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Some Muslims and non-Muslims have pointed to the dhimmi tradition rooted in the Pact of Umar as proof that Muslims have treated "religious others" with relative tolerance. Certainly, throughout most of world history, Muslims have not dealt with the monotheistic Christians and Jews as implacable foes, as they have the pagans. Rather, they have allowed these fellow "peoples of the book" living in their territories to keep practicing their own religion.

However, history has seen both less and more oppressive implementations of the dhimmi system, sometimes mixed with the sterner practices of jihad. And clearly Christians in Sudan have decided that the price of Islamic protection in this tradition is high enough to warrant resistance to the death.

Faced with such resistance, the modern Muslim leaders of Sudan seem at last to be backing away from the ancient pact. The Machakos Protocol is the fruit of several years of such retreat. Practically, this has already meant the easing of strict Islamic dress codes and other social legislation-enough that non-Muslim exiles have begun returning home.

Under the new protocol, the Muslims have agreed that though they may impose shari'a in the north, they will not infringe on non-Muslims' rights by doing so in the south. Northern leaders will have six years to prove they are serious about creating a friendlier environment for Christian and other non-Muslim Sudanese to practice their faiths. After that time, southern Sudanese will be able to vote in a referendum deciding whether to stay with the largely Muslim north or form an independent state.

Time will tell whether the legacy of Umar can be so swiftly disowned.

To see the Pact of Umar in action nearly a millennium later, view http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/1772-jewsinislam.html. This is a 1772 letter in which Shaikh Hasan al Kafrawi, a Cairo legal authority, outlines how non-Muslims should be treated in Muslim lands.

For two alternative texts of the pact itself, see
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pact-umar.html and
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/jews-umar.html.

On the recent events in Sudan, see http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/features/news/africa/sudan.html.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine.
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