OF KAFIRS AND ZIMMIS
All non-Moslems are infidels. However, there are grada-tions. The people of the Book (meaning the Bible, both the old
and the new testaments) are the Jews, the Christians and the
Moslems. According to Islam, Mohammed was the last prophet
and there would be no other future prophet or prophets.
The Jews and Christians are considered as people of
little faith by the followers of Islam. On the other hand, the
Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jains, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians,
the Taoists, in fact, all other religions are considered as the
religions of the kafirs. They are the worst of all and do not
have the right to exist in this world unless of course they
accept Islam unconditionally.
All the infidels living in an Islamic state are supposed to
pay a special tax called the ‘jiziya’ which signifies their
acceptance of the superiority of Islam. Such people are called
‘zimmis’.
At one time the kafirs did not have the right of a
‘zimmi’, the second class citizen. He was to be slaughtered or
forcibly converted into Islam. However, the Hanafi school of
thought was in support of giving the rights of ‘zimmis’ to the
Hindus, Buddhists and Jains as well as the Sikhs and other
people who did not belong to the Book. All other Islamic
schools of thought were against giving any right to the kafirs.
Ziyauddin Barani wrote: “If Mahmud had gone to
India once more, he would have brought under his sword
all the Brahmans [1] of Hind [2] who, in that vast land, are the
cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and of
the strength of the idolaters; he would have cut off the
heads of two or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs. He
would not have returned his Hindu-slaughtering sword to
its scabbard until the whole of Hind had accepted Islam.
For Mahmud was a Shafiite, and according to Imam Shafi
the decree for Hindus is Islam or death - that is to say,
they should be either put to death or accept Islam. It is
not lawful to accept ‘jiziya’ from Hindus who have neither
a prophet nor a revealed book.”
However, the great number of Hindus in India made
it impossible for the believers to kill them all and
eventually even the Hindus had the 'good fortune' to be
accepted as 'zimmis'. But to a Moslem such people have
been and still are kafirs.
A Moslem jurist called Shaikh-ul-lslam had propound-
ed the doctrine of 'din-panahi' during the reign of a Moslem
king called lltutmish. On the subject of the kafirs being
treated as 'zimmis' he was of the opinion: "The kings
should protect the religion of Islam with sincere faith...
And the kings will not be able to perform the duty of
protecting the faith unless, for the sake of Allah and the
prophet's creed, they overthrow and uproot 'kufr' and
'kafiri' (infidelity), 'shirk' (setting partners to Allah) and
the worship of deities. E5ut if the total uprooting of
idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of 'kufr'
and the large number of kafirs, the kings should at least
strive to insult, disgrace, dishonor and defame the Hindus,
who are the worst enemies of Allah and the prophet. The
symptom of the kings being the protectors of Islam is this:
When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish
to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot
the Brahmans, who are the leaders of 'kufr' and owing to
whom 'koir' is spread and the commandments of 'kufr' are
enforced...Owing to the fear and terror of the kings of
Islam, not a single enemy of Allah and the prophet can
drink water that is sweet or stretch his legs on his bed and
go to sleep in peace."
However, the fact is that the Moslem kings were no
fools and knew better. The mullahs lived in a fool's
paradise amidst leasure and luxury in towns protected by
Islamic armies. They could very well issue injunctions
from their ivory towers. The Moslem kings, on the other
hand, had to live mostly on battlefields and could feel in
their guts the power equations of a situation in which
they had to wage a constant war against repeated Hindu
reassertions of independence. They had discovered very
soon that the Hindus hated Islam as a system of black
barbarity and would fight rather than submit to this
sinister creed. Moreover, they needed the Hindus for
doing work which the mullahs and the swordsmen of Islam
were neither equipped nor inclined to do - agriculture,
commerce, industry, scavenging and so on. No wonder the
Moslem kings fell for the Hanafi school of thought as soon
as it was expounded to them, not because they liked this
school of thought but simply because they had no other
choice. They imposed 'jiziya' and other disabilities on the
Hindus, and reduced them, wherever they could, to the
status of hewers of wood and drawers of water.
The mullahs howled at this 'sacrilege'. They mourn-
ed: "Should the king consider the payment of a few coins
by way of 'jiziya' as sufficient justification for allowing
all possible freedom to the infidels to observe and demon-
strate all orders and details of infidelity, to read the
misleading literature of their faith and to propagate their
teachings, how could the true religion get the upper hand
over other regligions and how could the emblems of Islam
be held high? How will the true faith prevail if rulers
allow the infidels to keep their temples, adorn their
deities and to make merry during their festivals with
beating of drums, singing and dancing?"
Prophet Mohammed permitted the Jews and the
Christians living in Islamic countries in those days, the right to
survive as 'zimmis', if they refused to accept Islam. On that
basis, one can separate the two kinds of infidels as follows:
‘Zimmi’: ‘Nasranis’ or Christians (this includes
Catholics and Protestants of all de-
nominations); and Jews.
Kafirs: Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroas-
trians, Shintos, Taoists and Animists.