For Leah (Rabina yu'alimha akthar) the Zakat, Kharaj and the mafia tax aka Jizya! Chutzpah and half knowledge!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Sep 2, 2006 at 08:16

There is an old Arabic saying that translates as: "knowledge is blessed, ignorance is bliss, half know ledge is dangerous." More later.

You wrote: "As for the tax non-Muslims have to pay (the jizya) that because they are exempt from an other taxc (zakat) that Muslims have to pay. It evens out the taxes."

This is straight out of the ignorant tablighees da3wa literature. And shame on you for not examining such question in more detail before you utter such nonsense.

The historical evidence debunkes such above nonsense.

1. Let us work of the mafia tax aka Jizya. The Qur'an does not help us about how much such tax is supposed to be. So it was an open seson on the infidels. If the lazy khalifa wanted to build a palace the jizya tax will be going up and at times it used to be 50% of the assets of the poor dhimmi per year (oh I forgot that you know no Arabic and you still provide us with a fatwa about an issue that you seem to know nothing about).

Now Egypt provides us with a wealth of information about such atrocity agaist the Copts of Egypt. The fact that papyri survive in such dry climate we have extant inforamtion about such tax.

We know that Egypt was the bread basket of the Roman Empire in the late antique period. The Arabs invaded Egypt in 642 CE. And by 735 CE the people of Egypt were starving and abandoning the land because of the jizya tax (for a great book based on the extant papyri and ostraca see "The women of Jeme" by Wilfong about the lives of the people in a small village in Upper Egypt extending from 610CE to 785 CE and the poeple of the village got caught in the atrocities of the arabs. This village was abandoned in 785 CE) , and then we have the revolt against this most unfair of taxes in 735 CE and the arabs did what they always did best and that was kill, rape and subdue the poor peasants. Many Copts had to convert to Islam to escape such tax.

We also have the Cairo Geniza records that provide us with a wealth of information about such nasty tax. It seems that the Muslims were even taxing the dead and when things were tough they added more tax on the land, barn animals, homes and you just name it.

What is really funny here is that at times the Muslim rulers of Egypt did not want any more converts to islam as this means that they will not be collecting this mafia tax!!!! So much for your silly claim that the jizya equals the zakat. If you were correct, which you are not, you would not have had so many converts to Islam early on.

2. The Zakat tax is not well defined in the Qur'an. The main difference is that Mulsims did not have to pay the zakat tax!!! And you guessed it many Muslims did not pay it.

3. The kharaj tax is more complicated and it would be a bit beyond this post.

I suspect that you being Jewish you are very familiar with the word: Chutzpah!

And so much for your half knowledge.

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