Mutability of Protective Covenant (dhamma) with the Birth of Modern Citizenship Rights

The Islamic legal system established an institution based on which the followers of the triple religions, that is, Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, under the condition of accepting an agreement entitled as “dhamma”, could seek equality with Muslims in many citizenship rights and obligations; whereas, they have never enjoyed those equal rights. During recent years, Muslim scholars have tried to justify this rule and to reduce its negative consequences to the least possible extent. Considering the transformation of the case, the effect of time and place, and with regard to prudential jurisprudence as well as governmental jurisprudence, the authors of this brief article have attempted to prove that juridical laws regarding dhamma need to change, for the concept of dhamma and the many laws coming after that belong to the pre-modern era, when the concepts such as country, land, border, nationality and etc. either did not exist at all, or were not applied in their present sense. This doesn’t mean, however, that there is no legal dichotomy between the Muslim citizens and the People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb), for in many domains such as personal status (ahwāl al-shakhsīyya), one can still consider the dichotomy. The methodology of the present research is a combination of two
different approaches: intra-jurisprudential ‒concerning traditional independent reasoning (ijtihād-i sunnatī) which uses juridical proofs and evidences‒ and extra-jurisprudential; a second degree knowledge which is so called a juridical philosophy.