Bat Ye'or on the Jizya

The Jizya is the tax that the People of the Book (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) are required to pay when they live in Dar al Islam. It matters not that such people form a majority of the population, by the way. I mean, I'm tired of hearing speak about "religious minorities." All that matters is that the government is Islamic. If the US president were Muslim or became Muslim then the entire non-Muslim population would become "dhimmi", even though they for a large majority of the population, and they would all have to pay this jizya. Here is a fine quote from Bat Ye'or about the jizya. This book is a must read, by the way:

The poll tax was extorted by torture. The tax inspectors demanded gifts for themselves; widows and orphans were pillaged and despoiled. In theory, women, paupers, the sick, and the infirm were exempt from the poll tax; nevertheless, Armenian, Syriac, and Jewish sources provide abundant proof that the jizya was exacted from children, widows, orphans, and even the dead. A considerable number of extant documents, preserved over the centuries, testify to the persistence and endurance of these measures. In Aleppo in 1683, French Consul Chevalier Laurent d’Arvieux noted that ten-year-old Christian children paid the jizya. Here again, one finds the disparity and contradiction between the ideal in the theory and the reality of the facts. 

The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, pp. 78-9.