Dhimma tolerance is a revocable concession from a dominant to subordinate group.

Evidence

The second method is what we usually call tolerance or toleration; a word that has been used with a wide variety of meanings. What it normally meant was to allow the other, subject to certain conditions, to retain his otherness, his separate identity, and to grant him some, many, even most, but rarely all of the rights of citizenship. In Islamic law this is the system of the dhimma, whereby followers of certain approved religions, not all, were allowed to survive in that form, practising their own religions within their own communities, living by their own laws and institutions and enjoying many, though not all, of the priv­ ileges of full membership of the state. The degree of tolerance accorded in the different societies that practise it varies from minimal to maximal. Even at best, it remains a revocable concession, granted by a dominant group to a subordinate group. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1020

Categorization

• XREF: Models how tolerance structurally encodes hierarchy — qualifies Said-adjacent claims contrasting Islamic tolerance vs European intolerance, which is more a spectrum than a binary. — connects to: Muslim rulers profitably tolerated dhimmi subjects because their jizya tax was lucrative
• DEFINE: Precisely defines dhimma as conditional, revocable tolerance rather than equal coexistence.