Why Did The Caliphs Demonstrate Religious Tolerance To Jews And Christians?

Why Did The Caliphs Demonstrate Religious Tolerance To Jews And Christians? – It is a greatly known myth that Islam tolerates other religions. And this can be observed by how they treated the people of non-Muslim religions throughout history. To still establish a mild tolerance in the Muslim lands, they established a Religious Tolerance. But it wasn’t as friendly as people think.

Why Did The Caliphs Demonstrate Religious Tolerance To Jews And Christians?

The Religious Tolerance Tax

Even the Quran mentions this tax, and it calls it Jizya or Jizyah. The Jizya is an yearly tax paid for the Islamic states by non-Muslims. So, they can freely express they religious beliefs. This tax was paid by every non-Muslim, except those who joined the army. And those who were too poor. Because Jizya was a per capital tax.

The Jizya appears in the Quran and hadiths. But they don’t mention an amount or rate that should be paid by the non-Muslims. And this tax was seen as a fee for protection. For this fee the Muslim ruler would protect the non-Muslims and will not harm them. Leaving them to express their own religions.

Why Did The Caliphs Demonstrate Religious Tolerance?

And How Did Muslims Demonstrate Religious Tolerance To Jews And Christians?

The answer to this question is not so easy. There are many speculations about the motivation that lead to Religious Tolerance. Because the Islamic countries were against other religions. Even the Quran is anything but tolerant toward other religious beliefs. Therefore, the Muslim Rulers or Caliphs needed really good reasons to dismiss their initial laws and to tolerate and even protect the non-Muslims.

The most powerful motif seems to be the economic collapse that might have resulted in the division of lands due to religious differences. And mostly, trade was the biggest and most important motif.

The caliphs made most of their income from trading. But without the religious tolerance, it would have been hard to trade with non-Muslims. And would have resulted in a huge economic crisis.

Therefore, the caliphs chose to apply demonstrate religious tolerance and apply a fee to Jews and Christians in hope for higher levels of trade. Which, in a short period of time generated a huge income for the caliphs and the Muslim states.

In conclusion, they demonstrated tollerance purely because it was both an economical and political move. They did it to generate more incomes from trading.