According to one of the two transmitted opinions—and this is likewise the view of a number of scholars—I maintain that they must be prevented from taking possession of any real estate in the Abode of Islam in which Muslims hold a right, whether houses or farmlands. In the same manner, we bar them from erecting within the Abode of Islam any new religious structures—churches, synagogues, or hermitages—for the dhimmah pact only guarantees them whatever they already possessed, without allowing them to encroach upon property, land or slaves, in which Muslims’ rights are established.

The very purpose of daʿwah is that the word of Allah be supreme; they were tolerated through the jizyah only out of a transient necessity, and any ruling founded on necessity is limited strictly to its extent. Hence there is no authentic report from any of the early generations granting a dhimmī the right of pre-emption (shufʿah) over a Muslim. Imām Aḥmad—may Allah have mercy on him—and others adopted this view, for if we were to grant a dhimmī shufʿah in a share owned by a Muslim, we would be compelling the Muslim to transfer ownership of his property to the dhimmī by force, and that contravenes basic legal principles.

For this reason Aḥmad explicitly stated that when the seller of a share is a Muslim and his partner is a dhimmī, the latter has no right of shufʿah. Shufʿah, in its essence, is among the mutual rights of partners, comparable to the duties a Muslim owes another Muslim: accepting his invitation, visiting him when he is ill, and preventing someone from undercutting his sale or proposing to a woman he has already proposed to. All of these, according to Aḥmad, are confined to Muslims, though the jurists differ concerning the issues of sales and marriage proposals.