In Qatar, the government has gone all out to introduce more than a million non-Muslim visitors, in Doha to see the World Cup soccer matches, to the beauty and truth of Islam. Visitors to the matches pass displays where books on Islam’s sheer wonderfulness are free for the taking, and where Muslims who are experts in proselytizing are eager to discuss their religion with any passing Infidels who might care to stop and have a friendly chat. It’s impossible to walk anywhere near the stadiums without running across these Da’wa centers, where both Believers and written material make the case for Islam.
Dr. Shafi Al-Hajri, who is a professor of Islamic Studies at Qatar University, believes deeply in the duty of Muslims to conduct Da’wa, and wants to answer critics who claim that the expansion of Islam has always been accomplished through mass violence. This is unfair to Islam, he said on Qatar’s Rayaan TV, but in making the case for Islam’s “peaceful” expansion he also happens to make the case against it. Jihad Watch reported on his statements here, and more on his defense of how Islam must legitimately be spread can be found here: ““Fight only those who refuse to accept Islam or pay jizya”: Qatari Islamic Studies professor explains ‘peace & tolerance’ behind da’wa,” Hindu Post, December 2, 2022:
Islamic Studies professor at Qatar University, Dr. Shafi Al-Hajri, has attempted to rebut ‘Islamophobic’ critics who say that Islamic proselytization (da’wa/dawah) and expansion is accompanied with mass violence. He clarified that war is only the third and last step in propagating Islam. Speaking with Qatar’s Rayyan TV on November 25, he said that individuals must first be ‘invited’ to Islam. If they refuse the ‘invitation’, they should be ‘asked’ to pay the jizya protection tax. If they refuse to do even that, only then must they be fought.
“Fighting is the third stage of spreading da’wa. First, we call people to Allah, and if they accept, then they will have the same duties and rights as we have. If they refuse (to convert to Islam) then they have to pay the jizya poll tax in order to receive protection from others (Muslims). The third stage is fighting them if they refuse (to pay). Fighting is against those who reject da’wa..those who refuse (to convert to) Islam, or to pay the jizya poll tax,” said Dr. Al-Hajri as per a transcript provided by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute).
Another report, “Make them convert to Islam and if they refuse let them pay jizya says Qatari professor,” OneIndia, December 2, 2022, adds:
Jizya is a tax paid by non-Muslims as a protection tax to the Islamic dispensation ruling the territory. Hindus, it may be recalled were humiliated by the Muslim jizya collectors in India at the time of the Islamic rule. While paying the jizya, the Hindus had to lower their eyes, bow down and even let the Muslim official spit on them.
The failure to pay this tax would render the vow of protection of a non-believer’s property null and void, leaving the protected non-believer or Dhimmi with the option to convert, enslavement, death or incarceration.
The Jizyah is a tax that non-Muslims pay to the Islamic state in order to. buy protection from attacks by Muslims themselves. In other words, payment of the Jizyah, an onerous tax, is a form of extortion – “pay us….or else.” Or else that non-Muslim deserves the punishment Muslims will mete out to him, which can be enslavement, imprisonment, or most often, death.
How did tens of millions of Hindus in India become Muslims? Not out of a deep belief in the faith of Islam, but out of desire to both stay alive, and to be prevented from becoming impoverished by having to pay an extremely onerous tax. Muslim apologists like to claim that the Jizyah helped pay for the “protection” non-Muslims were offered, but they keep obscuring the fact that the “protection” granted was from persecution and theft by the Muslims themselves. And while they minimize the burden of the Jizyah, the scholar S. D. Goitein, after decades of research on the treasure trove of papers left by Jews in the Cairo Geniza, concluded that the Jizyah was indeed most burdensome, and in some cases led to the complete impoverishment of those who had to pay it. More from the Hindu Post report:
Qatar has been under fire for a number of methods being used to convert visitors to Islam during the ongoing 2022 FIFA World Cup. The Katara Cultural Village Mosque in Doha, the capital of Qatar, has become a hotspot for the proselytization of the non-Muslims visitors.
At the mosque, multilingual male and female preachers explain Islam and the tolerance (sic) preached by the religion to others. Visitors are also being encouraged to watch electronic boards on Islam which are on display in 30 different languages. Books too are being distributed among visitors which speak about the greatness and importance of Islam.
Qatar has received criticism for using the occasion of the World Cup to proselytize for Islam. The Qataris, however, are indifferent to what the Kuffar (non-Muslims) think. The center of those proselytizing efforts is the Katara Cultural Village Mosque in Doha, where Qataris and other Muslims, both men and women, explain the splendors of Islam in 30 languages. Those individual in-person efforts at Da’wa are supplemented by instruction in Islam displayed on electronic boards. Books on Islam, in tens of thousands of copies, are available for the taking. The hope is that long after the World Cup ends, many of those visitors, having returned home, will remember the conversations they had with enthusiastic Muslim proselytizers lavishing praise on their faith, will study those books on Islam they were given in Doha — including copies of the Qur’an — and be swayed by their contents.
Qatar’s Ministry of Awaqf and Islamic Affairs has also erected a pavilion outside the venue of the 2022 FIFA World Cup where visitors are being introduced to Islam and its preachings.
Recently it was reported that radical Islamic preacher, Zakir Naik who is wanted for financial frauds and other crimes in India, reached Qatar to preach Islam. A video from 2016 too went viral where he is seen converting people to Islam in Qatar.”
Zakir Naik may be a crook, wanted by the Indian authorities for financial fraud, but for Muslims, he is simply a most effective proselytizer for Islam, and the hated Hindus have trumped-up charges against him in order to silence his successful efforts at mass conversions. Qatar has welcomed Naik before for his exercises in proselytizing, and the Qataris were glad to have him back in 2022, to work his sinister inveiglements on unwary non-Muslims with his trademark mountebank’s patter, holding up Islam as a universal nostrum for whatever spiritual ails afflict you.
But let’s go back to Dr. Shafi Al-Hajri, that truth-tellin’ professor of Islamic Studies at Qatar University. He deserves our gratitude, for setting out the rules which Muslims must follow when dealing with non-Muslims. He is unapologetic about the three alternatives made available to non-Muslims, unlike so many Muslim apologists who become skittish about revealing the disturbing truth to non-Muslims. Al-Hajri sets out the alternatives matter-of-factly. First, non-Muslims must be “invited” to Islam. If they convert, they will have no problems in a Muslim polity, but will be fully equal to those who were already Muslims. Second, if they refuse to convert, they may continue to practice their religion if they are People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitab), that is, Christians or Jews,, but will have to pay the onerous Jizyah tax in order to buy protection from attacks by Muslims on themselves as well as seizure of their property, by the Muslims. Ordinarily that tax should be paid in a “humiliating” manner, sometimes by the non-Muslim being made to kiss the feet of the recipient of the JIzyah, or in enduring being spat upon by the recipient of the Jizyah. In India, some recipients insisted on spitting into the mouth of non-Muslims when they delivered their Jizyah payments.
And the third alternative for non-Muslims, if they neither convert, nor deliver the Jizyah, is death. In making these alternatives crystal-clear, and not trying to obscure the disturbing truth from non-Muslims, Dr. Al-Hajri is to be commended for his candor, and abhorred for his belief.
