conversion and the poll tax in early islam by daniel clement dennet jr
DESCRIPTION
The book is not a discussion on the religious and doctrinal aspects but on the historical facts. It simply busts the myth of Muslims using poll tax [i.e. Jizya] as a tool for making people convert and exposes the erroneous and hypocritical methods of research used by critics of early Muslims like Wellhausen and Beker. The author has shown how the statements which were rejected, doubted or considered contradictory by Wellhausen and Beker etc are all acceptable and relate to different places and only need objectivity to be understood collectively. I hope the book will prove a wonderful insight into an important issue about Early Islam. It'll also enlighten readers about the fact that most of the Orientalists got to wrong conclusions and are responsible for the false notions about Islam current in the Western society and the sole reason was their way of looking at things which was either sadly mistaken or cunningly deceitful.Some interesting facts brought to light by the author:Following are the salient points of our interest;1- Early Muslims i.e. Arabs usually displayed high moral standards and kept their words while non-Muslims often took undue advantage of the Muslim conduct.2- Muslims made the locals in charge of the administrative affairs who were often looking to restore the earlier system.3- There was general instruction of exempting the Muslims from poll tax but non-Muslim administrators often levied Jizya on those who reverted to Islam and even charged them with more land-tax while they did all they could to help their coreligionists.4- While we continue face the charge of Islam having spread through the use of sword or economic pressure and incentives but the examples given by the author about Egypt and Khurasan show that while their were more economic benefits for reverts the rate of reversion remained low and during the times when there were lesser incentives the rate increased. And even though the reverts faced troubles at the hand of local non-Muslim administrators they did not give up the Faith which had fascinated their hearts.5- The facts show that Christians in local administration did undue favors to their community, Magians to their own people and Jews did that for Jews but despite all this within century and a half Islam emerged as the dominating religion in all the areas discussed.6- Muslim historians and Jurists who discussed all the details about these issues never distorted the facts and reported whatever they could find. They did not even suppress some facts in some bid to show homogeneity or unanimity. And those apparently contradictions are easily solved if put in their respective context as shown by the author.Like any other work obviously the book will remain open to criticism but it will be a greatly help in upholding the Truth.TRANSCRIPT
