Page:An Analysis of Prophet Muhammad’s Covenants with Christians.pdf/13

 In calling his Muslim army to defend themselves against polytheist aggression towards the ummah, the Prophet stated:

"don’t exaggerate, don’t cheat, don’t mutilate, don’t kill a new-born child. If you meet your enemies of polytheists call them for one of three options. Whatever they take, you must accept, and stop fighting them. Call them to Islam . . . they will have the same rights and duties of the immigrants."

Although he encouraged Muslims to engage in defensive warfare against the polytheists, it is clear that Muhammad was willing to grant them the same rights that he would later grant Christians (immigrants) in the Covenants. History shows us that Muslim rulers and empires followed in the footsteps of Prophet Muhammad by granting non-Abrahamic communities privileges and political rights under “Islamic rule.” For example, governments of the Indian subcontinent readily extended the dhimmi status to Hindus and Buddhists of India (, p. 278). On several occasions throughout history, Muslim rulers and jurists eradicated the jizya (, pp. 79–80). Akbar the Great of the Mughal Empire abolished the jizya in relation to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs under his rule (, pp. 28–39;, pp. 282–89; , pp. 401–6). To reiterate, it is worth remembering that each of the Covenants discussed in this paper include a passage on how to levy the jizya. Muslims are not to enforce the tax on Christians without their consent, nor are Muslims able to enforce the jizya with force or violence (, p. 18). Furthermore, as Prophet Muhammad noted in the Covenant with the Christians of Najran, the charges of the jizya shall not exceed the measure of their means, meaning that taxes should not be excessive and be judged based on individual cases depending on the status of the citizen.

2. The Muslim Nation as Civic Nation

Having considered the concept of religious pluralism in the Covenants, the paper now takes up the discussion of civic rights among members of the “Muslim nation”. Scholars have dedicated much time and effort to unpack the various kinds of nation-building projects, but the distinction between “civic nation” versus “ethnic nation” is perhaps the most widely-employed conceptual building block in the study of nationhood and national identity (, p. 554). While these types of nations share common elements like historical territory and common culture, they have distinct features. An ethnic nation bases national group membership upon qualities such as ancestry, marriage, and blood. In this sense, an ethnic nation is an exclusive nation because it places emphasis on historical experiences and the resulting phenotypes that outline the boundary of the “natives.” Some contemporary scholars argue that Eastern European and Asian countries are historical examples of ethnic nations while Western European countries and the United States are historical examples of civic nations. In the “Eastern model”, nationalism arises in polities that coincide with cultural or ethnic boundaries (e.g., Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires) (, p. 555). In these regions, Kohn argues, imagining the ethnic nation led to redrawing “political boundaries in conformity with ethnographic demands” (, p. 329). Kohn, on the other hand, argues that in the “West”, particularly in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, nationalism was primarily political. Commenting on Kohn’s theory, Shulman adds: “ideas of the nation and nationalism arose within preexisting state structures that encompassed populations with a relatively high degree of cultural homogeneity” (, p. 555).

He continues: “Members of the [civic] nation were unified by their equal political status and their will as individuals to be part of the nation” (, p. 555). In light of Kohn and Shulman, a civic nation can be viewed as the opposite of an ethnic nation. A civic nation determines national group membership upon citizenship rights, rather than that of ancestry, marriage, or blood, as commonly found in an ethnic nation. A civic nation can be defined as “a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values” ([92], p. 6). Civic nation building envisions “one people” with a common sense of “we”, but not in the sense that “we” derive from a particular ethnicity or religion. Civic nationalism