Muhammad clearly stated that people of other religions have to pay a tax to Muslims, as a reminder of their subordinate status. The tax gets called Jizya. This removes a previous verse saying that there is "no compulsion in religion" and it destroys every pretext that Islam is only a religion and not a political system.
According to the esteemed historian Ibn Kathir, Muhammad established the Jizya as a means to compensate for the "converted" Meccans for their loss of income after the total ban on other religions from the Kaaba. This had ended the century-old tradition of pilgrimages by people of all faiths during the sacred months that the local economy was dependent on:
When Allah decreed that the polytheists should be prevented from approaching the Sacred Mosque, whether in the pilgrimage or at other times, that Quraysh said they would be deprived of the commercial activity that took place during the pilgrimage, and that they would therefore suffer financial loss. And so Allah compensated them for that by ordering them to battle the people of the scriptures so that they either accepted Islam or paid the jizya tax ("being in a state of submission") Ibn Kathir Vol 4. p.1
This practice enabled Muhammad and his successors to finance Islamic military expansion and the lifestyle of the religious class by blackmailing non-believers. The following passage continues from above:
I comment that the Messenger of God therefore decided to battle the Byzantines. This was because they were the people nearest to him and those most appropriate to invite to the truth because of their proximity to Islam and to those who believed in it. God Almighty had stated, "0 you who believe, fight those unbelievers who are near you. Let them see severity in you; and know that God is with those who are pious (9:123)" (Ibn Kathir Vol. 4 p. 1)
In the year 630, the Prophet of Islam marched an army into the Christian countries, the so-called "Battle of Tabuk". In fact, there was no battle because there was no enemy army. The inhabitants were surprised. Some were killed, and the survivors were forced to pay protection money to Muhammad. (Clear abolition of the previous rule of "no compulsion in religion", which the modern apologists so gladly repeat).
Only eleven years after Muhammad's death, his companions swept across North Africa, spearheading those who did not submit to Islamic rule. In the year 643, Tripoli was conquered, and the Christian Berbers were forced to give their wives and children as slaves to the Muslims to satisfy the Jizya.
Like the mafia, the Muslims told their involuntary donors that they would pay for "protection" - although the main threat to their livelihood and their safety is, of course, from their benefactors, the Muslims.
This lucrative extortion was practiced over the centuries and was a part of the brutal Ottoman rule over Christians, Jews and others. The Serbs of Europe were particularly hard hit and often had to surrender their children to satisfy the drivers. The children were then converted to Islam and trained as jihad warriors for use in foreign campaigns (the so-called Janissaries).
In India, the women and children of impoverished Hindus were also taken away by Muslim publicans until the 17th century, and sold to slavery to meet the demands of Jizya. For many, the only way to lose their families was to convert to Islam. This immense discrimination is how Islam made interventions in populations that had nothing to do with it (as an Islamic cleric confirmed in 2013).
From a technical point of view, there is no innocent non-Muslim in Islam, which also makes these utterly cruel condemnations of "terror against innocent people" useless. There is a basis for the protection of "people of the book" (originally Jews and Christians), but later extended to Hindus, when the Muslim leaders realized that killing them was less profitable than their taxation). "Dhimmis" are completely under the rule of the Muslims, renounce all rights and commit themselves to finance the Muslim expansion. Unfortunately, this was not enough to spare religious minorities extreme persecution and massacres.
Traditionally, the collection of Jizya occurs at a ceremony designed to emphasize the subordinate status of the non-muslim, where the subject is often performed in a humiliating manner. M. A. Khan reports that some Islamic clerics encouraged the tax collectors to spit during the process into the mouth of Hindu dhimmis. He also quotes the popular Sufi teacher Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi:
"The honor of Islam lies in insulting the unbelief and the unbelievers (kafirs). One who respects kafirs dishonors Muslims... The real purpose of levying the Jizya on them is to humiliate them... [and] they remain terrified and trembling." Islamic Jihad
The British preacher Anjem Choudary points out that "the normal situation for [Muslims] is to take money from the Kuffar" (at that time, he encouraged believers in the UK to abandon their work and benefit from public advantages). The Koran also confirms that the collection of Jizya is the ideal relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims. The verses that commission this (9:5) appear much later than the verse that there is "no compulsion in religion" (2:256), which means that it takes precedence and abolishes the earlier verse. For this reason, Islamic purists like Hamas and the Taliban want to reinstate Jizya. One of the first orders of the self-proclaimed caliphate, formulated by the Islamic state in 2014, was to impose Jizya by force on Christians who refused to embrace Islam.
An Egyptian cleric told on the TV channel al-Hafaz in 2013 that American foreign aid was a form of Jizya and "owed" to them. He also believed that Muslims should demand more money from the Americans, his words: "we can leave them alone". Only when the Jizya is paid will America be "allowed to perceive her own interests, which are allowed to them by the Muslims."
Contemporary Muslim apologists often use the earlier "no compulsion in religion" verse to portray Islam as a peaceful religion. They give very reluctantly that the Jizya is a punishment for not Muslims. They usually fall back on the assertion that the Jizya is merely a tax paid to the government - and that this "tax" is imposed on religious status and is almost always a much greater burden than for Muslim citizens . The interesting thing about this rhetorical strategy is that it directly contradicts every accusation that Islam is only a religion and not a political system.
Tolerance in Islam is not free. The Jizya is the tax that must be paid by non-Muslims to exercise their religion. Under Islamic law, people are to be killed or enslaved when the money is not paid or paid.