Through Force or Faith? — Page 208
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 208 leniency was shown in determining jizya but if anyone became incapable of paying it subsequently, the jizya tax was forgiven. In this regard the following historic incident is an interesting example. It is reported that once ‘Umar ra passed by a place where non-Muslims were being treated with some harshness in the course of the collection of jizya. He stopped and angrily inquired as to what was going on. He was informed that those people did not want to pay jizya and were saying that they did not have the capacity to do so. ‘Umar ra said, ‘Then there is no reason to bur- den them with what they cannot bear. Let them go. I have heard from the Holy Prophet s as that anyone who causes hardship to any- one in this world, shall be under the chastisement of God on the day of Judgment. ’ The jizya of those people was forgiven. ( Kit ā b ul-Khar ā j ) Professor Thomas W. Arnold writes: This tax was not imposed on the Christians, as some would have us think, as a penalty for their refusal to accept the Muslim faith, but was paid by them in common with the other dhimmis or non-Muslim subjects of the state whose religion precluded them from serving in the army, in return for the protection secured for them by the arms of the Musulmans [Muslims] and it is very noticeable that when any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from the payment of this tax. The Southern Rumanians, the so-called Armatoli, who consti- tuted so important an element of strength in the Turkish army during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and