Refuting Islam

Did Early Islam Really Tolerate Other Faiths — or Did It Enforce a Hierarchical Theocracy?

April 15, 2025

Modern Islamic apologists often claim that early Islam was remarkably tolerant. They point to the presence of Jews, Christians, and other minorities in Islamic empires as evidence of peaceful coexistence.

But is this the full picture?

Was the Islamic caliphate truly a model of pluralistic tolerance — or did it enforce a rigid religious hierarchy, with Muslims at the top and non-Muslims as permanently subjugated second-class citizens?

To answer this question, we must look beyond modern rhetoric and examine the primary Islamic sources, the legal frameworks of Sharia, and the historical reality of how Islam treated religious minorities.

1. The Myth of “Tolerance” in Context

Islamic tolerance is often presented as a contrast to Christian Europe — especially during the Middle Ages, when anti-Jewish persecution and forced conversions were widespread.

This comparison, however, is misleading. While Islam may have offered a more structured alternative to outright genocide, its system of "tolerance" was rooted in subjugation, not equality.

It wasn't "freedom of religion" as understood today.

It was a contract of surrender — a hierarchical system that kept non-Muslims under control, humiliated, and legally inferior.

2. The Dhimmi System: Legalized Religious Apartheid

Under Islamic rule, non-Muslims — particularly Jews and Christians, known as Ahl al-Kitab (“People of the Book”) — were offered a form of protected status called dhimmi.

This status came with strict conditions, codified in classical Islamic law and implemented across centuries of caliphates. Key features included:

Payment of jizyah: A special tax imposed on non-Muslims simply for not being Muslim.
Inferior legal rights: A dhimmi’s testimony could not be accepted against a Muslim in court.
Dress codes and physical markers: Non-Muslims were sometimes required to wear distinctive clothing or belts to visually mark them as dhimmis.
Religious restrictions: Public worship, evangelism, and construction or repair of churches and synagogues were often banned or severely restricted.
Social and political exclusion: Dhimmis were barred from positions of authority over Muslims or from bearing arms.

The Islamic scholar Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, a leading Hanbali jurist, outlined detailed conditions of humiliation required for dhimmis to live under Islamic rule. These were not fringe opinions — they were mainstream Sunni orthodoxy.

Islamic law treated non-Muslims as permanent outsiders, tolerated only under strict submission.

3. Qur’an 9:29 — The Theological Foundation

The legal and social discrimination of the dhimmi system was not invented by later jurists — it was rooted in the Qur’an itself:

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah… from among the People of the Book… until they pay the jizyah with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
— Qur’an 9:29

This verse establishes three critical points:

Non-Muslims must be fought — not just for violence, but for disbelief.
They must pay a tax (jizyah).
They must do so in a state of humiliation and subjugation.

This isn’t tolerance. It’s theocratic domination wrapped in bureaucratic taxation.

And throughout Islamic history, this verse was the primary justification for waging war on Christian and Jewish populations — and for imposing the dhimma framework on the conquered.

4. Historical Reality: “Tolerated” — But Not Free

Even under the so-called “Golden Age” of Islam, non-Muslims lived precarious, unequal lives:

❖ Under the Umayyads (661–750 CE):

Christians and Jews were allowed to practice privately, but they paid high taxes and were excluded from power.
Churches could not be repaired without state permission, and apostasy from Islam was punishable by death.

❖ Under the Abbasids (750–1258 CE):

Caliph Al-Mutawakkil issued decrees requiring Christians and Jews to wear yellow patches — centuries before medieval Europe adopted similar anti-Semitic laws.
Non-Muslims were banned from riding horses and had to walk in public.

❖ In Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain):

Despite modern myths of harmony, non-Muslims suffered repeated pogroms — such as the massacre of thousands of Jews in Granada (1066).
Dhimmis had to walk on the opposite side of the street, could not build higher houses than Muslims, and were publicly humiliated when paying jizyah.

This was not “tolerance.” It was a system of coercion and marginalization.

5. Apostasy: No Tolerance for Choice

Islamic tolerance is also undermined by its attitude toward apostasy — leaving the faith.

According to Sahih Bukhari 6922:

“Whoever changes his religion — kill him.”

This was not a metaphor. Apostates were — and in some Muslim-majority countries still are — executed or imprisoned.

So while Islam tolerated the existence of Christians and Jews under subjugation, it did not tolerate Muslims leaving Islam, or preaching other faiths to Muslims.

Religious freedom ended the moment it challenged Islamic supremacy.

6. Tolerance or Theocracy?

The early Islamic state — especially under Muhammad and the Rightly Guided Caliphs — was not a secular or pluralist state. It was a religiously enforced theocracy, where:

The Qur’an was the constitution
Sharia was the law
Muhammad was not just a prophet, but a political ruler and military commander

Non-Muslims were not equals. They were allowed to survive under the condition that they accepted permanent inferiority.

That is not the model of religious freedom that modern pluralism defends.

7. Conclusion: Coexistence ≠ Equality

Yes, non-Muslims lived under Islamic rule.

Yes, they were sometimes treated better than in certain Christian regimes.

But mere survival is not tolerance. Being allowed to live — while taxed, restricted, and publicly humiliated — is not religious freedom. It is domination masquerading as mercy.

The early Islamic state did not practice modern tolerance.

It practiced theocratic apartheid, codified in both scripture and law.

And until modern Muslim-majority nations openly reject these systems and reinterpret these foundational texts, the legacy of early Islamic governance remains a significant theological and ethical problem for Islam today.