Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

196 t CHAPTER EIGHT
ples who have received a genuine revelation; dhimmi is a peculiarly
Muslim politico-theological category and refers to those People of
the Book who have been offered and accepted the dhimma and live
with its protection under Muslim sovereignty in Muslim-ruled territory,
the so-called Abode of Islam (Dar al-Islam). People of the
Book may be found inside and outside the Abode of Islam dhimmis
only within it.
Note: The Christians recognized no such affinity with Islam. They
permitted the Muslims to live at peace among them (however briefly)
for social and economic, not theological reasons, and one group of
them, the Muslims living under Christian sovereignty in Spain, underlines
the religious and theological significance of the dhimma. The
dhimma concluded by the Muslims with their Christian and Jewish
subjects was a religious pact, guaranteed by God and sanctioned by
the practice of the Prophet himself; as such it formed part of the body
of the sharia, the canon law of Islam. The Christians’ arrangement
with their Muslim subjects in Spain, in contrast, was a political agreement
concluded by secular authorities as an affair of state. It could be
abrogated by the dictating party, as it shortly was in fact by Ferdinand
and Isabella in 1502 with respect to the Muslims living in Castile,
who were then, absent any statute, given the inevitable choice between
exile, death, or conversion. The same choice was extended in
1526 to cover the far more assimilated Muslim dhimmis living in the
Christian Crown of Aragon. We do not know how many Muslims
chose death in the aftermath of the abolition of their tolerated (Sp.
mudéjar) status, but many did in fact leave for Muslim-ruled North
Africa and others converted to Christianity.
The Millet System
The dhimma defines and regulates the status of the People of the
Book living under Muslim sovereignty. It makes no distinctions,
however, among them: Jews, Christians, and later, Zoroastrians,