion of peace”, let us look at that peaceful book the Qur’an:
Sura 7:166 “When in their insolence they transgressed all prohibitions, we said the them “be ye apes, despised and rejected” the “religion of peace” speaking about Jewish people
Sura 2:65 “And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them “Be ye apes, despised and rejected.” again, the “religion of peace” speaking about Jewish people
You Muslims are out of God’s will. May you come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. Your “friendly” Allah, will not and never will save ANYONE..