What Role Did Islam Play in Provoking the Crusades?

By: Dr. Ted Baehr; ©2005

The new movie by Ridley Scott, The Kingdom of Heaven, has prompted new interest in the Crusades. But Church historians charge the movie takes some serious liberties with history. Recent history books would have us believe that the Muslims were innocent and passive victims of the Crusades. Christians are portrayed as unprovoked aggressors. But what is the truth?

(Excerpts from Former Muslims Testify About Islam, a production of the John Ankerberg Show, with Dr. Ergun Caner and Dr. Emir Caner.)

The new movie by Ridley Scott, The Kingdom of Heaven, has prompted new interest in the Crusades. But Church historians charge the movie takes some serious liberties with history.

Recent history books would have us believe that the Muslims were innocent and passive victims of the Crusades. Christians are portrayed as unprovoked aggressors. But what is the truth? It appears that the Crusades were a dark time in the history of both Islam and Christianity, one that neither should be proud of, and both should be cautious of exploiting to their own ends.

Below we present an extended excerpt from programs we taped with two former Muslims, Drs. Ergun and Emir Caner. The Caners have recently released a book entitled Christian Jihad (Kregel, 2004), which explores the true history of the Crusades.

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Dr. Ergun Caner: Well, let’s first be very honest. When a Muslim brings this up the Crusades and Inquisitions, let’s be very honest and say, “You’re absolutely right. Horrific things have been done in the name of Christianity. Horrific things. Absolutely abominable things! However, if someone takes a gun, climbs a tower and believes that he’s killing people in the name of Jesus Christ, he does so in defiance of the teachings of Jesus Christ. When a Muslim takes up arms, declares a Fatwa, a legal opinion, goes to jihad, he does so in strict adherence to the life and example of Islam.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, I think that’s important. The fact is that Jesus never uttered a command anyplace for us to go after somebody else.

Ergun: We’re not looking for the death of the infidel. We’re looking for their conversion. We’re not called to kill those who do not believe. We are called to love them. That’s the way we were loved.

And this is what got to us in the Gospel of Christ in that we expected enmity. We walked into the churches expecting hatred, revenge, or retribution, or distaste at the very least. Instead, they loved us. And when we would ask them, “Why are you being so nice to us?” because the more vituperative, the more mean-spirited I was, the nicer they were.

And they’d said, “Oh, well that’s simple. God commended His love toward us…while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” [Rom. 5:8]. And so, because of this, that’s why love knocks down so many doors. Love builds bridges that come into our lives that we weren’t expecting.

Ankerberg: All right. Summarize Muhammad’s life and compare that with Christ.

Dr. Emir Caner: To be very explicit, the easiest example, the greatest demon­stration is that Muhammad shed other people’s blood. Jesus shed His own. Muhammad’s life was complex. Muhammad’s life was something of depravity if we’ll look at it in one way or the other. There was fault because he was a mere man.

But with Jesus Christ, especially as we look at the crucifixion and the Resurrection: “I find no fault in Him.” He can be Savior, He is Savior. And He’s not just a good Savior or a better Savior or best Savior. Jesus Christ came to be the only Savior. Whereas, Muhammad just claimed to be a messenger, Jesus Christ claimed to be Messiah, Savior, the Son of God and God the Son. And then He says, “That is the promise that if you believe that, you will have eternal life” (cf. 1 John 5:13).

Ankerberg: Talk about, more about jihad. Muhammad was a strategist and he was a great commander, but he was also, for lack of a better word, very ruthless with some of the people that he conquered. What is some of the history on that?

Emir: Probably the greatest example would be of the Jews. After he conquered a city, he had 800 Jews in a trench outside the city in which he cut off their heads. This is important to understand because when the Crusades happened and the Chris­tians did likewise, and they slaughtered 2,700 Muslims by the very exact same act of decapitation, they were pointing out what Muhammad did.

Now, the sad part about that is that the Crusades were not Christian theology. What happened, when Pope Leo IV in 833 said, “If you go to war, then you’ll go to heaven” it was Islamic theology. And then 250 years later, they go to war.

They, all of a sudden, remove Christian theology, take on Islamic theology, and the black eye of the last millennium, the Crusades from 1095 until 1291, is the very picture of what we shouldn’t do when Jesus in Matthew 13 says and gives a parable of wheat and tares, believers and unbelievers, and how you should handle them. The disciples say, Shouldn’t we rip up the unbelievers and remove them from this field which is the world? And Jesus says, “No,” for two reasons. Number one, He says, “Only I have the right to do that.” He says, number two, “If you try to rip up the tares, the unbelievers, you will also rip up the wheat with them.”

Ankerberg: Ergun, I think it’s important to say that again, that if people do that in Christ’s name, they’re going against Him; whereas, on the other side, there would be a following of Muhammad’s example. Summarize that.

Ergun: Jesus Christ never called us, ever, to kill the infidel. The Crusades were a horrific, sinful, quite frankly, disgusting dark chapter in our history. Be­cause in so doing, we emulated those who were militarily genius, but spiritually empty. Christ didn’t call us to kill the infidel; Christ called us to love the infidel. We are to love our enemies. This is the mark of Christianity. By loving them, sometimes we would rather, as they said about the patristic fathers, we would rather have our own blood shed than to shed the blood of another.

Ankerberg: Yeah. We can use Jesus Christ to condemn the Crusades.

Emir: Yes. That is, we never react according to what others believe. We act according to what the Scripture says and when we take the Scripture literally, we will treat them with a neighbor’s love; that we’ll “do unto others as we would have them do to ourselves.” That when we go to war, as we had with Iraq, this is not a Christian army. There are Christians in the Army, but this is not Christianity ver­sus Islam. This is not a religious war on our part, though in many a Muslim’s mind it is a religious war on their part. It is a confessional war that they’re trying to “kill the infidel and slay the enemy wherever they find them.” But to us, this is a matter of peace. This is a matter of protecting our homeland. This is not a matter of converting them to Christianity.

Ankerberg: Why is it that they see everything that the West does or Europe does as being Christian ethics at work?

Ergun: Remember, we can’t watch the world through Western eyes. Any­where else in the world, when you speak of a country or someone’s affiliation to a country, you’re speaking of their religion. When we would see Syria—they’re Alawite; Iraq—Shi’ite, or Sunni, but a Shi’ite majority; but at the time, a Sunni Ba’ath Party leadership.

When they see America, they do not see America, the great geo-political super-power or the only mega-power left; they see America, the defender of Zion; America, the Christian nation. For them, since February 23, 1998, the signing of the Fatwa, this is not just a war, this is holy war, this is jihad. For us, we either stem it, or ignore it. And if we ignore it, we become victims of it.

Ankerberg: Emir, what happened after Muhammad died? How did the people take his teaching, and how did they follow it up?

Emir: Muhammad dies in 632 A.D. His first convert, Abu Bakr, outside of his wife, then takes over and really secures the Arabian Peninsula for Islam, which has been since that day, and to this day, an Islamic Peninsula. He takes over Damascus, Syria.

After Abu Bakr is out of the way, with other caliphs such as Uthman and Umar and so forth—they take over Damascus in 634, Baghdad in 636; they take over Jerusalem less than a decade later. They sweep through North Africa, places like Cairo and so forth, all the way up through the Iberian Peninsula, which is Spain and Portugal today.

And exactly 100 years after they started, in 732—a hundred years after Muhammad’s death—they’re finally stopped. And in of all places today, France, when Charles the Hammer, Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours, stops the Muslims in their tracks.

Their goal was to stop oppression. This is absolutely key with jihad. Oppres­sion to the Muslim is anything that is not Shari’a law, that is not Islamic law. And so they were going to sweep through the south side of Europe, take over Europe and create this worldwide Islamic religion where theocracy is the key, politics and religion merged. Where the imams have a say, the mullahs have a say in which you’ll never have a separation of politics and religion.

Ankerberg: Slow that down for us because, they swept through basically the known world at that time except for the top of Europe. What was their motivation to do so? Why did they do so?

Emir: Because of the call of Muhammad.

Ankerberg: Which was?

Emir: That you must go to jihad—surah 2:216. That it is “good for you,” and that jihad is good for those to whom you go because if you go to them, you relieve them out of oppression, out of their monarchies, and oligarchies, or today, their democracies; that you put them in a place where they have the perfect law, the straight way, the Shari’a law. And that those, then, can become Muslims, and if they refuse to become Muslims, they at least live under the perfect law, that is, Shari’a law, and they then have to abide by the laws that are found in the Hadith, the jurisprudence for Islam.

Ankerberg: I found it interesting in your writings that you were talking about the writings in the Qur’an actually say the blessing of Allah is evident in those who rule. In other words, that’s part of his blessing to people. If you get the posi­tion of power to rule, Allah has blessed you. Is that correct?

Emir: Absolutely.

Ankerberg: And then the second part of that is the fact is, if you are given that position, Allah expects you to do things. What are the things he’s expecting you to do as the ruler?

Emir: “For the sake of Allah,” that is, to set up his laws, his ways, his morals, his jurisprudence, and that’s your responsibility. When we come to rule here, if you’re a Congressman of some sort, we are to uphold the United States Consti­tution and the Bill of Rights. If you become a leader within a Muslim community, you are to uphold the laws of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad in what he spoke.

Ankerberg: Ergun, take us into Iraq for a moment, because we’re trying to set up a democracy there and the fact is that in the first few meetings of the leaders, they all wanted to join Islam with the state. And tell the people why.

Ergun: Well, what’s interesting about Iraq is this. It has always been, since it was formed as a country out of the Mesopotamias in 1921 (Winston Churchill, head of the Admiralty, gave it away), it has always been ruled by Sunnis. And this has been greatly infuriating to the vast majority of the Muslims who live in Iraq who are Shi’ite. You have about 20 percent are Kurds, maybe 20 percent are Sunni, but 60 percent are Shi’ites.

As soon as Iraq fell, as soon as the regime of Saddam Hussein fell, the first song, the first sound you heard were Muslims who are Shi’ite who believe with all of their hearts that what Saddam Hussein had was a secular government, not secular because he didn’t always wear his headdress, but secular because he was a Sunni.

The Sunnis and the Shi’ites, immediately following the death of Muhammad, you have that split. Muhammad did not know he was going to die. He did not leave marching orders, so to speak. So now the fight is on. Who will lead Islam? In 632 we have so many followers now. Muhammad’s last words were, according to the Hadith, “Push the pagans out of the Arabian Peninsula.”

Well, how are we going to accomplish this? There was the group that wanted it to be a genetic leader, a trail of blood, so to speak, and they, the Shi’ites, be­lieved that Ali needed to be the first leader, the first caliph. There are no more prophets, but a caliph. The rest of them said, “It has to be Muhammad’s best friend, the first convert, the richest man, the wealthy merchant–Abu Bakr.

The vast majority of the people went with Abu Bakr and thus the vast majority of the people went with the Sunni. The small group split off and they became known as the Shi’ites. From that time, there has been warfare between Sunni and Shi’ite. The Shi’ite will never recognize any Uthman [e.g.], Umar. They will recognize no caliph until Ali. And so you have this fight between the two.

In Iraq, whether we set up an Islamic republic of Sunni or an Islamic republic of Shi’ite, if we do not do as we did with Japan in World War II—give them the opportunity for free voice, a democracy—I hate to say it, but I think we’ll be back there in another ten years.

Ankerberg: Okay. Go back and tie the second caliph to some of the things that are happening today. He defined the laws of mercy, that is, the protection to be given to Christians, Jews, and to non-Muslims. What was that all about and is it still in effect today?

Emir: Well, Umar said, How do you handle when they surrender? This is something Muhammad didn’t have to deal with because it was all within one Arabian Peninsula. But now you’re dealing with different cultures and different people, and so the Pact of Umar [See Appendix], one of the earliest documents that you see, he says, You cannot build churches, rebuild churches, remodel churches. That when a Muslim wants to sit down, you must get up. When you have these things, you are a second-class citizen. And you must pay an extra tax, the Qur’an says.

Now the Pact of Umar really makes the salient points and practical points of how to deal with these Christians, these Jews, or these polytheists. Now, oddly enough, the Christians and Jews found protection, but many times the polytheist had no right because they were not “people of the Book.” They were not people who had perverted the gospel of Allah, but nonetheless, they were polytheists and had no right to exist.

Ankerberg: So that when the caliph would come in and the troops would conquer the people, they were given a choice, in essence. They had to submit and they also had to pay a tax, didn’t they?

Emir: Jizyat, yes. You pay a tax, they say, because you cannot fight in a Mus­lim army. You cannot fight jihad. You cannot fight in a Muslim army. And so this is paying your conscription. That’s what a jizyat is.

Ankerberg: And what if they didn’t pay the tax, and what if they didn’t submit?

Ergun: You live under the Pact of Umar, you either submit or you are “submitted.”

Emir: And that’s when surah 5:33 comes. That’s when you can exile. That’s when you can imprison. That’s when you can crucify or execute. And when you can do those things—in Morocco you have imprisonment today; in Pakistan you have the “blasphemy law by execution.” And all of these things are what modern Muslim purist countries, Islamic republics, adhere to today, and it comes straight from the Pact of Umar.

Ergun: Islamic republics, by their very nature, cannot allow for religious free­dom. They must allow, at best, for religious toleration. Religious toleration means you, as a Christian, you are allowed to live in our country, the laws we just spoke of; but you cannot paint the walls of your church. You cannot expand the land upon which your church builds. You cannot do the very thing that Christianity calls us to do, which is the Great Commission. If you win your child to Christ, fine. They aren’t going to care. If your child becomes a Muslim, you cannot prohibit him. If you win a Muslim to Christ, at best, you are deported.

Emir: You have a rise of purist Islam over the last 20 years, but since Septem­ber 11, now we are no longer in a “cold war,” we’re in a confessional war. And they recognize this as a war of worldview. If you introduce freedom, then by negation they will have to take what Muhammad said only historically, or allegori­cally. They’ll have to somehow modify it in one way or the other and truly remove much of Islam’s tenets, and place inside of it instead freedom to believe however you wish to believe. And so this is a grand experiment, so to speak. But this happened in Japan. This happened in the Korean Peninsula. And since that happened, Japan has become an incredible democracy. Korea itself has be­come, one of two are Christians now because where you have an open Bible and an open mind, it will make a Christian every time.

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Ankerberg: All right, we’re talking about the thousand years after Muhammad lived. How did his followers carry out his teachings, especially in terms of jihad. And Emir, summarize where we are, and where we need to get to here.

Emir: Well, after the Battle of Tours in 732, the Muslims basically have to regroup. I mean, they have the Iberian Peninsula. That’s why Spain, until 1492, is under Muslim control, under the Moorish control. But the empire is so expansive, all the way through the North African continent, all the way touching China to the other side, all the way to Europe and down through Animism you have this in­credible empire.

So now the question is, Who’s going to be the center? What’s going to be the epicenter of Islam? It was Damascus. It moves to Baghdad. After Baghdad, it goes to Cairo, where we see, even today, what is the most popular Muslim, most authentic Muslim seminary in the world. And so they internalize it for two or three hundred years, while still conquering. And then come the Crusades.

Ankerberg: What happened in the Crusades?

Ergun: Well, in the Crusades, sadly, Christianity decided, well, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for us. The Muslims had taken over Jerusalem and it had cut off pilgrimages. The Church had split, East and West, obviously starting in the eighth century, but had finalized in 1054. And what you had was, nobody could send pilgrims to Jerusalem and follow the steps of Christ, the stations of the cross, so to speak. So the leader, the emperor of the East, writes a letter to the pope, Pope Urban II. The pope, who has got wars to deal with himself—I mean, he’s got the Teutons against the Gauls, etc.—he decides, “I’ve found it. Find a common enemy and we will stop fighting civil wars.” He stands up at the Council of Claremont in November of 1095, and on November 27 he says with a re­sounding voice, “Deus Vult,” “God wills it!”

Well, everyone decides to go, but he throws in the caveat which is, in my mind, in our estimation, the darkest day in Christian history, post-Pentecost. He says, “If you die in battle, Christ will forgive your sin.”

Now, we had always had Christians in the military. I mean, from the thundering legion of Marcus Aurelius we’d had Christians in the military. But this was differ­ent. This wasn’t a “just war” criteria, this was holy war. Christianity, for one dark moment, adopted Islamic jihad. We had, in effect, Christian jihad. He said Christ will forgive you if you die in battle. Christ will forgive you. You are given heaven as your home.

Ankerberg: And Christ never said that.

Ergun: No! Christ said…when Christ disarmed Peter, one of the patristics said, He disarmed Christian holy war, in the Garden of Gethsemane. We cannot fight in the name of Christ. We can fight as Christians; we live and operate by the just war criteria, but we do not fight as a Christian army.

Ankerberg: So we admit that that happened, and it’s terrible…

Ergun: Oh, yeah.

Ankerberg: …and we can use Christ to condemn it.

Ergun: Yes! And it’s horrific. And this is salient, this is vital, for our discussion. Because in the name of Christ, we slaughtered Jews at Antioch, the siege at Antioch at Acre. We slaughtered Muslims. We called them to convert or else. We did Inquisitions. We burned heretics in the name of theocracy. We allowed it, even Calvin and Servetus. Because of this, to this day, Muslims call Christians “the Crusaders.” Bin Laden, in his first released videotape following the bombing of 9-11 said, “I have gotten to the Crusaders.” We as Americans say, “Wait a minute. America wasn’t even a nation at this time.” But see, in a Muslim mind, this was a battle against the Crusaders.

Ankerberg: Okay, keep it going here. The fact is, the Crusaders came and they started to attack Muslims. What happened?

Emir: Well, the first one was, we were successful. We took Jerusalem back. We got the pilgrimage going once again until the hero within Islamic theology, Saladin. In 1187, he recaptured Jerusalem, and truly, until 1187 until 1291, you have the Muslims conquering over and over again, and the Christians being defeated over and over again. And it got so ugly that Christians not only fought against Muslims, Christians fought against each other. The West versus the East.

Ergun: We had the darkest day of 1212, when our men had been defeated so often, we decided to send our children—The Children’s Crusade. This little boy in France named Peter said, “I will lead the children. The children will lead.” And it was a wholesale slaughter.

Now, the reason we bring this up is because Christianity had six subsequent defeats. Constantly! And every time we said, “God wills it! You will die, you will go as a martyr. You will go as a martyr for Jesus,” and we kept getting defeated. All these promises of victory, I think God had to use the darkest actions of man to show us that Christ did not call us to warfare. Christ called us to love our enemies.

To this day, if somebody in the name of Christ says, “Go and kill,” no! In the name of Christ? No! We are subject to the authority of our country. Absolutely. But in the name of Christ? Absolutely not! We are not called to this. And so we condemn the Crusades. We condemn the Inquisitions. We condemn killing “in the name of Christ.”

We have never met a Muslim, a Muslim leader, who is willing to call other Muslims to lay down arms, to quit jihad. They won’t condone jihad, but neither will they condemn it.

Emir: And that’s the contradiction in Christian theology, 2 Peter 3:9: “God is willing that none should perish, but all should come to repentance” compared to surah 5 where, if you do anything against Islam, you should die. And then in the Hadith 9.57, if a Muslim changes his Islamic religion, kill him.

To the Christian, we want Muslims to be here because this is the only chance which any of us get. This is not an “us against them” mentality, this is a “Christ for them” mentality, and it’s wholly different. When we send missionaries, they see us as if we wish to conquer. We’re not there to conquer them. We’re there to give them the only hope that the world has in Jesus Christ.

Ankerberg: Now Emir, isn’t it true to say that Muslims, looking back at their own history, through their eyes, they saw themselves as being successful, as being blessed by Allah, by actually carrying out the commands of Muhammad in the Qur’an, and that Allah was blessing them? Okay? But then, there came a period of time where they started to experience defeat, and what did that feel like to them?

Emir: Well, to them, they had to somehow rationalize: How can Allah lose? Well, perhaps Allah made them lose because they were arrogant (surah 4). Maybe it was something they did. But all of a sudden, for the first thousand years they were on the offensive, and now they’re on the defensive. Colonialism comes to be—the Brits and the Dutch and the French and others win over so much parts of Africa but also the Mideast, and now they’re in subjugation to those who they should be subjugating. And to this day, colonialism has a bitter taste in their mouth because they were the colonizers for the first thousand years. And it’s not bitter just because of colonization, but because those who have no right to subju­gate, those who are infidels and inferior, are all of a sudden, for the next 300 years until the time of 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, are the ones who are in control of a land that they shouldn’t even inhabit, according to many listeners.

Ankerberg: So, for a thousand years they were successful, and then they got beaten back, and for the last 300 years they’ve been, what?

Emir: The last 300 years, it was colonization and now, since 1940’s up until today, you have this re-emergence of Islamic purism. You know, the re-emer­gence of Islamic states all across the Mideast. The re-emergence of an offensive Islamic jihad in the Sudan, in Nigeria, and in Kenya and Malaysia. And across the world you see it over and over and over again. People are persecuted for their faith. And we must stand and recognize that more people will die perhaps in this century, in this new millennium, than in all 20 centuries previous to this. It will come under the hand of Islam and the rationalization of Shari’a law.

Ankerberg: Ergun, in terms of the two points, of the life of Muhammad and the thousand years after he lived, what do those two things say in reference to jihad to Muslims living today?

Ergun: When we first started speaking out on this and referencing jihad as far as it’s in the Qur’an and in the Hadith, Muslims would jump up and say, “No, no, no, no, no. Jihad is personal holiness.” And we would say, “Well, yes, of course. But it is also public acts of warfare.” And they would say, “No, no, no. You are misinterpreting this. You’re misinterpreting this.” We have 1,300 years of history on our side. We have 1,300 years of active, consistent, constant warfare. We have in Israel the Palestinians. We have a constant warfare that will not let up, will not shut up, will not back up. This will not let up, I do not believe, until the Prince of Peace returns. The best we can hope for is a truce. But when you have a world view that says it has to be established as a theocracy, i.e., Shari’a law, or a democracy, this is going to clash because the two can never be twain.

Ankerberg: Ergun, in 30 seconds, wrap it up here. What’s a positive word in terms of Christianity versus Islam?

Ergun: I think what we’ve spent 17 years of our life doing–which is calling Christians not to defeat the Muslim, not to hate the Muslim, not to abrogate the Muslim or to try to kill the Muslim. It is our job to love the Muslim because that’s the message we share with them. Jesus Christ died for you. Jesus Christ died not to kill you, He died to offer you grace and salvation so you don’t have to shed your blood. And I pray that Christians around the world have started praying for our people, praying that they may be saved. Praying that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and other Muslim leaders come to a faith in the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Appendix—Pact of Umar

The Status of Non-Muslims Under Muslim Rule

After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion in the 7th century, Muslims leaders were required to work out a way of dealing with Non-Muslims, who re­mained in the majority in many areas for centuries. The solution was to develop the notion of the “dhimma”, or “protected person”. The Dhimmi were required to pay an extra tax, but usually they were unmolested. This compares well with the treatment meted out to non-Christians in Christian Europe. The Pact of Umar is supposed to have been the peace accord offered by the Caliph Umar to the Christians of Syria, a “pact” which formed the patter of later interaction.

We heard from ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghanam [died 78/697] as follows: When Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, accorded a peace to the Christians of Syria, we wrote to him as follows:

In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate. This is a letter to the servant of God Umar [ibn al-Khattab], Commander of the Faithful, from the Chris­tians of such-and-such a city. When you came against us, we asked you for safe-conduct (aman) for ourselves, our descendants, our property, and the people of our community, and we undertook the following obligations toward you:

We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.

We shall keep our gates wide open for passersby and travelers. We shall give board and lodging to all Muslims who pass our way for three days.

We shall not give shelter in our churches or in our dwellings to any spy, nor bide him from the Muslims.

We shall not teach the Qur’an to our children.

We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.

We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.

We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims by imitating any of their garments, the qalansuwa, the turban, footwear, or the parting of the hair.

We shall not speak as they do, nor shall we adopt their kunyas.

We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor bear any kind of arms nor carry them on our- persons.

We shall not engrave Arabic inscriptions on our seals.

We shall not sell fermented drinks.

We shall clip the fronts of our heads.

We shall always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and we shall bind the zunar round our waists.

We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly.

We shall not raise our voices when following our dead. We shall not show lights on any of the roads of the Muslims or in their markets. We shall not bury our dead near the Muslims.

We shall not take slaves who have been allotted to Muslims.

We shall not build houses overtopping the houses of the Muslims.

(When I brought the letter to Umar, may God be pleased with him, he added, “We shall not strike a Muslim.”)

We accept these conditions for ourselves and for the people of our commu­nity, and in return we receive safe-conduct.

If we in any way violate these undertakings for which we ourselves stand surety, we forfeit our covenant [dhimma], and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition.

Umar ibn al-Khittab replied: Sign what they ask, but add two clauses and impose them in addition to those which they have undertaken. They are: “They shall not buy anyone made prisoner by the Muslims,” and “Whoever strikes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall forfeit the protection of this pact.”

from Al-Turtushi, Siraj al-Muluk, pp. 229-230.

(From Internet Medieval Source Book)