According to this story from The Washington Times, Muslim Brotherhood authorities in the Egyptian village of Dalga have begun forcing the area’s 15,000 Christians to pay a “jizya” unless they convert to Islam. Koran scholar Raymond Ibrahim explained that jizya is a payment “that conquered non-Muslims historically had to pay to their Islamic overlords ‘with willing submission and while feeling themselves subdued’ to safeguard their existence.” The report says that Christian families that have been unable to pay the daily tax have been attacked, and many others have begun to flee the region.
There have also been similar reports coming out of Syria—a region also entangled in a civil conflict in which Christians have been subject to persecution. This weekend, The Christian Science Monitor reported that rebels went into a Christian man’s shop and gave him three options: “Become Muslim; pay $70,000 as a tax levied on non-Muslims, known as jizya; or be killed along with his family.” The shopkeeper and his family fled to neighboring Jordan as reports of further attacks on Christians continue to grow …