Allah the Exalted says: “If they break their oaths after having pledged their covenant and attack your religion, then fight the leaders of unbelief, for they have no fidelity to any oath” (Q 9:12). That is to say, they cannot be trusted to keep their pledges.

This verse, therefore, is an unqualified command to fight anyone who violates a covenant. Those who enjoy a fixed-term pact: should they accept Islam, they become brothers in faith; if they break their oaths, fighting them becomes obligatory; and if they honor the treaty, it must be honored in return—whether that pact was concluded with no jizyah stipulated or with jizyah.

The correct position is that an open-ended treaty is permissible. Indeed, the treaties the Prophet ﷺ concluded with the idolaters were indefinite, not time-bound. The Quran differentiates between the two, permitting the repudiation of an open-ended pact while obligating adherence to a time-limited one—and this is what the foundational legal principles dictate, just as