The second principle is the claim that jizya is not to be accepted from anyone other than the People of the Book. This opinion is the better-known point of contention; yet the majority of scholars, too, hold the opposite position, and it is the Quran and the Sunnah that point to it.

I have reviewed every source available to me on this question and found nothing—neither in the Book of Allah, nor in the Sunnah, nor in the practice of the Rightly Guided Caliphs—that distinguishes, in the collection of jizya, between the People of the Book and others.

Before the verse of jizya was revealed, the Prophet ﷺ allowed both the polytheists and the People of the Book to remain without paying jizya, just as he left the Jews without it. They continued in that state until ʿUmar expelled them, and that was because the Muslims were in need of them (1). When the verse