Why they hate us

27 May 2003

We are at war with terrorists, not with Islam, the president tells us, and I'm sure he believes it. But there are certainly some Muslims in the world who believe that Islam is at war with us. The secular media finds this hard to understand, and frames this hatred in its own categories, as nationalism, or globalism, or resentment of our great wealth. That is not how the militant Muslims themselves see it. They don't hate us because we are rich. They hate us because we are there.

I learned about this thirty years ago in Professor Andrew Ehrenkreutz's class on the history of the Crusades at the University of Michigan. Islamic theology divides the world into the dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam, and the dar al-Harb, the abode of war. The former is the area of the world under the control of Islamic authority; the latter is the rest of the world, where, because the authority of Islam is not recognized, is at war with God. It is a collective goal of Islam to extend the dar al-Islam, that is, to bring the world into submission to God. This may be accomplished by peaceful persuasion, but at many times in history it has been accomplished by war. The goal of Islamic conquest is first to establish the rule of Islamic law, and secondarily to convert individuals. Idolaters must convert or die; monotheists may live on as dhimmi or tolerated minorities. Minorities can practice their religion--if they do so out of sight and hearing--but they cannot, in the strictest interpretation, exert authority over Muslims or bear arms. Some Muslims (like Osama bin Laden) extend the concept of the dar al-Harb to countries inhabited by Muslims where the goverment is insufficiently Muslim for their taste. Other Muslims deny the right of Osama or any other Muslim leader to declare a holy war, jihad, to pacify the dar al-Harb. Some even argue that the concept of the dar al-Harb is either outmoded, or not part of the original religion of the Quran, or to be reinterpreted to mean only areas where the practice of Islam is actually persecuted or forbidden. To get some idea of the variation in the approach among Muslims, try doing a Google search on "Dar al-Harb."

These last would be considered moderate Muslims. Here is an example of one, Dr. Mustafa Ceric, president of the Ulema of Bosnia-Herzegovina in an interview (2002) presented at the web page www.angelfire.com/hi/nazam/Aceric.html :

Q: Will Bosnia remain a secular state or develop into a theocracy ?

A: As far as Islam is concerned, all countries belong to one of the following categories: Dar al-Islam, Dar al-Harb or Dar as-Sulh . Each and every Muslim should know the difference between the three groupings and decide which one they are resident in.

In the first category, Islam must be implemented to the furthest extent. Islam can never be implemented perfectly, but in dar al-Islam the government ought to try their best and continue trying; Islam is an ideal that people in nations in this category must strive for.

In a dar al-Harb state, non-Muslims form the majority of the population and Islam is not recognised by the legislature. Hence it cannot be implemented to any degree. This category applies to most Western states.

In the third, intermediary category, Sulh, the situation is such that Islam or the shariah cannot be implemented fully, but the government should endeavour to put it into practice as much as possible.

Bosnia is not in the first category, but the third. Therefore we are obliged to try our best to put Islamic legislation into practice, but it is unrealistic to expect us to implement shariah completely. That's what I want, of course, but it will not happen just like that.

So here is a moderate Muslim cleric with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, on what Muslim control means.

In spite of the revisionists, then, the concept of dar al-Harb still has considerable credibility within the Muslim world. And many who would not endorse offensive jihad  will justify defensive jihad. Within the concepts of the two abodes, however, "defensive" has a special meaning. Bear in mind that the relations of the dar al-Islam and the dar al-Harb are not symmetrical. The movement is only supposed to be in one direction. If a territory passes from the dar al-Islam to the dar al-Harb it is actively revolting against God, and its being outside Muslim authority is an attack on Islam. There are a lot of places in the world like that: Spain, most of the Balkans, most of India, and Israel, for example. The question in the Muslim mind is how, not whether, these territories should be reclaimed for Islam. In the cases of Greece or Spain, I have not heard of anyone trying to use force at this time. But when Hindus want to rebuild a temple that was replaced by a mosque, or Jews establish a state in Palestine, or where Christians try to resist the application of Islamic law in Nigeria or Sudan, many Muslims see direct action against the infidel not as attack, but as self-defense, or rather, the maintenance of peace.

And then, of course, there is America. American power extending into Muslim lands is the most visible (next perhaps to the existence of the state of Israel) intrusion of the dar al-Harb into the dar al-Islam. Those who favor violent jihad do not care about our motives or even our actions. We may argue that we are trying to bring peace, but as far as they are concerned, by our nature we are war and carry war with us. Even to those who are personally opposed to violence for themselves have difficulty denying the underlying logic of the argument so deeply embedded in Islamic tradition. "Islam is a peaceful religion"--I have heard that over and over again in the last year and a half--"Islam even means peace."  Not exactly; the word means "submission" or "pacification"--from the same root perhaps, but not what we usually mean by "peace." This kind of peace is not neutral, and it cannot be reached by conciliation.