Islam: Religion of Intolerancespell out the deprivation of rights entailed by living "under the shadow
o fIslam,"however.
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam (1941-1989), one of the founders of al Qaeda,
also assumes that the Islamic: state he fought to restore would collect the
jizya from dhimmis. In his bookDefenseof the Muslim Landshe
discusses various categories of jihad. In accordance width traditional
Islamic theology, he explains that offensive jihad is an obligation of the
Islamic community, and adds, "And the Ulama [Muslim scholars] have
mentioned thatthis type of jihad is for maintaining the payment of
Jizya,""PC Myth: Historically the dhimma wasn't so bad
But in practice, it couldn't really have been like that, could it? Islamic
apol ogis t Steph en Schwa rtz, a conve rt to Isla m, argu es that in reali ty,
dhimmitude wasn't all that bad and maintains that its horrors have been
exaggerate d: "The dhimmaisnow held out by a demagogi c element in
the West as a terri fying symbol of Islami cdomin ation, ' And itiscer-
tainly true that no law is ever universal lyenforced with uniform zeal and
t horoughness. In the ninth century, Theodosius, the patriarch of
Jerusalem, wrote that the Muslims "are just and do us no wrong nor show
1,,us any violence."' But the legal status of the Christians and Jewswasstill
precarious at best. Historian A. S. Tritton notes:
.,
At one moment thedhimmiappears as a persecuted worm
who is entir ely negli gible , and the next compla int is made of
his pernicious influence on the Muslims around him, Laws
I were made, obser ved for a time,and then forgot ten till somethin g
brou ght them to the reme mbran ce of the auth oriti es.. .. One
fee ls tha t if eve nts had bee n gov ern ed by log ic, Isl am
woul d have swal lowe d up the subj ect reli gions ; but they sur-
vive, vigorous though battered."