Dhimmi - Dhimmi Communities

Dhimmi Communities

The dhimmi communities had their own chiefs and judges, with their own family, personal and religious laws, and "generally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century". "Muslims guaranteed freedom of worship and livelihood, provided that they remained loyal to the Muslim state and paid a poll tax". "Muslim governments appointed Christian and Jewish professionals to their bureaucracies", and thus, Christians and Jews "contributed to the making of the Islamic civilization".

However, dhimmis faced social and symbolic restrictions, and a pattern of stricter, then more lax, enforcement developed over time. Marshall G.S. Hodgson, a historian of Islam, writes that during the era of the High Caliphate (7th–13th Centuries), zealous Shariah-minded Muslims gladly elaborated their code of symbolic restrictions on the dhimmis.

From an Islamic legal perspective, the pledge of protection granted dhimmis the freedom to practice their religion and spared them forced conversions. The dhimmis were also serving a variety of useful purposes, mostly economic, which was another point of concern to jurists. Religious minorities were free to do whatever they wished in their own homes, but could not "publically engage in illicit sex in ways that threaten public morals". In some cases, religious practices that Muslims found repugnant were allowed. One example was the Zoroastrian practice of incestuous "self-marriage" where a man could marry his mother, sister or daughter. According to the famous Islamic legal scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292–1350), non-Muslims had the right to engage in such religious practices even if it offended Muslims, under the conditions that such cases not be presented to Islamic Sharia courts and that these religious minorities believed that the practice in question is permissible according to their religion. This ruling was based on the precedent that the prophet Muhammad did not forbid such self-marriages among Zoroastrians despite coming in contact with them and having knowledge of their practices.

The Arabs generally established garrisons outside towns in the conquered territories, and had little interaction with the local dhimmi populations for purposes other than the collection of taxes. The conquered Christian, Jewish, Mazdean and Buddhist communities were otherwise left to lead their lives as before.