THE DHIMMI AGENDA: About Dhimmis

Dhimmi: refers to the non-muslim subject of the Ottoman Empire. Derived from Islamic legal conceptions of membership to society, non-muslim “Dhimmis” were afforded protection by the state & did not serve in the military, in return for specific Taxes.

*My acknowledgement of Dhimmi Culture*

Muslims thus were forced to confront the question of how to deal with non-muslims in their midst from the very inception of Islam itself. Though timing is not yet clear, a basic hierchy between three groups emerged relatively early: at the top were (Muslim) beleivers, at the bottom of the hierchy were unbeleivers who should be fought, & there emerged an intermediate category of non-muslims who had entered into an agreement with the Islamic state. Those in the third category were governed by a set of laws known as a pact, or Dhimma in Arabic, that only Jews & Christians, as custodians of a monotheistic scripture, occupied this intermediate place between beleivers & infidels. However as the Islamic Empire expanded, the Dhimmi category came to encompass Zoroostrians, Hindus, & Buddhists, sometimes with some rather convoluted & ingenious Muslim attestations to their monotheism.

To exchange for the protection of the Islamic state, Dhimmis were expected to pay a special Tax, called Jizya. A document known as the pact of Umar spelled out the details of the agreement in detail.

Modern Muslim intellectuals tended to view the Jizya as a charge levied in exchange for a valuable privilege - examption from military conscription. However, it is far from certain that Dhimmis could have served in early Islamic armies even if they had wanted to do so. More generally Arab & muslim historians viewed the invention of Dhimmi status as a marked improvement over the majority-minority relations that prevailed prior to Islam. This perspective goes some way to explaining the vehemence of the controversy over Dhimmi status between muslims of varying levels of religiosity & non-muslims int he west.

One example of a sumptuary law is the stipulation that non-muslims not ride horses. If they did ride donkeys they had to ride side saddle & dismount if a passing Muslim demanded it. There is some debate as to whether such laws were intended to signal social differentiation in socities where a hiarchy was taken for granted or whether they were intended to humiliate non-muslims. Was a horse a form of military hardware? Or was it a noble animal suitable to be ridden only by a noble (i.e., Muslim) person to ride? Did the Jew ride side saddle so that others could tell that a Jew was comming or to make it easy to knock them off their donkey with a good shove?

Were they arbitrary or were they undergirded by the logic that non-muslims ought to be degraded?

In general, the post-colonial regimes of the middle-east & north africa restricted the sphere of Islamic law to personal status issues & to loosely defined source of inspiration for current law. However among countries that underwent a period of radical secularization & subsequently experienced an Islamic reaction in the 1970’s & later, the issue of Dhimmis having exceeding their proper social roles arose again.