One that people need to understand about this “protected minority” idea is that it is not freely entered into, nor is it some kind of absolute guarantee of rights, rather it comes with all kinds of stipulations within the context of a clear unbalance of power, with the non-Muslims being conquered people, and these “agreements” essentially imposing a second-class (or worse) status on the conquered people.
The prototypical example perhaps being the Pact of Umar (9th century), which you may read
here. It lays out quite clearly in its preamble, “When You [Muslims] marched against us [Christians],: we asked of you protection for ourselves, our posterity, our possessions, and our co-religionists”. In other words, this is a treaty made from subservience, in hopes that further destruction would not be visited upon the native people. It is in no way, then, an example of “Islamic tolerance” (I submit that there is no such thing as we would understand it in truly pluralistic societies). And, just in terms of development of law governing relations between the conquerors and the conquered, it is most definitely
a step backwards. You will notice, for instance, that it forbids Christians from holding government office, yet prior to this 9th century extension of the original pact (which, as the analysis tells us, has shaped Muslim-non-Muslim relations ever since), we have the example of people like John of Damascus, who served as governor there after the death of his father (his grandfather having served, as well, during the time of the Islamic conquest). In fact, as EO priest Fr. Josiah Trenham points out in
this talk on Sharia law in America, this is one of the ways we can reliably know the date of the Islamicization of Damascus, as John was eventually forced out of government service (along with all his fellow Christians), which is how he ended up spending his last days in a monastery.
So if there’s anything we shouldn’t be listening to, it’s the opinions of people who would have us believe that Islamic rule has somehow protected Christians or other minorities, and that this is thus a reason to either be kind to Islam, or not to be concerned about calls for Sharia to be extended to Western countries (Fr. Josiah provides an Orthodox Christian view of that question in the talk linked above, if anyone is curious). To be sure, there are “protections” enshrined in Islamic law for Christians and other “People of the Book”, but realistically they are used as a means of asserting Islamic power and dominance over us,
not evidence of Muslim benevolence (though, to be fair, there have been examples of that in the long history Muslim-Christian relations, as in the case of 'Abd al-'Aziz, who began to govern Upper Egypt in 685 AD – the trouble is that they are horribly inconsistent. Even in the case of 'Abd al-'Aziz, who is remembered fondly for having strengthened the relative position of the Coptic Patriarch compared to the desecration and destruction that had occurred previously, the Muslim governor still ordered the destruction of crosses and the placement of signs promoting Islam and ridiculing Christianity over the doors of the churches throughout his territory).
