By Walid Shoebat 

For the first time in history, evidence for a receipt for a Jizya payment on an Armenian Christian in northern Syria that should open the eyes of Christians worldwide.

Islamic Jizya Tax has been absent for nearly a century after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. No one dreamt that it will revive until ISIS established a Caliphate. When ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June, Christians and Muslims lived together in peace until ISIS told Christians to pay the  protection tax (jizya), convert to Islam, or leave. The majority chose to flee the city. The letter “N” for Nasrani (“Nazarene”) was painted on Christian buildings and homes. Now we come back to see, perhaps for the first time in history, evidence for a receipt from northern Syria for a Jizya payment that should open the eyes of Christians to what happens to Christians in Syria and Iraq:

Circled “Jizya Payment”. Tribute amounting to 27 thousand and 200 Syrian Lira ($144) paid by a Syrian Armenian named Sarkis Yorkie Arakelian. The payment was made on 16 Safar 1435 AH.

Circled “Jizya Payment”. Tribute amounting to 27 thousand and 200 Syrian Lira ($144) paid by a Syrian Armenian named Sarkis Yorkie Arakelian. The payment was made on 16 Safar 1435 AH.

Tribute amounting to 27 thousand and 200 Syrian Lira ($144) paid by a Syrian Armenian named Sarkis Yorkie Arakelian. The payment was made on 16 Safar 1435 AH. The Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq changed “set times and set laws” avoiding the Year of Our Lord, December 8th, 2014, last year while invoking the Islamic Hijra dating system. This is a prelude to what is coming soon:

He [Antichrist] will speak against the Most High and oppress his holy people and try to change the set times and the laws. The holy people will be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time. (Daniel 7:25)

Sargis, refusing to blaspheme the Most High in denouncing The Son of God chose his fate, to pay the humiliation tax in accordance to the Quran “until they pay the Jizya by an upper hand while they are belittled (subjugated and humiliated)”  (Quran, Chapter of Repentance, 9:29)

The Christian Armenian paid the recipient who signed his name as Al-Farouk.

This Jizya on Christians was revived on February 26th, 2014 when ISIS imposed a series of provisions on the Christian population in Raqqa, included 12 laws aimed at what ISIS termed as The Protection of Christians declaring that anyone who does not comply will be treated as an enemy. The ones considered wealthy had to pay 13 grams of pure gold (approximately $ 540) the middle class would pay half that amount and the poor a quarter. Sarkis was  named amongst the poor.

With this image, which may be the first to show a tribute in the Islamic world, it reverses the clock back to when Christians had to endure such humiliation.

“From Khalid bin al-Walid to the governors of Persia. Embrace Islam so that you may be safe. If not, make a covenant with me and pay the Jizyah tax. Otherwise, I have brought you a people who love death just as you love drinking wine.” (1)

The history of this humiliation began when Khalid bin al-Walid was prophet Muhammad’s right hand general. When the Christians and Persians from Ullays turned down this peace offer, Khalid engaged them with an unfettered assault. The battle was so fierce that Khalid made a vow to Allah during the battle that if he defeated these resistors, he would make the canal that surrounded their village literally run with their blood. When the outcome was in Khalid’s favor, it actually took a day and a half to behead all of the captives. The obstacle for Khalid was that the ravine of blood coagulated and Khalid’s troops were forced to eventually release water into the canal in order that it would run red with the blood of the slain lest Khalid’s vow be left unfulfilled. (2)

ISIS were simply carrying out what Khalid, Muhammad’s right hand man has done.

While today’s naive Americans think that such practice should not concern them since it was on someone else’s backyard, may I remind, that in its history, every American paid Jizya.

Here’s how it happened, lest the naive forget. It was the struggle with Islam that caused Europe’s loss of access to the Black Sea, depriving her of a land route to India. The search for a new sea route brought about the discovery of the New World, and, as such, America was born. Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by Muslim pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations. Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new American government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute (Jizyah) and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled ‘through the medium of war.” He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy. In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to appease. During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts. In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Most Americans do not know that the payments in ransom and Jizyah tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800 which means that every American paid Jizya.

Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast. The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all fought. In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves. During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbled as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines. They finally agreed officially to abandon slavery and piracy. Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn with the line “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

You might think, O well, if such a system is revived, just pay the sum and move on.

But this will no longer be the case. According to Islamic tradition, when their messiah returns, he does not merely come to convert most Christians to Islam but to literally abolish Christianity. This fact is understood when we analyze a very well-known tradition which states that when the Muslim Messiah  returns he will “break the cross, kill swine, and abolish Jizyah. Allah will perish all religions except Islam.”

The three actions are based on the notion that the Muslim Messiah will assault all of the symbols of Christianity in order to abolish it as a religion. The Muslim jurisprudence declared by Shafi and Usmani explain that to “break the cross” means to “abolish worship of the cross.”(3)

Muslims believe that Jesus will break or remove all crosses from the rooftops and steeples of churches throughout the earth. This action is understood as a clear statement regarding Jesus’ disapproval of the notion that he was ever crucified on a cross. The killing of the swine is so that the “Christian belief of its lawfulness is belied.” The reason for abolishing the Jizyah tax (the compulsory poll-tax that non-Muslims must pay in order to live in a Muslim land) is based on the idea that when the Muslim Messiah returns, the Jizyah tax will no longer be accepted. The only choice that Christians will have is to accept Islam or be decapitated.

As Sideeque M.A. Veliankode states in Doomsday Portents and Prophecies, “Jesus, the son of Mary will soon descend among the Muslims as a just judge. Jesus will, therefore, judge according to the law of Islam… all people will be required to embrace Islam and there will be no other alternative.” (4)

Harun Yahya, the Turkish propagandist liar, who claims to love Christians and Jews, in his book Jesus Will Return, affirms that, “Jesus will remove all systems of disbelief in that period.” Classic Muslim jurists also confirm these interpretations. Consider, for example, the ruling of Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368) from The Reliance of the Traveller, the classic Shafi manual of Islamic jurisprudence which Muslims even in the U.S. uphold and follow: “… the time and the place for the poll tax is before the final descent of Jesus (upon whom be peace). After his final coming, nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent (upon him and our Prophet be peace).” (5)

Harun Yahya

Even the so-called “moderate” Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America and the darling of many conservative Americans in government,  has stated that, “The coming of the Mahdi is an established doctrine for both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and indeed for all humanity”. He also taught that the end of Christianity will come when armies will come from the region of Iran: “Hadith indicate that black flags coming from the area of Khorasan [Iran] will signify the appearance of the Mahdi is nigh. Khorasan is in today’s Iran, and some scholars have said that this Hadith means when the black flags appear from Central Asia, i.e. in the direction of Khorasan (Iran), then the appearance of the Mahdi is imminent.”

On left: Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. On right, Turkey’s Erdogan favorite Mawlana Shaykh Nazim Qibrisi

And what will this Mahdi do? “Like all prophets, Prophet Jesus came with the divine message of surrender to God Almighty, which is Islam. This verse shows that when Jesus returns he will personally correct the misrepresentations and misinterpretations about himself. He will affirm the true message that he brought in his time as a prophet, and that he never claimed to be the Son of God. Furthermore, he will reaffirm in his second coming what he prophesied in his first coming bearing witness to the seal of the Messengers, Prophet Muhammad. In his second coming many non-Muslims will accept Jesus as a servant of Allah Almighty, as a Muslim and a member of the Community of Muhammad.” (6)

America today trusts in liars, false prophets and hirelings who roam their churches like wolves, ready to devour anyone who is naive. They tell them of ‘peace’ while there is no peace. They tell them that peace comes through dialogue when American history shows that dialogue with Islam brought only subjugation. Today, history will repeat itself. America will only wake up when it has another Pearl Harbor. But this time, it will be at a much grander scale.

SOURCES

(1) At-Tabari, Vol XI, The Challenge to the Empires, In series: The History of at-Tabari, (Ta’rikh al-rasul wa’l-muluk), Translated by K.Y. Blankkinship, SUNY series in near Eastern Studies, Bibliotheca Persica, State University of New York Press, Albany New York, 1993, p.44-45

(2) Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir At-Tabari, the early Islamic historian and theologian recorded this event “Khalid said, ‘O Allah, if you deliver their shoulders to us, I will obligate myself to You not to leave any one of them whom we can overcome until I make their canal run with their blood.’ Then Allah defeated them for the Muslims and gave their shoulders to them. Khalid then commanded to his herald to proclaim to his men, ‘Capture! Capture! Do not kill any except he who continues to resist.’ As a result the cavalry brought prisoners in droves, driving them along. Khalid had detailed certain men to cut off their heads in the canal. He did that to them for a day and a night. They pursued them the next day and the day after, until they reached the Nahrayn and the like of that distance in every direction from Ullays. And Khalid cut off their heads.”

(3) Abu Muslim Book 020, Number 4562 11 Mufti Muhammad Shafi and Mufti Muhammad Rafi Usmani, Signs of the Qiyama and the Arrival of the Maseeh, (Karachi, Darul Ishat, 2000), p. 60

(4) Sideeque M.A. Veliankode Doomsday Portents and Prophecies.

(5) Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368) from The Reliance of the Traveller.

(6) Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, The Approach of Armageddon? An Islamic Perspective (Canada, Supreme Muslim Council of America, 2003), p. 228 2 Ibn Kathir, The Signs Before the Day of Judgment (London, Dar Al-Taqwa, 1991), p. 18, p.237