rylah
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- Jun 10, 2015
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The reason why the Arab world, and the Muslim-Arab world in particular, find Israel categorically unacceptable goes back to the doctrine of Dar al Harb, Dar al Islam. The land between the river and sea became a key part of the exploding Arab-Muslim empire ā Dar al Islam ā in the 7th century. Fast forward some 14 centuries, and the dissolution of the Caliphate in 1924 (the first āNakbaā) put an end to Dar al Islam formally. In the eyes of the West, Islam, the millennia-long foe, had been put in its place.
THE ROLE OF ARAB-MUSLIM IMPERIAL-COLONIALISM IN THE CURRENT CONFLICT WITH THE JEWS
But this triumphalist vision of a world ultimately entirely submitted to Allah (through Islam) lived on, taking on a more modern form, more powerful and effective than the Ottoman basket case. Hassan al-Banna formed the Muslim Brotherhood (1927), a multi-generational plan to revive true Islam, fight the forces of secular modernity making inroads in the Arab world whose progress al-Banna saw as a regression to the āJahaliyya,ā i.e. the āIgnoranceā of the pre-Islamic Arab world. He sought a long-term, multi-generational goal of a new salvific and eventually global Caliphate in which Muslims ruled according to Sharia: Where there was Dar al Harb, there shall be Dar al Islam.
For al-Banna, his triumphalist followers and sympathisers, the demotion of Islam in the eyes of the nations that had occurred through the military and cultural success of Western imperial-colonialists, threatened the very religion itself: āa declaration of war on all shapes of Islam.ā For them, Islam must dominate. Few forces today that seek global hegemony are so open about their imperial ambitions.
In the minds of supremacists like al Banna, therefore, the creation of Israel was a further catastrophe in this long war on Islam, the loss of territory in the heart of what was and should be dar al Islam, and a denial of Muslim imperial claims. The core of the Arab-Muslim irredentist demand that Israel be destroyed, is a direct expression of this imperialist Islam from its first century. Free infidels are anathema to Islamās triumphalist sovereignty. āWe cannot concede a grain of sand to Jews.ā For Abul Aāla al-Maududi, the most systematic thinker of modern Islam explained, Jews must exist in the state of submission. āThe purpose for which the Muslims are required to fight is ā¦ to put an end to their sovereignty and supremacy.ā[1] To have the dissolution of the Caliphate followed two decades later by a Jewish state in the heart of what should be Dar al Islam was a continuation of the same war āagainst all shapes of Islam.ā For triumphalist Muslims like al-Banna, Islam necessitated dominion. Its demotion on the world stage was an existential threat. Hence, losing the battle with the Jews threatened to be an unmitigated disaster, utter humiliation on a global scale in response to which, in complete confidence in their impending victory, the Arab League promised historic massacres. To lose would fatally wound triumphalist Islamās need for visible dominion. To Muslims such as these, Israel was a blasphemy against the Prophet (PBUH). An intolerable degradation. Another nakba. Indeed, The Muslim Brotherhood, initially a weak movement, only came into its own in the fight against Zionism.[2]
THE NAKBA
This hard zero-sum mentality ā if you win (anything) I lose; in order for me to win you must lose (everything) ā has characterised one of the dominant currents in Arab attitudes towards Jews in the modern period. Itās not that more egalitarian, mutually respectful relations didnāt exist. The large influx of both Jews and Arabs in the first half of the 20th century, with far greater growth where Jews and Arabs lived together (Haifa) than where Arabs lived alone (and dominant), attests to the possibility of civil, voluntary relations between the two populations.[3] The current situation in Israeli hospitals is a rare case of a large Muslim minority integrated into the workings of professional democratic institutions. Israel has better relations with its Arab-Muslim citizens than any European country currently, despite having twice as large a population as any other democracy.
The Zionists put great importance on that reciprocity, and unlike European imperialism (which they saw themselves as explicitly rejecting), they purchased and worked the land, and played by the prevailing rules rather than conquering and then settling the land of displaced populations. They understood that their ability to live in the (former) Dar al Islam (i.e. among Muslim-majority nations), depended on that civil, demotic model of non-coercive, contractual relations prevailing. Their declaration of independence makes it clear that they operated in the liberal-progressive tradition of egalitarianism and self-determination rather than authoritarian imperialism.
The Great Arab Revolt of 1936-39, in which the Muslim Brotherhood played an important role, asserted the hard zero-sum triumphalist position. People who participated in the assault on both the British imperialists and the Zionists, did so to restore Arab honor. The Peel Commission made a point of asking Arab rioters how come, if things had so dramatically improved since the arrival of the Zionists, were they attacking Jews? Responded one rioter: āYou say we are better off: you say my house has been enriched by the strangers who have entered it. But it is my house, and I did not invite the strangers in, or ask them to enrich it. Better a mat of my own than a shared house.ā In other words, āI prefer poverty as a member of the dominant group, to sharing in wealthā. One might call it a lose-lose: I can only āwinā (live in poverty) if you lose.
What we have here is a good example of what, mutatis mutandis, became of the spirit of Muslim imperial-colonialism over the many centuries in the land between the river and the sea. By the later Ottoman period, this was a classic case of so many prime-divider societies where the ruling elites dominate the vast majority of commoners living in poverty, and the backwater of a failing system: Muslim peasants ā fellahin ā and other commoners were in dire shape, impoverished by natural conditions, Bedouin raids, exploitative absentee landlords, and heavy state taxation, living at the edge of subsistence.
Their condition was far from the glorious triumphalism of their ancestors, but that apparently did not mean they renounced the proud sense of superiority appropriate to the conquest, but now threadbare ā¦ A mat of my own. When the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Nationalists denounced Western imperial-colonial aggression, they did so accurately: both sides were engaged in la raison du plus fort. But what they opposed to that aggression was their own, robust, millennia-long, imperial-colonialism, the so-called āresistanceā was imperial competition for dominion.
This framework clarifies the Muslim stakes in Israelās creation. Nothing could be more catastrophic than the Jews, historically the weakest and most cowardly of the dhimmi, establishing an autonomous state in the heart of (what should be) Dar al Islam. (Scholars of shame-honor cultures note that as long as a humiliating fact [e.g. a wifeās infidelity] isnāt made public, it is bearable.) A Jewish state in Palestine was just such a public announcement of Muslim impotence.
And yet, that is precisely what happened. And the response to the catastrophe was to imprison the refugees from Palestine in ārefugee campsā (where most still live) and swear eternal enmity to the āZionist entity.ā Here one finds the key triumphalist response among Arabs to Israelās inexplicable and blasphemous success, a response that has dominated Arab leaders with few exceptions, to present: make your own people suffer as a way to promote the war you wonāt admit you lost. Hamas explains:
The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters.
Read more:
Islamic and Arab Imperialism and Irredentism is driving the conflict between the river and the sea
Richard Landes is a historian of millennialism living in Jerusalem; his most recent book, Can āThe Whole Worldā be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad. Introduction: Rethink...fathomjournal.org
