Palestinians Petition for "Sacred Space"
by Clare M. Lopez
September 18, 2011
by Clare M. Lopez
September 18, 2011
Watching the determined, decades-long campaign of Arab Muslims to destroy the small State of Israel, it can be difficult to understand why this very tiny sliver of Levantine land should matter so much to a people who already occupy more than 20 nation states of their own. Aside from the Jew-hatred that is intrinsic to Islam as expressed throughout the Qur’an, hadiths, and Sira (life of Muhammad), there is at least one other reason. That reason is about much more than a mere territorial dispute and traces its justification to the Islamic doctrine of “Sacred Space.”
The concept of “sacred space” is well-developed in Islamic law (shariah) and holds that all land on earth has been given by Allah to Muslims in perpetuity. According to this belief, inasmuch as the world already belongs in its entirety to Muslims, they are both destined and obligated to dominate it. In practice, however, pursuit of this global objective proceeds incrementally and includes both advances and retreats. Land already once conquered or occupied by Muslims, whenever in history that may have occurred, is considered waqf, or a holy endowment from Allah to the ummah (the Muslim people) forever. If such space has been lost in battle or for any other reason, it is the duty of all Muslims to regain it, by jihad if necessary.
Given that places like Chechnya, the Iberian Peninsula (or al-Andalus), Israel, and the Indian subcontinent (Hind) are all examples of such territory that were once conquered by the armies of Islam but are now under the political control of non-Muslims (infidels or kuffar), it becomes easier to see why each of these has been the target of jihadist attacks. Under the doctrine of sacred space, they all must be “liberated” from the Dar al-Harband returned to the Dar al-Islam. Read the rest on:
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