Editing Dhimmi (section)

==Restrictions==
There were a number of restrictions on dhimmis. In a modern sense the dhimmis would be described as second-class citizens.<ref name=Majid/> According to historian [[Marshall Hodgson]], from very early times Muslim rulers would very often humiliate and punish dhimmis (usually Christians or Jews that refused to convert to Islam). It was official policy that dhimmis should “feel inferior and to know ‘their place".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=18b-K9AMLlwC|title=
The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols|page=1:268|isbn=
9780226346861|last1=
Hodgson|first1=
Marshall G. S.|date=
15 May 2009|publisher=
University of Chicago Press}}</ref>

Although ''dhimmis'' were allowed to perform their religious rituals, they were obliged to do so in a manner not conspicuous to Muslims. Loud prayers were forbidden, as were the ringing of church bells and the blowing of the [[shofar]].<ref>Karsh 29.</ref> They were also not allowed to build or repair churches and synagogues without Muslim consent.<ref name="World"/> Moreover, dhimmis were not allowed to seek converts among Muslims.<ref name="Griffith">{{cite book |title=The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam |publisher=Princeton University Press |author=Sidney H. Griffith |year=2010 |isbn=978-0691146287}}</ref>{{page needed|date=January 2016}} In the [[Mamluk]] Egypt, where non-Mamluk Muslims were not allowed to ride horses and camels, dhimmis were prohibited even from riding donkeys inside cities.<ref>Stillman (1979), p. 471</ref> Sometimes, Muslim rulers issued regulations requiring dhimmis to attach distinctive signs to their houses.<ref>Al-Tabari, ''Ta'rikh al-Rusul wa 'l-Muluk'', translated in Stillman (1979), p. 167.</ref>

Most of the restrictions were social and symbolic in nature,<ref name="Lewis 1984, p. 26"/> and a pattern of stricter, then more lax, enforcement developed over time.<ref name="Lewis 1984 pp. 49–51"/> The major financial disabilities of the dhimmi were the jizya poll tax and the fact dhimmis and Muslims could not inherit from each other.<ref name="Lewis 1984, p. 26"/> That would create an incentive to convert if someone from the family had already converted.<ref name="World">{{cite book |title=Introducing World Christianity |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |author=Heather J. Sharkey |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4443-4454-7 |page=10}}</ref> [[Ira M. Lapidus]] states that the "payment of the poll tax seems to have been regular, but other obligations were inconsistently enforced and did not prevent many non-Muslims from being important political, business, and scholarly figures. In the late ninth and early tenth centuries, Jewish bankers and financiers were important at the 'Abbasid court."<ref name="Lapidus">{{Cite book| last = Lapidus | first = Ira M. | author-link=Ira M. Lapidus | title = A History of Islamic societies | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kFJNBAAAQBAJ| year = 2014|pages=155–156| isbn = 978-0521514309 }}</ref> The jurists and scholars of Islamic sharia law called for humane treatment of the dhimmis.<ref>Lewis (1984), p. 16.</ref>

A Muslim man may marry a Jewish or Christian dhimmī woman, who may keep her own religion (though her children were automatically considered Muslims and had to be raised as such), but a Muslim woman cannot marry a dhimmī man unless he converts to Islam. Dhimmīs are prohibited from converting Muslims under severe penalties, while Muslims are encouraged to convert dhimmīs.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Dhimmi|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/dhimmi|access-date=16 December 2021|website=Encyclopedia.com}}</ref> {{unreliable source?|date=September 2021}}

===Jizya tax===
{{Main|Jizya}}
Payment of the ''jizya'' obligated Muslim authorities to protect dhimmis in civil and military matters. Sura 9 ([[At-Tawba]]), [[At-Tawba 29|verse 29]] stipulates that ''jizya'' be exacted from non-Muslims as a condition required for jihad to cease. Islamic jurists required adult, free, healthy males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya, while exempting women, children, the elderly, slaves, those affected by mental or physical handicaps, and travelers who did not settle in Muslim lands.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1 = Mirza|editor-first1 =Mahan |editor2=Gerhard Bowering |editor3=Patricia Crone |display-editors=etal|title = The Princeton encyclopedia of Islamic political thought|date = 2013|publisher = [[Princeton University Press]]|location = Princeton, N.J.|isbn = 978-0691134840|page = 283|quote = Free adult males who were not afflicted by any physical or mental illness were required to pay the ''jizya''. Women, children, handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, and slaves were exempt, as were all travelers and foreigners who did not settle in Muslim lands.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Alshech|first1=Eli|title=Islamic Law, Practice, and Legal Doctrine: Exempting the Poor from the ''Jizya'' under the Ayyubids (1171–1250)|date=2003|journal=Islamic Law and Society|volume=10|issue=3|pages=348–375|doi=10.1163/156851903770227584|quote=...jurists divided the dhimma community into two major groups. The first group consists of all adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community, while the second includes all other dhimmas (i.e., women, slaves, minors, and the insane). Jurists generally agree that members of the second group are to be granted a "blanket" exemption from ''jizya'' payment.}}</ref> According to [[Abu Yusuf]] dhimmi should be imprisoned until they pay the jizya in full.<ref name="lewis1415">Lewis (1984), pp. 14–15.</ref> Other jurists specified that dhimmis who don't pay jizya should have their heads shaved and made to wear a dress distinctive from those dhimmis who paid the jizya and Muslims.<ref>{{cite book|author=[[Ibrahim Oweiss]]|title=The Book of Revenue: Kitab Al-Amwal|year=2003 |page=xix|publisher=Garnet & Ithaca Press |isbn=978-1859641590 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LXVBBdEFySsC&pg=PR19}}</ref>

Lewis states there are varying opinions among scholars as to how much of a burden jizya was.<ref name="lewis1415"/> According to [[Norman Stillman]]: "''jizya'' and ''[[kharaj]]'' were a "crushing burden for the non-Muslim peasantry who eked out a bare living in a subsistence economy."<ref>Stillman (1979), p. 28</ref> Both agree that ultimately, the additional taxation on non-Muslims was a critical factor that drove many dhimmis to leave their religion and accept Islam.<ref name=autogenerated1>Lewis (1984), pp. 17–18; Stillman (1979), p. 18</ref> However, in some regions the jizya on populations was significantly lower than the zakat, meaning dhimmi populations maintained an economic advantage.<ref>Klorman (2007), p. 94</ref> According to Cohen, taxation, from the perspective of dhimmis who came under Muslim rule, was "a concrete continuation of the taxes paid to earlier regimes".<ref name="Cahen"/>{{page needed|date=January 2016}} [[Bernard Lewis|Lewis]] observes that the change from Byzantine to Arab rule was welcomed by many among the dhimmis who found the new yoke far lighter than the old, both in taxation and in other matters, and that some, even among the Christians of Syria and Egypt, preferred the rule of Islam to that of Byzantines.<ref name="Lewis p57">Lewis (2002) p. 57</ref> [[William Montgomery Watt|Montgomery Watt]] states, "the Christians were probably better off as dhimmis under Muslim-Arab rulers than they had been under the Byzantine Greeks."<ref>[[William Montgomery Watt]], ''Islamic Political Thought: The Basic Concepts'', p. 51. Quote: "The Christians were probably better off as dhimmis under Muslim-Arab rulers than they had been under the Byzantine Greeks."</ref> In some places, for example Egypt, the jizya was a [[tax incentive]] for Christians to convert to Islam.<ref name="World"/>

Some scholars have tried compute the relative taxation on Muslims vs non-Muslims in the early Abbasid period. According to one estimate, Muslims had an average tax rate of 17–20 dirhams per person, which rose to 30 dirhams per person when in kind levies are included.<ref name=bonney/> Non-Muslims paid either 12, 24 or 48 dirhams per person, depending on their taxation category, though most probably paid 12.<ref name=bonney>{{cite book|title=Jihad: From Qur'an to Bin Laden|author=[[Richard Bonney]]|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]|year=2004|page=84}}</ref>

The importance of dhimmis as a source of revenue for the [[Rashidun Caliphate]] is illustrated in a letter ascribed to Umar I and cited by Abu Yusuf: "if we take dhimmis and share them out, what will be left for the Muslims who come after us? By God, Muslims would not find a man to talk to and profit from his labors."<ref>Lewis (1984), pp. 30–31.</ref>

The early Islamic scholars took a relatively humane and practical attitude towards the collection of ''jizya'', compared to the 11th century commentators writing when Islam was under threat both at home and abroad.<ref name="Lewis 1984 p. 15">Lewis (1984), p. 15.</ref>

The jurist Abu Yusuf, the chief judge of the caliph [[Harun al-Rashid]], rules as follows regarding the manner of collecting the jizya<ref name="Lewis 1984 p. 15" />

{{Blockquote|No one of the people of the dhimma should be beaten in order to exact payment of the jizya, nor made to stand in the hot sun, nor should hateful things be inflicted upon their bodies, or anything of that sort. Rather they should be treated with leniency.}}

In the border provinces, dhimmis were sometimes recruited for military operations. In such cases, they were exempted from jizya for the year of service.<ref>"Djizya (i)", ''[[Encyclopaedia of Islam]]'' Online</ref>

===Administration of law===
Religious pluralism existed in medieval Islamic law and [[Islamic ethics|ethics]]. The religious laws and courts of other religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, were usually accommodated within the Islamic legal framework, as exemplified in the [[Caliphate]], [[Al-Andalus]], [[Ottoman Empire]] and Indian subcontinent.<ref name="Weeramantry-138">{{cite book|last=Weeramantry|first=Judge Christopher G.|title=Justice Without Frontiers: Furthering Human Rights|year=1997|publisher=[[Brill Publishers]]|isbn=978-90-411-0241-6|page=138}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism|first=Abdulaziz Abdulhussein|last=Sachedina|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-513991-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/islamic_sac_2001_00_4172}}</ref> In medieval Islamic societies, the qadi (Islamic judge) usually could not interfere in the matters of non-Muslims unless the parties voluntarily chose to be judged according to Islamic law. The dhimmi communities living in Islamic states usually had their own laws independent from the Sharia law, such as the Jews who had their own Halakha courts.<ref>{{cite book|title=Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages|author=Mark R. Cohen|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|year=1995|isbn=978-0-691-01082-3|page=74|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fgbib5exskUC&q=cohen+Under+Crescent+and+Cross|access-date=10 April 2010|author-link=Mark R. Cohen}}</ref>

Dhimmis were allowed to operate their own courts following their own legal systems. However, dhimmis frequently attended the Muslim courts in order to record property and business transactions within their own communities. Cases were taken out against Muslims, against other dhimmis and even against members of the dhimmi's own family. Dhimmis often took cases relating to marriage, divorce or inheritance to the Muslim courts so these cases would be decided under sharia law. Oaths sworn by dhimmis in the Muslim courts were sometimes the same as the oaths taken by Muslims, sometimes tailored to the dhimmis' beliefs.<ref name="al-Qattan-99 2">al-Qattan (1999)</ref>

Muslim men could generally marry dhimmi women who are considered People of the Book, however Islamic jurists rejected the possibility any non-Muslim man might marry a Muslim woman.<ref>Al-Mawardi (2000), p. 161; Friedmann (2003), p. 161; Lewis (1984), p. 27.</ref> Bernard Lewis notes that "similar position existed under the laws of Byzantine Empire, according to which a Christian could marry a Jewish woman, but a Jew could not marry a Christian woman under pain of death".<ref name="Lewis 1984, p. 27"/>