It is fitting first to note that since the Arabic equivalent of the term ‘violence’, ‘unf, and its derivatives exist in the Quranic text, the same is true for Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's Aḥkām ahl al-Dhimma. Only the manifestations of violence are evoked, particularly in five cases: the punishment of crimes, murder, oppression and corruption and, finally, aggression, which Muslim legislators have methodically classified in order to be able to apply legal statutes (aḥkām) to them. Lawful violence was in their view represented on the one hand by the application of Quranic punishment and on the other by the jihād, the specific fight against not only infidels but renegades, rebels and brigands (highwaymen). The theorisation of legitimate violence is a perfect illustration of the Islamic conception of the universe and of life based on the close and ontological relationship between religion and power.

The work of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (b. 691/1292, d. 751/1350) on the legal statutes of dhimmīs (non-Muslims under protection, that is ‘people of the Book’), although the work of a Ḥanbalite, has the documentary advantage of assembling – even if only for possible discussion – the various opinions on the matter emitted by jurists of the whole classical period. It is an eloquent example of the functioning of the very relationships of Islam to man. Indeed, the word ‘violence’, which usually means ‘abuse of force’, takes on a moral connotation when it is given the meaning of ‘constraint exercised upon a person in order to obtain his consent to a juridical act’. It is this transposition of meaning that allows the editor of the text, Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ, to state in his preface that ‘the work, read diligently, increases comprehension of the benevolent generosity of Islam in its treatment of dhimmīs’. Let us see just what the case is.

At the beginning of the work, a passage is devoted to a detailed commentary of Q 9: 29 regarding the obligation of the jizya and particularly its last words ‘wa-hum ṣāghirūn’. He shows how effective violence, from which theoretically people under protection are excluded, is substituted by moral violence. Indeed, jizya is defined as being ‘a tribute (kharāj) which strikes the heads of infidels to humiliate them and submit them’, that is to say ‘until they give the tribute to save the napes of their necks’.