The jizya's purpose--Muslim supremacist domination as Muslim jurists have explained it--makes it as indefensible as Jim Crow, the US Supreme Court's 1894 "separate but equal" segregation decision and the pizzo (extortion payment) paid by southern Italian shopkeepers to Cosa Nostra.
The jizya Wikipedia page and Mark Cohen's
Islamic Policy toward Jews from the Prophet Muhammad to the Pact of Umar show how its main purpose was humiliation and subjugation:
"Modern Pakistani scholars have taking the stance of viewing the badge of humiliation or as a mercy for non-Muslims for the protection given to them by the Muslims."
The 11th century jurist Ibn Hazm elaborates; "Allah has established the infidel's ownership of their property only for the institution of booty for Muslims".[86]
Al-Zamakhshari, a Mu'tazili author of one of the standard commentaries on the Qur'an, said that "the Jizyah shall be taken from them with belittlement and humiliation. The dhimmi shall come in person, walking not riding. When he pays, he shall stand, while the tax collector sits. The collector shall seize him by the scruff of the neck, shake him, and say "Pay the Jizyah!" and when he pays it he shall be slapped on the nape of the neck."
According to Norman Stillman: "jizya and kharaj were a "crushing burden for the non-Muslim peasantry who eked out a bare living in a subsistence economy."[120] Both agree that ultimately, the additional taxation on non-Muslims was a critical factor that drove many dhimmis to leave their religion and accept Islam.[121
[Tafsir ibn 'Ajibah. Commentary on Q9:29. Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn 'Ajibah] "The dhimmi is commanded to put his soul, good fortune and desires to death. Above all he should kill the love of life, leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely submissive. Thereafter nothing will be unbearable for him. He will be indifferent to subjugation or might. Poverty and wealth will be the same to him; praise and insult will be the same; preventing and yielding will be the same; lost and found will be the same. Then, when all things are the same, it [the soul] will be submissive and yield willingly what it should give."
Sufi saint Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624), letter #163 "The honour of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims... The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam."
The Muslim world's slave markets were fed by jizya non-payers:
"Failure to pay the jizya was commonly punished by house arrest and some legal authorities allowed enslavement of dhimmis for non-payment of taxes.[158][159][160] In South Asia, for example, seizure of dhimmi families upon their failure to pay annual jizya was one of the two significant sources of slaves sold in the slave markets of Delhi Sultanate and Mughal era.[161]
"Patricia Seed describes the purpose of jizya as "a personal form of ritual humiliation directed at those defeated by a superior Islam" and quotes the Quranic verse calling for jizya: "Fight those who believe not in Allah... nor acknowledge the religion of truth... until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued". She notes that the word translated as "subdued", ṣāghirūn, comes from the root ṣ-gh-r ("small", "little", "belittled" or "humbled").[175] Seed calls the idea that jizya was a contribution to help pay for the "military defense" of those who paid not a rationale but a rationalisation that was often found in societies in which the conquered paid tribute to conquerors.[176]"
"Muslim Jurist Malik ibn Anas's al-Muwatta declares that "Zakat is imposed on the Muslims to purify them and to be given back to their poor, whereas jizya is imposed on the people of the Book to humble them (to show they are subjects of the state)....
According to Ziauddin Ahmed, in the view of the majority of Fuqahā (Islamic jurists), the jizya was levied on non-Muslims in order to humiliate them for their unbelief.[99]
later Muslims interpreted it to contain "an equivocal warrant for debasing the dhimmi (non-Muslim) through a degrading method of remission".[148] In contrast, the 13th century hadith scholar and Shafi'ite jurist Al-Nawawī, comments on those who would impose a humiliation along with the paying of the jizya..."
"the jizya was to be paid "in humiliating conditions".[36] Many of the Islamic scholars base this on Surat At-Tawbah 9:29 which states – "(9:29) Those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day – even though they were given the scriptures, and who do not hold as unlawful that which Allah and His Messenger have declared to be unlawful, and who do not follow the true religion – fight against them until they pay tribute out of their hand and are utterly subdued." Ennaji and other scholars state that some jurists required the jizya to be paid by each in person, by presenting himself, arriving on foot not horseback, by hand, in order to confirm that he lowers himself to being a subjected one, and willingly pays.[153][154][155]"
Even children were liable to pay jizya:
"According to Kristen A. Stilt, historical sources indicate that in Mamluk Egypt, poverty did "not necessarily excuse" the dhimmi from paying the tax, and boys as young as nine years old could be considered adults for tax purposes, making the tax particularly burdensome for large, poor families.[130] Ashtor and Bornstein-Makovetsky infer from Geniza documents that jizya was also collected in Egypt from the age of nine in the 11th century.[131]"
Dhimmis paid the jizya, but often didn't get the promised protection: https://medium.com/@Ksantini/the-list-of-crimes-committed-by-muslims-against-jews-since-the-7th-century-0ff1a8eb0ad0
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries
The jizya was the tip of the Muslim supremacist spear whose features included institutionalized kidnapping of Jewish children. There were thousands of Edgardo Mortaras in Yemen, which was a trigger for Yemenite Jewish emigration to the Ottoman vilayet of Jerusalem, erroneously renamed as Palestine by the British:
"The Zaydi enforced a statute known as the Orphan's Decree, anchored in their own 18th-century legal interpretations and enforced at the end of that century. It obligated the Zaydi state to take under its protection and to educate in Islamic ways any dhimmi (i.e. non-Muslim) child whose parents had died when he was a minor. The Orphan's Decree was ignored during the Ottoman rule (1872–1918), but was renewed during the period of Imam Yahya (1918–1948).[64]
Under the Zaydi rule, the Jews were considered to be impure and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim's food. They were obligated to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk to the left side, and greet him first. They could not build houses higher than a Muslim's or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or a donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering the Muslim quarter a Jew had to take off his foot-gear and walk barefoot. If attacked with stones or fists by youth, a Jew was not allowed to fight them. In such situations, he had the option of fleeing or seeking intervention by a merciful Muslim passerby.[65]
Ottoman rule ended in 1630, when the Zaydis took over Yemen. Jews were once again persecuted. In 1679, under the rule of Al-Mahdi Ahmad, Jews were expelled en masse from all parts of Yemen to the distant province of Mawza, in what was known as the Mawza Exile, when many Jews died of starvation and disease as a consequence. As many as two-thirds of the exiled Jews did not survive.[66] Their houses and property were seized, and many synagogues were destroyed or converted into mosques.[67]"
Orphan's decree (Yemen, 1922)
In 1922, the government of Yemen, under Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, re-introduced an ancient Islamic law entitled the "orphans decree". The law dictated that if Jewish boys or girls under the age of 12 were orphaned, they were to be forcibly converted to Islam, their connections to their families and communities were to be severed, and they had to be handed over to Muslim foster families. The rule was based on the law that the prophet Muhammad is "the father of the orphans", and on the fact that the Jews in Yemen were considered "under protection", and the ruler was obligated to care for them.[78] The Jews tried to prevent the conversion of orphans in two main ways, which were by marrying them so the authorities would consider them as adults, or by smuggling them out of the country.[79]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Jews
From the British consul in Mosul in 1909:
"discrimination against dhimmis did not end with the abolition Edict of 1856, and they remained second-class citizens at least until the end of World War I.[56] H.E.W. Young, the British Council in Mosul, wrote in 1909, "The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed."
You conflate assets and income. The 2.5% rate was on assets. If the long term return on capital was 4.3%, as Thomas Piketty has shown in Capital in the 21st Century, then a 2.5% tax on assets = a 55% income tax rate. That doesn't account for the majority who lived in a subsistence non-monetized economy in which the state demanded instant liquidity at the time the jizya was assessed, which would lead to sales of dhimmi assets dumped on the market at the same time, leading to fire sale prices. The jizya was a license for Muslim vulture investing. Your failure to see this shows financial illiteracy of the highest order.
So, here's what you're defending:
"In 2009 it was claimed that a group of militants that referred to themselves as the Taliban imposed the jizya on Pakistan's minority Sikh community after occupying some of their homes and kidnapping a Sikh leader.[151]
In 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt occupied the town of Dalga immediately following the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi on 3 July, and reportedly imposed jizya on the 15,000 Christian Copts living there.[152][153] However, in autumn of that same year Egyptian authorities were able to retake control of the town following two prior failed attempts.[154]
In February 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) announced that it intended to extract jizya from Christians in the city of Raqqa, Syria, which it controlled at the time. Christians who refused to accept the dhimma contract and pay the tax were to have to either convert to Islam, leave or be executed. Wealthy Christians would have to pay half an ounce of gold, the equivalent of $664 twice a year; middle-class Christians were to have to pay half that amount and poorer ones were to be charged one-fourth that amount.[155] In June 2014 the Institute for the Study of War reported that ISIL claims to have collected jizya and fay.[156] On 18 July 2014 ISIL ordered the Christians in Mosul to accept the dhimma contract and pay the jizya or convert to Islam. If they refused to accept either of the options they would be killed.[157]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi
This shows the mafioso nature of jizya collection: squeeze just hard enough:
"In al-Andalus (Iberia), the conquering Umayyads applied the jizya strategically with respect to the Christian former aristocracy. They wanted to keep the tax burden heavy enough for them to profit, but light enough to keep profiting." https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3u2bts/how_much_of_a_financial_burden_was_the_jizya_on/
