the People of the Book and those whose religion bears some resemblance to theirs, to the exclusion of all others; or whether it may be taken from every unbeliever with whom a pact is lawful. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—did not levy it upon the Arabs only because their battles with him occurred before the verse of jizyah was revealed. Must Arab idolaters, then, be categorically exempt? On this question there are three well-known opinions among the jurists. The majority hold that it may be collected from the idolaters of India, the Turks, and other non-Arab peoples, and that treaties with any of them are permissible whenever need or benefit so requires. Whether such treaties may be open-ended or must be fixed to a specific term is a matter over which there are two views.

For this reason many commentators, whenever they come across verses that they imagine to forbid fighting, declare them abrogated by the “Verse of the Sword.” Thus, those who claim that the sūrah, “Say: O disbelievers…” (al-Kāfirūn 109:1), is abrogated proceed from this assumption. In truth, that verse does not address fighting at all—neither commanding it nor prohibiting it. Its entire purport is a renunciation of the religion of the unbelievers, and that is a decisive ruling that can never be abrogated. As for alleging that this verse or any other shows the Messenger’s approval of an unbeliever’s religion, no scholar of Islam has ever said such a thing—none from the earliest generations of the ummah nor from the latter ones. Only someone destitute [of knowledge] would make such a claim.