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March 29, 2009

The blind man or the man who follows him

Hans Jansen - Houtsma professor for Contemporary Islamic Thought in the Department of Arabic, Persian and Turkish at the University of Utrecht - discusses the violent history of Islamic expansion. Particularly fascinating: News of a quaint aspect of the jizyah (i.e. "ransom") tax that had previously escaped my notice.

Annually every non-Muslim person had to pay a personal tax. When it was handed over, the tax collector had to strike a blow on the neck of the non-Muslim, which was meant as a symbolic beheading. The purpose of this was to remind the non-Muslim that he had been overcome by the superior Muslim armies, and even though he was spared from being a prisoner of war, enslaved or decapitated, this would only be as long as the Muslim rulers were pleased to do so.

This may sound ridiculous to you now. But give it time. Given the laws on the books, publishing any criticism of Islam is already a risky business in Canada and in a generation we shall have all internalized the new dispensation and forgot what all this fuss about "freedom" could have meant.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 29, 2009 06:37 AM

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