THE MERCY OF ISLAM :
Umar ibn al-Khattab the second caliph of Islam, once passed by a old man begging in front of a house. Umar asked him which religious community he belonged to. The man said he was Jewish. Umar then asked him, ‘What has brought you to this?’ The old man said, ‘Do not ask me; ask …poverty, and old age.’ Umar took the man to his own home, helped him from his personal money, an...d then ordered the head of the treasury, ‘You must look after this man and others like him. We have not treated him fairly. He should not have spent the best years of his life among us to find misery in his old age.’ Umar also relieved him and others in his situation of paying the jizya.......
Another example is found in Khalid ibn al-Walid the man who the prophet saw named him " teh sword of allah " in his letter to the people of the Iraqi city of Hira. It contains the terms of truce he offered them:
‘If God gives us victory, the people of the covenant will be protected. They have rights promised to them by God. It is the strictest covenant God has made incumbent on any of His prophets. They are also held by the duties that it places upon them and must not violate it. If they are conquered, they will live comfortably with everything due to them. I am commanded to exempt from jizya the elderly who cannot work, the disabled, or the poor who receive charity from their own community. The treasury will provide for them and their dependants as long as they live in Muslim lands or in the communities of Muslim emigrants. If they move outside of Muslim lands, neither they nor their dependants shall be entitled to any benefits.’
In another instance, Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Muslim Caliph, was visiting Damascus. He passed by a group of Christian lepers. He ordered that they be given charity and regular stipends for food.
Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz, another Muslim Caliph, wrote to his agent in Basra, Iraq, ‘Search for the people of the covenant in your area who may have grown old, and are unable to earn, and provide them with regular stipends from the treasury to take care of their needs.’......
