[The Reason the jizyah Was Instituted]

It has been said: the jizyah is a wage, and therefore it is not nullified when the person embraces Islam.

It has also been said: rather, it is a punishment for unbelief, and so it lapses at death just as it lapses with Islam.

Another view states: rather, it is the price paid for the preservation of his life, secured by his submission and by the Muslims’ fighting on his behalf. Hence it remains due until he dies, because his blood has been spared; but it is not due once he becomes a Muslim, for the very factor that grants him protection—and that makes jihad incumbent upon him—is then present within him.

Whoever maintains, as did Abu al-Khattab and some of Ahmad’s companions, that it is a punishment has contradicted his own foundational principle: his principle is that sheer unbelief does not in itself entail punishment, and these people, in spite of their treaty and humbled status (saghar), possess nothing besides unbelief—so how could they be punished for it?

And whoever says that it is a wage can be told: in that case it ought to be taken from women as well.

As for the one who says it is a means of protection, asserting that it becomes due upon anyone whose killing would otherwise be lawful, his position is thus internally consistent