Betonov,
those who had to pay jizya, were not citizens of equal value, but slaves and second class inferiors who had to be made feeling their inferiority by discriminating them, so that they shall feel the penalty by Allah for refusing him. It was the demand to pay protection money against terror and assassination that the receiver of the protection money else would have brought about the victim by his own hands.
Moral superiority or multi-cultural tolerance has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with it. I must remind you that the discrimination of infidels for Muslim males is not voluntary, but a religious obligation, there is some passage in the Quran that leaves no doubt on that. Muslims showing tolerance and kindly live side by side with you, already violate the basic rules of Islam, whether they are aware of it or not. Islam does not know real tolerance and multiculturalism. People of the book my be held as second class people and slaves, all other infidels that are not Jewish or Christian, either have to convert, or must be killed. That'S why I do not take everybody claiming to be Muslim as a Muslim for sure, but take everybody I see as a real Muslim as a supremacist barbar indeed. Thus my hostility towards "real Muslims". The really integrating, humanism-orientated, "liberal" and tolerant "museum-Muslims" (after the term
museum-Fremen from Frank Herbert's Dune-novels) that we often meet in Europe, are not representative for what Islam really is about. They are still helping the fundamentalists (the Real Muslims) with their silent passivity by tolerating them, not confronting them, claiming they are not representing Islam, and letting them act and talk on their behalf.
Moral superiority...? Think again. Since you referred to the medieval, let me just say that we have left it behind us since long. The Muslim world intellectually still sticks right in the midst of it. Europe was lagging behind to Arab knowedge in maths, medicine, optics, and some more. But not only have our forefathers closed the gap, but they have overtaken the Islamic world in all regards: technology, science, medicine, theology, philosophy, economy, basic human rights, state theory.
Personally, though i admit that is absolutely a question of perosnal taste, I could not even become friend with the cooking recipes in the ME.
- that food is not for me, despite the damn warmth over the day the one thing I suffered most from.
I prefer Italian, westernised Chinese, some German cuisine.
