Ottoman Empire was a Muslim based empire; but the empire tolerated and accepted non-Muslim communities in their empire (Stanford, 1976). The Ottoman Empire protected other religions, and they also gave them freedoms as they were free from being persecuted by the Shariah. For example, the Treaty of Umar Ibn al-Khattab guaranteed the Christians of Jerusalem total religious freedom and safety. Although the Ottoman Empire allowed freedom to other religions and gave them freedom, the Muslims handled, treated, and tolerated Christians and Jews as second class citizens while Muslims were treated as first class citizens and were highly respected (Karsh, 2006). Non-Muslims were treated as inferiors, and there were some positions which they could not hold for example the high positions in the empire were held by Muslims only, and the non- Muslims only held the normal positions, and they received smaller pay compared to the Muslims.
Muslim had some negative attitudes towards the non-believers and the Gentiles especially those who had refused to accept the truth and convert to Islam. There were established policies and regulations over the non-Muslims institutions to become legally valid organizations, but this was in conditions that all had to accept Islam as dominant and not to criticize Islam or Sultan; anyone who went against this was subject to death as a punishment. Under the Ottoman Empire majority of the churches were destroyed or converted into Mosques. Non- Muslims and Muslims had different Courts where each could handle their cases as long as the cases did not involve capital offenses, religious groups or threats to the public order. The non-Muslims were barred from testifying as witnesses against Muslims or in Muslim courts. According to Tijana (2009), Marriage between non-Muslim men and Muslim women was forbidden under Shariah law and the refusal of the husband to convert resulted to divorce and the wife gaining custody of the children over the non-Muslim husband.
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References
Karsh, Effraim. (2006). Islamic Imperialism A History . Yale University Press.
Stanford Shaw. (1976). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey . Cambridge University Press.
Tijana, Krstic. (2009). " Conversion ." Infobase Publishing.
