Islamic Law: Dhimma’s Origin

There have been many studies of Christians living under Islamic rule. There have been two main approaches from the Muslim scholarly field: a traditional defense and support of the Dhimma as a necessary part of God’s law (Sharia) and a newer, reformist trend. From a Western perspective, the field is dominated by one of two approaches: acting as a polemic to demonstrate the evils of Islam or as a study of the final legal understanding of the concepts by Islamic legal scholars. A diachronic study that focuses on the origin and development of the Dhimma within a multidisciplinary approach is absent. Studies from a traditional Islamic perspective have focused on the relationship of the Dhimma to the origins of the Islamic community, linking the status of Christians to Quranic verses and hadith of the Islamic prophet Muhammad