ISIS profits from Christians’ jizya

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is partially funding itself from taxes on Christians in Raqqa, the center of ISIS’s control in Syria.  The jizya is a centuries old tax imposed by Islam against Christians and Jews in accordance with the plain text of the Koran.  The jizya is dangerous not only because it discriminates against non-Muslims, but because it is often used in modern days as a revenue source by Islamic terrorist groups.

Those in the West who support religious freedom and equal protection under the law, and those who claim that we should “follow the money” when any nefarious activities are observed, have an obligation to speak out against the jizya anytime and anywhere it appears.

From Newsweek:

…It was previously thought by many that the entire Christian population of Raqqa had fled the city or had been killed by ISIS after it ousted Syrian troops in January 2014. Yet, several families remain in the city after paying a jizya (tax) and signing a dhimma (sharia social contract) that prevents them being killed by the radical Islamists.

“There are a couple of families left in Raqqa. I was surprised,” says Nuri Kino, founder and president of A Demand For Action, a group advocating the protection of ethnoreligious minorities such as Assyrians and Yazidis in the Middle East.

“I spoke to a Syriac man who only left Raqqa about six weeks ago. He turned up at an association in Germany. It turns out that some families actually are in Raqqa, paying jizya and are being protected by their former neighbors, Sunni Muslim neighbors, as long as they follow the Sharia laws.”

Muslims who lived in the city prior to ISIS’s arrival are protecting the Christians—who have been the subject of some ISIS propaganda releases in the city; for example, having the Quran read to them—from death at the hands of the radical Islamists.

“They have a document that they have with them wherever they go, that says they are protected by the Sharia, by the court, that they have been to the court, that they are paying jizya and that they also have some kind of sponsor or protector.”

The jizya and the dhimma allows minorities protection from a brutal death as dictated by the group’s radical strand of Islamic law. The group has implemented it in other areas of Syria, such as the Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn. The ultra-conservative group considers ancient religious minorities, such as Syriac Catholics, Assyrians and Yazidis, to be kafir (disbelievers) and infidels.

Such rules in the social contract include prayers being forbidden in public, prayers at home not being loud enough so that others can hear them, the outlawing of renovations to churches, not showing religious symbols and the outlawing of the ringing of church bells…

ISIS demands jizya from Swedes

Not so long ago, demands for jizya—a tax required by the Koran against non-Muslims—occurred in countries like Pakistan and Syria. Now it’s happening in Sweden. It’s good to hear that law enforcement is taking it “very seriously.” Hopefully that means there will be arrests, trials, and convictions of the perpetrators soon.

From RaymondIbrahim.com on Dec. 13:

According to a new report published yesterday, December 12, by RT Arabic, the “Swedish government is in a state of panic after dozens of its citizens received threatening letters signed by ISIS and offering them three choices, either conversion to Islam, payment of jizya, or decapitation.”

The letters warned their recipients that they had three days to decide.

Written in the Swedish language, the letters appeared yesterday on dozens of homes in different cities at the same time.  Police are reportedly taking the threat “very seriously.”  Among other regions, letters appeared in the cities of Ronneba, Sigtuna, Vstroes and the capital Stockholm.

Add jizya to Boko Haram’s catalog of crimes

Boko Haram has killed 20 villagers in northern Nigeria for their inability to pay jizya, the traditional Islamic tax on non-Muslims, as demanded by the terrorist group (h/t El Grillo).

Boko Haram has previously relied on bank robberies and raids on army depots to fund and arm their activities. Demanding jizya may suggest a shift in Boko Haram’s revenue collection tactics or increased territorial control.

Prior evidence of Boko Haram interest in jizya has been somewhat limited and recent. One of the Christian girls abducted by Boko Haram said her captors raped her with the justification of “sex as jizya.” Another source alleged that the jizya was the basis for the kidnapping of the 230 girls in the first place, saying that the girls’ failure to pay the tax justified their sale as wives or slaves in order to compensate Boko Haram.

Jizya, though not officially collected by governments of the modern Islamic world, is known to fund terrorist groups including the Taliban, Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. The success of such measures and relative indifference of the West toward such illegal taxation may have emboldened Boko Haram to embrace the jizya concept.

The imposition of jizya against non-Muslims is mandated by the Qur’an (9:29), and according to the Hadith Sahih Muslim, the penalty for failure to either convert to Islam or pay the tax is to be attacked.

How jizya funds terror groups

The traditional Islamic tax on non-Muslims, jizya, which is imposed by various terrorist and militant groups across the Islamic world today, is frequently viewed singularly as a problem of religious persecution.

While the maltreatment of non-Muslim minorities is indeed a serious problem, what’s often overlooked is how jizya serves as a revenue generator for terrorist groups.  It’s time to look at some of the basics of this problem:

Who benefits from jizya?

• Taliban
• Abu Sayyaf Group
• Muslim Brotherhood
• Al Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS)

What do they spend jizya on?

• Paying wages to fighters and operatives
• Buying weapons, equipment, and supplies.  (For example, the Assyrian International News Agency reported that one jizya collector “demanded 10,000 Egyptian pounds so that he could buy weapons.”  Another observer recently wrote that the imposition of jizya in Iraq is because “ISIL needs money to buy arms off the black market.”)
• Planning and carrying out terrorist attacks

Where does this happen?

• Pakistan
• Philippines
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Syria

When

Officially, jizya was collected by the Caliphate for twelve centuries from the time of Muhammad at least until the Tanzimat decree of the Ottoman Empire in 1856, and existed in a more limited form under alternate names into the 1900s.  Jizya has experienced a revival over the last two decades, during which time it has been collected mostly by non-state actors, but sometimes with government approval right up to the present day.

Why

In addition to being a terrorist income source, jizya is mandated by the Qur’an and serves as an inducement to non-Muslims to convert to Islam.

Jizya can no longer be written off or ignored by count-terror analysts solely as an indicator of religious persecution.  It must be viewed as a threat and risk to security because its collection in modern times primarily benefits terrorists.

Muslim Brotherhood fills coffers with jizya from 80 Coptic families

Muslim Brotherhood gangsters have demanded from 3,000 to 15,000 USD apiece from 80 Coptic Christian households in Malawi, Egypt, according to a recent broadcast on CTV.  The report doesn’t specify how the Muslim Brotherhood is using the money it has collected, but typically such funds are used to pay Muslim Brotherhood operatives and to buy weapons.

Raymond Ibrahim has the details on the Brotherhood’s latest enterprise:

The Kidnapping and Plundering of Christian Copts

By Raymond Ibrahim on November 2, 2013

The kidnapping and plundering of Egypt’s Christian Copts continues unabated.

As recently revealed on CTV, in a village called Maghlaga, in the district of Malawi—where Muslim Brotherhood supporters earlier ransacked and plundered a museum housing Egyptian antiquities—a Muslim gang leader known as “Saddam” has been going to every one of the approximately 80 Coptic households in the village demanding jizya/extortion money from them.

One inhabitant of the village confirmed that Muslim Brotherhood members are behind Saddam, specifically informing him how much money each household can be squeezed of, so that most households are paying anywhere from 20,000-100,000 Egyptian pounds (from 3-15 thousand U.S. dollars).

Yasser, the village resident reporting, said that Saddam told the Copts that “Everyone is going to pay and whoever doesn’t pay we’ll take his son, his wife—we’ll violate the people to the utmost extreme.”

During the live news show it was further revealed that in the region of Shubrat al-Khaima, another young Coptic child was kidnapped, with demands that his parents pay 250,000 EP (nearly 40,000 USD).  After the father complied and met them alone with the money in a secret place, the kidnappers took the money, beat the father severely, and still kept his child.

Such hate for Egypt’s Christians is hardly unprecedented.  Earlier another Muslim man kidnapped a 6-year-old Christian boy and, after the family paid the ransom, still killed the child and threw his body in his sewer.

See prior Money Jihad coverage of how the Muslim Brotherhood finances itself through the traditional Islamic jizya tax here, here, and here.

Egypt: Islamists levy jizya against Copts

And what do they do with the proceeds?  Buy weapons to wage further assaults against non-Muslims, the military, and moderate Muslims.  Excerpts from a recent article in The Times of London follow:

• “Some Coptic Christian communities are being made to pay bribes as local Islamists exploit the turmoil by seeking to revive a seventh-century tax, called jizya, levied on non-Muslims.”

• “In Minya, home to one of the largest communities of Coptic Christians, families said that they had had to pay protection money to their Muslim attackers.”

• “‘…A local thug [in Deir Mawas], together with representatives of the two most important Muslim families in the city, came around to the Christian families demanding money or they will burn their buildings,’ he said. ‘The starting price was 2,000LE (£190), but because I own quite a large shop, I had to pay 5,000LE.’ For many this is several months’ earnings.”

Additionally, Raymond Ibrahim reports:

• “…the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters are forcing the roughly 15,000 Christian Copts of Dalga village in south Minya province to pay jizya…”

• “‘…Some are being expected to pay 200 Egyptian pounds per day, others 500 Egyptian pounds per day’.”
  

• “…some 40 Christian families have now fled Dalga…”

And just yesterday, two Coptic Christians in Sahel Selim in Assuit Province were killed for refusing to pay 10,000 Egyptian pounds in jizya to a “Muslim gang.”  CBN has video:

Syrian fighters funded in part by jizya

Jizya taxation has driven Christian families out of their villages in northern Syrian and into Jordan according to Martin Janssen, a Dutch missionary living in Amman.  The Syrian refugees describe the marauders as “bearded strangers”—an indication that Salafist fighters have penetrated into the Syrian countryside.

How the jizya collections have been spent was not discussed, but such revenues are normally used by jihadists to buy more weapons and supplies.  Under classical Islamic tax law, money collected from jizya and kharaj taxation is used to provision the army of the caliphate.

Eventually, the jizya demands in northern Syria increased to the point where Christian residents could no longer pay—they eventually fled or were murdered for non-payment, with only three of 30 families from one village reportedly surviving.

From a translation by Dr. Mark Durie of the Religious Freedom Coalition (h/t IvE) on June 1:

…My interlocutors this evening were almost all from northern Syria. They came from Idlib, Aleppo and villages in the countryside between the two cities. Their testimony was unanimous. Many of these villages had a large Christian presence until a few years ago, but now Christians no longer lived there. Jamil, an elderly man, told the following story during which other attendees began to nod violently in agreement. They appeared to have experienced exactly the same things.

Jamil lived in a village near Idlib where 30 Christian families had always lived peacefully alonside some 200 Sunni families. That changed dramatically in the summer of 2012. One Friday trucks appeared in the village with heavily armed and bearded strangers who did not know anyone in the village. They began to drive through the village with a loud speaker broadcasting the message that their village was now part of an Islamic emirate and Muslim women were henceforth to dress in accordance with the provisions of the Islamic Sharia. Christians were given four choices. They could convert to Islam and renounce their “idolatry”. If they refused they were allowed to remain on condition that they pay the jizya. This is a special tax that non-Muslims under Islamic law must pay for “protection”. For Christians who refused there remained two choices: they could leave behind all their property or they would be slain. The word that was used for the latter in Arabic (dhabaha) refers to the ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals.

After Jamil had finished his story a gloomy silence descended. I asked him how the 30 Christian families in his village had perished since then. He replied that a number of families – including his own family – had initially opted to pay jizya. When the leader of the armed militia in their village, however, noticed that they were able to do this, the amount kept increasing in the following months. Like almost all other Christian families he eventually fled the village. His land and farm were lost. Some Christian families in his village who were unable to escape or pay the jizya converted to Islam. To his knowledge, there were no Christians killed in his village, but he had heard other stories from a neighboring village where only three Christian families survived. They were all murdered in the middle of the night…

Copts threatened again with jizya

The imposition of the jizya tax against non-Muslims is frequently threatened and often enforced in the Islamic world.  Just ask the Sikhs of Pakistan, the Jews of Yemen, the Christians of Iraq, the Catholics of the Philippines, the Greek Orthodox of northern Cyprus, and the Copts of Egypt.

The promise that non-Muslims shall convert to Islam, pay the jizya, or be fought is a promise made by the Hadith, and a promise kept by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Read all about it at http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/09/egypt-muslims-distribute-leaflets-telling-christians-to-leave-city-or-have-their-property-destroyed.html.

Seven ways to stop funding terror

Money Jihad has previously proposed methods to limit zakat and hawala—two major mechanisms for funding terror.  Here’s a more comprehensive set of our recommendations that would reduce terrorist financing overall:

1. Drill, baby, drill.  The U.S. should expand offshore oil drilling, open federal lands for drilling, ease its permitting process for new refineries, encourage hydraulic fracturing methods that tap previously inaccessible energy sources underground, and approve the Keystone XL pipeline.  Increasing domestic U.S. and Western Hemisphere energy production will reduce reliance on Persian Gulf oil supplies and thereby minimize the profits reaped by hostile, foreign regimes that sponsor terror.
2. Eliminate foreign aid to Pakistan.  Pakistan uses its ISI spy service to fund the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba.  Continuing to waste money on Pakistan is not only wasteful when we can least afford it, but it is suicidal.
3. Study the true enemy and threat.  Among the most important concepts for the Western public to understand are:
   • The Koran calls upon Muslims to strive with their lives and wealth for the cause of jihad (Chapter 9, Verse 41).
   • Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, shall be allocated to several categories in accordance with the Koran 9:60, one of which is for those waging jihad for Allah.
   • Islam imposes the jizya tax on “infidels” living in Muslims territory (Koran 9:29), even today.
   • Islam calls for taxes on Muslims apart from zakat such as khums and ushr which finance terrorist organizations throughout the Islamic world.
   • Sharia finance is a destructive, opaque financial system that has kept Islamic economies in tatters for centuries.
   • Sharia banks and halal businesses are involved in financing terrorism.
   • Radical Muslims believe, as Anwar al-Awlaki instructed them, that there is a basis in Islamic law for stealing (through robbery, welfare fraud, tax cheating, etc.), especially if the theft takes place to finance jihad.

   If we fail to acknowledge Islam as the animating force behind terror finance, we’ll get confused and aim at the wrong targets.  For example, we’ve spent billions of dollars complying with extensive bureaucratic requirements such as currency reports that have yielded minimal results.

4. Launch a new offensive against Muslim American charities and entities that fund terrorism.  Pick a few of the highest profile ones and make an example of them by prosecuting their leaders and dressing them in orange jumpsuits.  Prosecute Islamic Relief USA under the laws against providing material support for terrorism.  Prosecute the Council on American-Islamic Relations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  Strip the halal food certifier IFANCA and the mosque deed financier North American Islamic Trust of their tax-exempt status.

Aurangzeb: How to tax, oppress, and humiliate

A history lesson comes to us from the Bikaner Museum’s exhibit on Aurangzeb, the Muslim emperor who ruled over India and forced the Koran-based jizya tax upon Hindu subjects:

Aurangzeb, as he was according to Mughal Records

an exhibition mounted by FACT – India

Exhibit No. 18: Hindus forced to suffer humiliation in paying the Jizyah tax

On 2nd April 1679, Aurangzeb re-imposed Jizayah upon the Hindus which had been abolished by Emperor Akbar in 1564. The author of Maasir-i-Alamgiri writes: ‘As all the aims of the religious Emperor (Aurangzeb) were directed to the spreading of the law of Islam and the overthrow of the practices of the infidelity, he issued orders ….. that from Wednesday, the 2nd April 1679/1st Rabi I, in obedience to the Qur’anic injunction, “till they pay Jizyah with the hand of humility”, and in agreement with the canonical traditions, Jizyah should be collected from the infidels (zimmis) of the capital and the provinces’.

The economic burden of Jizyah was felt most by the poor who formed the vast majority of the Hindus; for the middle classes and the rich, it was not so much the economic burden which mattered but the humiliation involved in the prescribed mode of payment, which the Jizyah collector could always insist upon, as of right i.e. by insisting that he would accept it only when paid personally. The Qur’anic injunction that war must be made upon all those who do not profess Islam “till they pay Jizyah out of their hand and they are humiliated”, was interpreted to mean that the Hindus must be made conscious of their inferior position when paying this tax.

In the painting, a number of Hindus, both rich and poor are lining up to pay Jizyah while the arrogant Jizyah collector is picking up the coins from the palm of a Hindu Jizyah payer. Some people have come from the neighbouring areas in their bullock-carts; their bullocks are resting under the shade of the trees.

More on the history of jizya can be found in our prior coverage here.

Okay, trolls, here’s your big chance.  This is where you can respond and repeat your false claims that jizya isn’t in effect today (even though it is), that the jizya tax rate is low (even though it isn’t), that jizya isn’t a tax but some type of “compensation,” or “recognition” of the state (which it isn’t), that jizya is “fair” because Muslims pay zakat (which is irrelevant), that jizya is a progressive or “graduated” tax (a misleading claim), or that jizya has been imposed by Hebrews against their enemies (which is false), etc.

Two Filipinos killed during jizya tax billing

Abu Sayyaf, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or some other group of Philippine jihadists is trying to force bus companies to pay jizya to them in exchange for “protecting” their passengers by not bombing them.  But that didn’t stop the Muslim fanatics from detonating a bomb and killing two passengers as a warning shot first.  From NaharNet with a hat tip to Rantburg yesterday:

Two Dead, 5 Wounded in Southern Philippine Bus Bombing

Two people were killed and five others were wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus in the southern Philippines on Wednesday, the regional military commander said.

The explosion occurred as the bus was pulling into a terminal in Carmen, a town on the restive island of Mindanao that is home to a long-running Muslim insurgency, Lieutenant Colonel Benjie Hao told reporters.

The regional military spokesman initially reported that 10 people were killed and two wounded, but Hao said the death toll of two was confirmed after soldiers reached the scene of the blast.

The bomb was apparently planted inside the bus, according to Hao.

Although there were no immediate suspects in the blast, Hao said that extortionists had previously carried out such bombings to force the bus company to pay them protection money.

The incident took place in a region where Muslim separatist rebels and heavily-armed outlaw groups are active, often resorting to extortion, kidnapping and banditry to raise funds.

“Extortionists”=jihadists.  “Protection money”=jizya.  “Outlaw groups”=those acting in accordance with Islamic law…