ASIA/SYRIA - Video released on the Christians in Qaryatayn who sign a "protection pact"

Qaryatayn (Agenzia Fides) - "Fight until they pay the jizya pledging subservience to Muslim rule" is the title of the video released in recent days by jihadist websites (available at: https://archive.org/details/Jizia_Q) which shows a group of Christians in Qaryatayn while they participate in the meeting in which they had to sign a "payment contract" to continue living in their homes, in the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (Daesh).
Photographic images of that meeting, which took place in a conference room in Qaryatayn, had been released already at the end of August. In the video one can see at least fifty Christians in the background, all men, sitting in the room, while some of them, in close-ups, are called to a table to sign the "contract" in front of a militant of the Islamic State (Daesh). Among those present in the room, the figure of Father Jacques Murad can be seen, who was kidnapped from the monastery of Mar Elian on May 21. The monastery was later destroyed by the jihadist of the Islamic State in August.
In the contract signed by Christians, Daesh guaranteed the baptized that they will not plunder their possessions, not force them to change their religion and will "do no harm to any of them". Christians on their behalf committed themselves inter alia not to expose crosses over their churches, not to use amplifiers, not to ring the bells, not to conspire against the Islamic State, not to carry out ceremonies and liturgies in public places and to pay the fee required per capita, varying depending on their social level, which may be paid in two annual installments. The contract ended warning that those who violate the underwritten rules will be treated by the State Islamic in the same way as enemies of war.
The jizya is the tax that until the nineteenth century every non-Muslim subject was required to pay to Islamic authorities as clause of the "pact" that guaranteed them protection from external aggression and freedom of worship, and exempted them from the military service and from the payment of the Zakat, the religious tax prescribed by the Koran on every Muslim, which is one of the "Five Pillars" of Islam. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 07/10/2015)

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