Fighting the Jews and Christians
A brief look at the jizya verse
In the last instalment, we examined one of the Qur’ān’s most debated verses: the so-called “Verse of the Sword” (Q. 9:5). Divorced from its context, it reads like an ultimatum: convert or be killed.
However, the surrounding verses, as well as many classical commentaries, suggest a more restricted scope, namely those who violated treaties and attacked the early Muslims, while explicitly exempting those polytheists who kept their word.
While the verse does demand confrontation with treaty-violators, it also upholds the right of safe passage for anyone genuinely seeking to understand Islam. Coerced conversion is neither required nor accepted.
Scholars split, not just on how to read this verse, but on how it relates to earlier ones calling for restraint, religious tolerance, and peace. Some invoked naskh, the principle of abrogation, to claim that verse 5 cancelled out those earlier calls. Others rejected this move, insisting that the Qur’ān be read as a whole, with its message of justice and mercy intact.
This difference has momentous implications. As later discourse on jihād shows, much of the debate hinges on whether we treat verse 5 as context-bound or timelessly applicable. This choice continues to shape Muslim approaches to peace, violence, and religious difference, resulting in the gamut of interpretations we see today.
In this post, we will take a brief look at another strongly debated verse, before finally turning to jihād in Sufi thought in the following instalment.
Verse 29 of Sūrah al-Tawba, sometimes described as the jizya verse, is almost as vilified as the verse of the sword. Like verse 5, it’s also often taken out of context, and cited as proof of general religious intolerance. But as always, the reality is more complicated.
First, let’s have a look at the verse itself:
“Fight those of the People of the Book who do not [truly] believe in God and the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, who do not obey the rule of justice, until they pay the tax and agree to submit” (Q. 9:29).
This verse addresses the Ahl al-Kitāb, the “People of the Book,” which is an honorific term used for those who had received a revelation in the form of scripture (for the most part, Jews and Christians).
What exactly does it mean to accuse them of not believing in God and the Last Day? Opinions varied. Some exegetes interpret it as meaning that Jews and Christians do not really believe in the Last Day, as they do not believe in physical resurrection. For others, it is more of a behavioural critique: they act as if they don’t believe.1
As for “not forbidding what God and His Messenger have forbidden,” classical commentators offered several interpretations. For some, it means eating pork and drinking wine. For others, it means lying about God, or usury and unlawful use of gentile property.
In yet another interpretation, it means not paying what is due to the Muslim state (that is, the tax the Jews and Christians had agreed to pay), through which they were breaking an agreement and therefore not obeying their own prophet.2
What about the part about paying the tax and agreeing to submit? Here, too, there was a range of interpretations. On the stricter end of the spectrum, the exegete Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Qurtubī (d. 1273) took the verse as requiring subjugation of Jews and Christians because of their denial of the Prophet.3
Others offered more pragmatic explanations. An exegete of the preceding century, Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (d. 1144), understood it as a means of offsetting the economic loss Muslims faced after breaking ties with the Meccan polytheists.
The tax referred to—the jizya, a per capita tax on non-Muslims, paid in exchange for protection, exemption from military service, and the right to practice their religion—was, in this reading, merely a financial safeguard, meant to protect the Muslims from poverty.4
But as with the verse about polytheists, this raises the question: was the verse meant as a general directive for all times, or as a limited wartime instruction?
Which Jews and Christians?
One of the earliest exegetes, Mujāhid ibn Jabr (d. 722), read the verse more narrowly. He understood this verse to refer specifically to Byzantine Christians, against whom the Prophet was preparing to fight at Tabūk.
Later scholars like al-Tabarī expanded its reach, arguing that it applied to all Jews and Christians: no longer just a particular imperial enemy, but any non-Muslim group rejecting Islamic rule.5
This change was not incidental. While early exegetes favour the narrowed application, by the Mamluk period, an age of Mongol invasions and Crusades, a preference developed for a more general mandate for offensive warfare against those deemed enemies of Islam.6
Verse 29 thus came to be more widely read as a call to broader offensive warfare. As political and military needs changed, so did scholarly interpretations.
Abrogation and the jizya verse
Another layer of complexity is introduced through the application of naskh. As introduced in the last post, naskh allowed later verses to override earlier ones if they contain rulings that seem to contradict each other.
Some scholars resisted using it here. Al-Zamakhsharī, for example, insisted that neither 9:5 nor 9:29 abrogated the verses that promoted coexistence for some exegetes.7 Exegetes such as Abū Jaʿfar al-Nahhās (d. 949), however, argued that Q. 9:29 cancelled out verses urging peace and tolerance toward the People of the Book.8
Together with Q. 9:5, this meant that, for some exegetes, more than a hundred more peaceful verses were considered null and void. As with Q. 9:5, this principle was used to override earlier restrictions.
Yet the Qur’ān itself doesn’t say these earlier verses were annulled. That is to say: the Qur’ān does not explicitly declare, “this verse cancels those earlier ones.” Rather than being compelled by the text itself, certain scholars decided that these verses should be treated as final and determinative, rather than reading them in light of earlier restrictions, such as those in verses 2:190-5.
What to make of this verse?
So where does this leave us? Was this a command for all time, to be applied to all Jews and Christians, or a directive bound to a particular moment in history?
This question has never had a definitive answer. Some scholars preferred the more bellicose readings, seeing the more peaceful verses as cancelled and expanding the scope of application. Others apply abrogation in a much more restricted way, or even, in modern interpretations, read the verse in light of the whole Qur’ānic vision, without assuming that it overrides any others. This way of reading the Qur’ān, they argue, preserves its spirit of peace-making.9
And it goes without saying that each reading emerged within, and so cannot be separated from, its sociopolitical context. Once again, we can see here, implicitly, that scriptural interpretation is not neutral. It is shaped by the politics, fears, and needs of the moment. These traces are never easy to distinguish from the truth of a holy text.
Some things to think about:
How can one know when a verse refers to a specific historical circumstance and when it contains a universal, timeless ruling?
To what extent should we refer to traditional scholarly commentaries, or inversely, to embark on paths of interpretation that diverge from them?
If interpretation is inescapably shaped by the reader, is it still possible to speak of the “original” meaning of a verse?
If you have thoughts on any of these, I would love to hear your perspective in the comments!
In the coming instalments, we finally turn to jihād in Sufi writings. To what extent does the Sufi understanding of jihād differ from, or mirror, the non-Sufi understanding? What does the so-called greater jihād mean, and is it an alternative to the lesser one?
However, Haleem takes issue with this interpretation, arguing that it is more characteristic of the Qurʾānic style to refer to belief in God and the Last Day not literally, but to stress certain points (if they really believed in God and the Last Day, they would behave differently). He argues that the Qurʾān is not saying that believing in God and the Last Day justifies fighting people. For a more in-depth treatment, see Abdel Haleem, “The jizya Verse (Q. 9:29): Tax Enforcement on Non-Muslims in the First Muslim State,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 2, 2012, 73.
Haleem, “The jizya Verse,” 73-4.
The polytheists, by contrast, are not given this option: al-Qurtubī writes that “not one of them shall remain on earth, but they must fight or convert to Islam.” Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Qurtubī, Jāmi‘ li-ahkām al-Qur’ān [The Compendium of Rulings of the Qur‘ān]. Retrieved from http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=1&tTafsirNo=5&tSoraNo=9&tAyahNo=29&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1. Commentary on Q. 9:29.
Abū’l-Qāsim al-Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf ‘an haqā’iq al-tanzīl [Revealing the Realities of the Revelation] (Dār al-fikr), vol. 2, 184. Cited in Denis Savelyev, “Fighting the Unbelievers: Various Perspectives on Qur'an 9:29 by Muslim Theologians,” CSIOF Occasional Papers 2 (2010), 13.
Ibn Jabr Mujāhid, Tafsīr Mujāhid [The Commentary of Mujāhid] (Majma‘ buḥūth al-Islāmīyya), 99. Cited in Asma Afsaruddin, “Jihad in Islamic Thought,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, vol. 2, ed. Matthew S. Gordon, Richard W. Kaeuper and Harriet Zurndorfer (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 455.
Afsaruddin, “Jihad,” 454.
Al-Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, vol. 3, 13-14.
Abū Jaʿfar al-Nahhās, Al-Nāsikh wa'l-mansūkh [The Abrogator and the Abrogated], vol. 1 (Mu’assasat al-Risāla, 1991), 514. Cited in Reuven Firestone, Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford University Press, 1999), 64.
Asma Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013), 297.