Islamic Dhimmitude: Peaceful Co-Existence? Introduction. Tonight is the sixth class of the winter quarter of the St. John Chrysostom Catechetical School of St. Andrew Orthodox Church. This quarter is dedicated to the topic, Christianity and Islam: A Survey and Critique of Islam according to the Church Fathers. Our previous five lectures were An Introduction to Islam, The Life of Mohammed, The Koran: The Word of God?, The Muslim Jesus: Just a Prophet? And Islamic Jihad and Terrorism: A Peaceful Religion? Part I.

Last week, in our lecture, we explored the essential role of jihad is Muslim religion. We began the lecture by surveying the contemporary Islamic propaganda aimed at the West attempting to present Islam itself as a peaceful and non-violent religion and the spread of Islam as a peaceful and non-violent process. Supposedly Islam did not spread by the sword but by its own "appeal" to the masses. In examining this "official line" of contemporary Islamic public relations we noted several things. First, that it is admitted that the initial spread of Islam in Arabia was indeed violent. We noted that this was the spread of the religion under its great prophet Mohammed, whose life is esteemed by all Muslims as a model to be carefully imitated. Second, we noted that the "peaceful conversions" of numerous people groups took place after they had been military conquered and had been given numerous economic, social, and political incentives to convert to Islam. This is what is described in Moslem literature as the "peaceful embrace" of Islam made "without coercion."

Additionally we explored in last week’s lecture the teachings of the Koran on jihad, or holy war. In many places in the Koran Moslems are called upon to fight the infidel. Such war in Islam is obligatory for believers and is itself an institution. It is the institution for the expansion of Islam in the world, and it is the means for funding the growth of the Islamic empires. The initial plunder of the Islamic conquests was institutionalized through the practice of dhimmitude, which is the practice of taxing non-Muslim conquered peoples.

We concluded our lecture last week by comparing Islamic jihad to Old Testament Holy War and to New Testament Holy War. We pointed out that, contrary to Moslem assertions, Islamic jihad does not share the principles of Old Testament Holy War and cannot find its justification in the examples of military battle in the Old Testament. We also emphasized that even Old Testament Holy War was but a foreshadowing of true Holy War which is the war of the Church of Jesus Christ against the unseen powers of evil. True holy war is spiritual war with the demons, not military battles with human beings.

In this evening’s lecture we will examine the Islamic practice of dhimmitude in history, particularly in its practice with our own Orthodox peoples. How have non-Moslem fared under Islamic domination? Is it true, as contemporary Islam asserts, that Christians and Jews have lived under Islam in "peaceful co-existence" and unmolested?

We began this topic last week by examining the early expansion of Islam under its first four caliphs from AD. 632-750. This important time period established the paradigm for Moslem treatment of conquered peoples. What history bears record to during this first century of Islamic expansion is a consistent pattern of pillage, destruction, enslavement and mass murder from Lebanon, to North Africa, to Greece, Italy, and Spain. Bat Ye’or in her groundbreaking study of this subject writes, "This general picture of destruction, ruin, massacre, and deportation of urban and rural captive populations was common to all the conquered territories in Asia, Africa, and Europe."[1] These facts are well documented by historians of all types contemporaneous with the Moslem expansion.

Dhimmitude. As Islam expanded to the West the majority of their conquered subjects were Orthodox Christians. They were also the majority of taxpayers in the early Islamic empire. Society was established on two pillars: the army and the subjection of the conquered masses. Initially, by necessity, the dhimmi/conquered peoples help many positions of social and economic importance in the conquered territories. Over history the leadership and possessions of the dhimmi peoples were systematically transferred to Moslems. Conquered peoples had no right to private ownership of their lands. By paying the kharaj conquered peoples were able to, in theory and by Islamic law, buy back their rights to possession of their lands and use of their goods. Bat Ye’or comments, "Even if Islamic law recognized the principle of the dhimmis’ right to possess land, history reveals a process whereby the lands, houses, livestock, and property of the indigenous population were usurped, a situation which does not appear in the law itself."[2]

Tax. Where did the practice of exacting the tax, the jizya, from conquered non-Moslems come from? It came from the Koran itself.

"Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued."[3]

This teaching of the Koran is abundantly clear that Moslems are to make war on Christians and Jews. Here Christians are described as those "to whom the Scriptures were given" and as those who "do not forbid what God and His apostle have forbidden." This could be any number of things from confessing that God has a Co-Eternal Son, to adoring holy icons of the Lord, His All-Immaculate Mother, and the Saints. Moslems were very critical of the Christian veneration of Holy Icons. One of our hierarchs from the 8th century, Bishop Theodore Abu Qurrah, wrote a defense of the veneration of the holy icons in Arabic directed at least partially at the Moslem and Jewish populations.[4] What are Moslems to do with Christians? They are to "fight" and make them "pay tribute" until they are "utterly subdued."

This jizya, or tax, was graded in three rates according to the person’s degree of wealth. The Caliph Umar in AD 640 conducted a major census for the purpose of exacting carefully and fully this tax. Often it was extorted by torture. When Libya was conquered in A. D. 643 Christians were forced to gives their wives and children as salves to the Arab army as part of their jizra.[5] Here is a description of how it was sometimes collected,

"According to some jurists, the poll tax had to be paid by each person individually at a humiliating public ceremony; while paying it, the dhimmi was struck either on his head or on the nape of his neck. This blow to the neck , a symbol of the non-Muslim’s humiliation, was repeated over the centuries and survived unchanged till the dawn of the twentieth century, being ritually performed in Arab-Muslim countries, such as Yemen and Morocco, where the Koranic tax continued to be extorted from the Jews."[6]

On top of this standard poll tax there were additional taxes placed upon the conquered peoples, as well as regular kidnapping and demands for ransoms of the communities’ notable personages. It became standard Moslem practice to establish the religious leaders of the community as the temporal/ political leaders also responsible for tax collection. Due to the Koranic prohibitions for Moslems to "become friends"[7] with Christians and Jews and to certain hadith which forbade non-Moslems from having authority over Moslems Dhimmi peoples were consistently excluded from public office.

Law Courts. Besides these inequalities Christians faced great liability in courts of law. Islamic legislation did not recognize the oath of a Christian against a Moslem, and this was particularly grievous when, as was often the case, a Christian would be accused of blasphemy by a Moslem. The exceptions to this legal rule were in cases where a Moslem government, such as the Ottoman, was influenced by European law codes. Michael the Syrian records the following when a 9th century Byzantine Emperor asked a Moslem leader for an exchange of prisoners , "Al-Mu’tasim replied, "We, Arabs, can not admit the possibility of comparing Muslims with Byzantines [Christians], because God values the former more highly than the latter."[8] There is no commitment to the principle of the equality of all persons before the law in Islam, nor the equality of value of all persons by creation. If a Moslem committed a crime against a dhimmi the usual punishment was halved.

Places of Worship. In theory dhimmi peoples could keep their own places of worship based on the terms of the treaty of conquest. New construction was forbidden, but the upkeep and restoration of existing places of worship was in theory permitted as long as the structures were not enlarged or altered. Usually upon conquest a large number of churches were confiscated by the Moslem conquerors. The most famous of these is Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. This Queen of all Christian Churches was converted to a Mosque when the City of Constantinople fell to the Moslems in A.D. 1453. At the beginning of the Moslem conquests in Syria and in Spain one-half of the Christian Churches were relinquished to the Moslems to be converted to Mosques. Upon assuming a Church the Moslems would first destroy the sacred iconography, which was considered by Moslems to be idolatry.

I was deeply affected by a tour of the holy Churches of Thessaloniki, Greece. Thessaloniki arguably has the most beautiful Christian Churches in the world. Many date from the first millennium, and some from the 3rd and 4th centuries. There is a beautiful church downtown, for instance, that was built upon the conclusion of the Third Ecumenical Council in A. D. 431. For some four centuries Greece was under Turkish-Moslem domination. The Moslems were thrown out of Greece in the War of Independence in 1821, but northern Greece, where Thessaloniki is located, remained under Turkish control until 1921. Since that time the sacred Churches of Thessaloniki have been carefully restored. This includes first of all the removing of the plaster that was caked on the interior walls of the churches in order to cover up the holy icons. When the plaster is removed one sees numerous chisel marks where the Moslem craftsmen made chinks in the wall into the icons themselves to hold the plaster. There is a beautiful Church in a residential portion of the city that was concealed from the Moslems and was never discovered. One is able today to worship there seeing the mosaics and frescoes untouched and unmolested from the period prior to the Turkish conquest. Such cannot be said for most of our Churches throughout the previously Christian lands. Besides placing great restrictions upon Christian Churches, the Moslems also forbade Christians from entering their mosques. Some of these typical and historical Moslem restrictions on Christians have been relaxed in the last two centuries.

Islam also restricts Christians from the ringing of bells, the public display of the Precious Cross, and Christian banners. These rules are claimed by Moslems to have originated from the beginning of Islam. Christian cemeteries were required to be separated from Moslem ones and were often desecrated.

Various Injustices. Although the Koran itself forbids forced conversions, this has often been the case throughout history. Writes Bat Ye’or, "The whole history of the Islamic conquests is punctuated with forced conversions."[9] The abduction of Christian children for harems and to be raised as Moslem warriors, was a particularly perverse form of forced conversions which has taken place throughout Moslem history. A practice known as devshirme was introduced in the mid-fourteenth century. Christians of the Balkans were required to offer as tribute one-fifth of their children between the ages of fourteen and twenty, who were then converted to Islam and entered the janissary corps. They were most often taken from the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and Armenian aristocracy and from the children of priests.[10] Christians were assigned special living quarters, and their homes were expected to be less elegant than Moslem homes. Consulting Christian physicians and pharmacists was discouraged, and marriage and sexual relations between Moslem women and Christian men was punishable by death. On the contrary, Moslem men could marry Christian women. Christians were not to use Arab honorific titles, and it was a serious offense for a Christian to ride upon a camel or a horse. Christians were to ride donkeys, and often were expected to dismount while passing a Moslem. Christians were to speak in the presence of a Moslem only when spoken too, and always in a low voice. In some Moslem countries like Yemen and Persia dhimmis were expected to construct their doors short enough that they would have to bend down to enter their homes. In 14th century Damascus Christians were expected to keep the threshold of their shops below street level so that they would always be in an inferior position before Moslems.[11] Christians living in the Phanar region of Constantinople were expected to paint their homes in dark colors until the middle of the 19th century. Arabs invented the idea of discriminating by way of clothing, requiring Christians to wear certain clothes, cut their hair a certain way, wear particular turbans and shoes. In some regions like Persia Christians were barred from public baths, and in other regions like Egypt and Palestine they were required to wear small bells to mark them when their clothes were off. This type of exclusion was more typical in Arabized countries and not in the Moslem countries more intimately affected by Europe.

Slavery. Often tribute of conquered lands included the giving of a fixed number of individuals as slaves. The regular raids on villages and the expansion of Islam into ever new territory provided a large slave market. When Ephesus was sacked in A. D. 781 seven thousand Greek men were taken as slaves. When Thessaloniki was attacked in A. D. 903 the number was twenty-two thousand. When Constantinople was captured in A.D. 1453 fifty to sixty thousand Orthodox Christians were deported and enslaved, and the city was repopulated with thousands of Moslems, and Jews and Christians from other parts of Moslem lands.[12] This practice of enslaving Christians and Jews of the dhimmitude went on for centuries right up to the sale of thousands of Ottoman Armenian women and children in 1915-1917. It is sadly ironic that so many African-Americans, fleeing Protestantism as "the white man’s religion" and as "slave religion" and embracing Islam as "authentically African", have fled in reality into the arms of a religion that mastered and propagated the slave trade itself.

Inter-Muslim Warfare. On top of the difficulties directed against them directly, the dhimmi peoples often suffered from the constant inter-Muslim wars that have raged throughout history.

Sale of a Christian Family in Constantinople , Ellendigh (1663)

Conclusion. Summarizing the life of the dhimmi peoples Bat Ye’Or writes, "Nothing could be more illusory than to imagine the dhimmi populations enjoying a definitive guaranteed and stable status."[13] And again she writes, "Scribes, secretaries, treasurers, accountants, architects, craftsmen, peasants, doctors, scholars, diplomats, translators, and politicians, the Christians formed the base, the texture, the elite, and the sinews of the Muslim empire. It is probable that without their collaboration the creation and expansion of this empire would not have been possible. The conquered Christian masses placed all the resources- all the proficiency, the accumulation of technical skills, and sciences built up by earlier civilizations- at the service of nomad chiefs or seminomad Arabs and, later, of Turks. Islamic literature, science, art, philosophy, and jurisprudence were born and developed not in Arabia, within an exclusively Arab and Muslim population, but in the midst of conquered peoples, feeding off their vigor and on the dying, bloodless body of dhimmitude."[14]

[1] The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, p. 52.

[2] Ibid., p. 71.

[3] Koran, p. 136 (9:29).

[4] A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons, Theodore Abu Qurrah, translated by Sidney Griffith, Peeters, Louvain, 1997.

[5] The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, p. 108.

[6] The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, p. 78.

[7] Koran, pp. 45, 86.

[8] The Decline of Eastern Christianity, p. 82.

[9] The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, p. 90.

[10] Ibid., p. 115. This practice was supposedly abolished in 1656, but continued for another hundred years.

[11] Ibid., p. 93.

[12] Runciman, Sir Steven The Fall of Constantinople, Cambridge University Press.

[13] The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, p. 112.