I have seen some people argue that dimmhi status was not apartheid and often remark that life of Jews in muslim countries were better than in Europe and often sited the inqusition. Which in my eyes is like comparing the most extreme prosecution of Jews to a rather milder and not consistent treatment of Jews in muslim countries (since treatment of Jews in other parts of Europe, famously in Poland was much more accepting, maybe even on par of equal rights - correct me if I am wrong).
Anyways, I have asked once someone about the rain laws of Shia areas/countries like Iran and yemen. And have ofc gotten a great answer, but it was rather localized on one aspect of Shia treatment of Dihmmis and ofc did not include the Sunni treatment of Dihmmis.
Therefore I am asking broadly speaking both about Sunni and Shia treatment of Dihmmis (including Jews and christians). Would that be apartheid? Please feel free to include different time periods, different reigns ( as in different caliphates, empires).
And I know applying modern terms on much older times is rather hard or perhaps ahistorical. So I mean apartheid as in: state-sanctioned system of racial segregation and discrimination.
I feel like I am misunderstanding the term dihmmi, since there are many opinions both negative and positive about the term. So please be understanding if it sounds like I am omitting something, there is too much information to gather a coherant opinion on the subject.
Thank you all, in advance.
Edit: I am much more intrested on the historical part of the dihmmi. If you can, please include different time periods of Islamic rule. It would be really intresting to see how different reigns and time periods led to different treatment of dihmmis. Perhaps this was not clear. So I used the term aprtheid as state-sanctioned system of racial segregation and discrimination. Which is a widely accepted.
Edit 2: I am feeling like the answers are vague and incomplete and do not draw conculsions based upon the different questions that I have asked. So here are the key questions: How consistent was the treatment? Was the system state-sanctioned system of racial segregation and discrimination ? How did it differntiate between different reigns and different time periods? How was sunni treatment of Dhimmis? How were Shia treatment of Dhimmis? Was the treatment equally enforced upon all dhimmis or just sub groups of them?
These questions are for you and for me as to not label all in absolute terms of apartheid and not apartheid. Since history is much more complex than binary labels.