.... So jizya was, and is indeed, protection money -- though protection, not from outsiders, as Esposito and others claim, but from surrounding Muslims themselves. Whether it's the first caliphate from over a millennium ago or whether it's the newest caliphate, the Islamic State, Muslim overlords continue to deem the lives of their non-Muslim subjects forfeit unless they purchase it, ransom it with money.
There is nothing humane, reasonable, or admirable about demands for jizya from conquered non-Muslim minorities, as the academics claim. Jizya is simply extortion money. Its purpose has always been to provide non-Muslims with protection from Muslims: pay up, or else become one of us and convert to Islam, or else die.
And it is commanded in both the Koran and Hadith, the twin pillars of Islam.
In short, jizya is an ugly fact of Islam -- one that, distort as they may, the academics can't whitewash away, even as the world stands idly by watching its resumption in the twenty-first century. [The Commentator] Read more
