Dhimmitude, Part Two: The Basic Rules of Subjugation

 Continued from here…

In the recent situation in London (see here),  Islamic radical expansionism is once again demonstrated in the West. In my ongoing series, I am examining the aftermath of this, if Islam is the winner, for non-Muslims, important also because of President Bush’s appalling and scandalous pandering to Muslims. Today I will focus on hisorical dhimmitude once again. Let’s start where we left off.

 The dhimmi’s inferior status was first instituted by caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (caliph from 634-644, the second one, the first having died two years into his reign, so note that they wasted no time in implementing this). The Qur’ranic commentary of Ibn Kathir talks about the Christian pact with Umar. They pledged:

We made a coalition on ourselves that we will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs reparation nor use any of them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims.

If you think that’s a raw deal in and of itself, which it is, you’ll hate to hear that there’s more than than meets the eye. You see, this can and was used against Christians to seize churches and other places of worship or Christian gathering, etc. Testimony of Christians was often simply disallowed and pretty much never counted that highly against a Muslim in the first place. This made it easy  for a Muslim to charge that a place of worship was being used for purposes of “enmity against Muslims,” and then seize the church.

Apparently, Umar had a pretty good lawyer for the time, because the Christians’ agreement with him continued in a rather thoroughly subjective fashion:

We will not prevent any Muslim from resting in our churches whether they come by day or night…. Those Muslims who come as guests will enjoy boarding and food for three days

In following Qur’an 9:29, the Christians, as dhimmi, had to “feel themselves subdued.” So, they also had to agree to various regulations made form their humiliation:

We will not… prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so. We will respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they wish to sit in them. We will not imitate their clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names, or ride on saddles, hang swords on our shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons… We will not encrypt our stamps in Arabic, or sell liquor. We will have the front of our hair cut, wear belts around our waist, refrain from erecting crosses on the outside of our Churches and demonstrating them and our books in Muslim fairways and markets. We will not 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.

The agreement ends: “These are the conditions we set against ourselves and the followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set before and against ourselves, then our Dhimma (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.

And it’s all still part of Sharia today, or it would be quite as irrelavent to the discussion of modern Islam as the Inquisition is to the modern practices of the Catholic Church in Spain. According to a contemporary manual of Islamic law, Umdat al-Salik , “The subject peoples must pay the non-Muslim poll tax (the jizya)” and “are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with ‘as-Salamu ‘alaykum’ [traditional Muslim greeting: "Peace be with you"] must keep to the side of the street; may not build higher or as high as the Muslim’s buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork… recite the Torah or the Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals or feast days, and are forbidden to build new churches.”

All of these  terms must be followed or they no longer have “protection.” As far as I see, the protection is mainly from the protectors themselves. In losing their “protection,” their lives are forfeit. They can be killed or sold into slavery at the Muslim leader’s discretion, according to the law if they violate the terms.

Dhimmis were also forbidden on pain of death to proselytize among Muslims. Notice, however, that above it clearly gave Muslims the right to attempt to convert Christians with no opposition from the Christian community. Also, Muslims who converted were also sentenced to death. As with everything above, both of these remain part of Islamic law up to today.

For over a millenium, these harsh, humiliating and subjective laws were the rules of interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims in Muslim countries. They were only brought to an end in the middle of the nineteenth century because of Western pressure on the weakened Ottoman Empire, and the dhimmi were emancipated. In some places they were relaxed or ignored at times, but have always been part of Islamic law and easily called back by any Muslim ruler with the inclination to do it.

And from Hamas’ charter, according to The Poltically Incorrect Guide to Islam “comes a keen awareness of how to manipulate the myth of Islamic tolerance: ‘Under the shadow of Islam, it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to coexist in safety and security. Safety and security can only prevail under the shadow of Islam, and recent and ancient history is the best witness to that effect… Islam accords his rights to everyone who has rights and averts agression against the rights of others. Hamas doesn’t exactly spell  out the deprivation of rights entailed by living ‘under the shadow of Islam,’ however.”

Why is this all relevant, again, you may ask? Because it is still part of Sharia law today, and has been for virtually as long as the religion itself has existed in any notable size or importance, and it’s not going to change any time soon. And if the global caliphate is restored by the millions of Muslims who subscribe to extremist viewpoints and jihadists in particular, then there will be no Sunni Muslim country part of the caliphate where it is not in full effect. That’s not to say it’s not on the books in full effect now, it’s just that it’s not always followed in Muslim countries seeking to have a good reputation in a Western dominated world. But that may change as Islam grows and Western civilization shrinks to become a less formidable foe to it.

And everyone knows that nothing much is being done about it where it’s needed, and the government has an annoying tendency of repeating liberal lies about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, blah, blah, blah. So unless you, for some odd reason, have no problem being a dhimmi, (heads up non-Christian, non-Jewish, [religion, that is, not ethnicity] secular liberals, if you could stop trying to spin the above self-explanatory facts for a few seconds- you’re even worse off than us. Look at the Zoroastrians, Hindus, etc. Subject to even harsher laws than “People of The Book.” Usually they get dhimmitude as a matter of course though, but it will be a pretty bad start unless you convert to Islam. We all know you will) you should probably be informed about this and be vigilant.

My two favorite resources:

Jihad Watch

The Religion of Peace

There’s a plethora of information in both. I’m sure you’ll change your perception of Islam by reading them, if you haven’t already. And stay tuned for my next installation in the Islamophobia series. We’re still on dhimmitude, by the way. 

Okay, I’m done now. Where’s my fatwa?

 Thanks to Robert Spencer for writing the PIG to Islam (and the Crusades). Most of the information here is from his book, The Politically Correct Guide To Islam (and the Crusades), in the “Islam: Religion of Intolerance” chapter.