Some people in the West quote, as an example of Muslim intolerance,the fact that in the past they called Jews and Christians dhimmis (ignoring the real sense of this term which means ‘those who enjoy protection’) and the fact that Muslims collected jizya tribute from them. The jizya was one dinar a year for every able-bodied male who could fight in the army –monks were exempted. As non-Muslims they were not obliged to fight for the Muslim armies. This is a liberal attitude, which recognised that it would be unfair to enlist people who do not believe in Islam to fight for the Muslim state, something which their own religion and conscience might not allow them to do. The jizya was their contribution to the defence of the Islamic state they lived in. Muslims, on the other hand, were obliged to serve in the army, and all Muslims had to pay the much higher zakat tax, part of which is spent on defence. When non-Muslims chose to serve in the Muslim army they were exempted from the jizya, and when the Muslim state could not defend certain subjects from whom they had collected jizya, it returned the jizya tax to them, giving this as a reason. In return for the jizya non-Muslims also enjoyed state social security.
The Muslims charged Christians one dinar a year and allowed them to live in Muslim society and practise their religion freely; the Christians, in Jerusalem, Spain and other places, did not charge Muslims one dinar a year – instead they wiped them out.
It is a fact that there have always been Christians and Jews living among the Muslims, some even serving as members of the government at the height of the Islamic state; but no Muslims were left, for example, in Spain, Sicily, and other places from which Christians expelled them, and genocide was still practised in Europe in the twentieth century.
