Palestinians Petition for "Sacred Space"

Clair M. Lopez

"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." 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-Harb and returned to the Dar al-Islam.

This concept of sacred space also explains why Muslims who conquer enemy territory historically erect mosques and Islamic Centers literally on top of the destroyed sacred places of other faiths. In Jerusalem, for example, there are the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock Mosque, both built directly above the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple. These constructions are expressions of Islamic supremacism and battlefield triumph over the kuffar.

Jerusalem has never been the capital city of any people but the Jewish people and is nowhere mentioned even once in the Qur'an. The reason those mosques were built there is because they became Muslim waqf when Jerusalem fell to the armies of Umar, the second caliph, in 637. From that moment onward, Jerusalem and the land of the Jews have been considered sacralized Muslim territory that must be held forever in the Dar al-Islam. Having been lost to the Dar al-Islam in the early 20th century, however, first to the Allied Powers in WW I, then the League of Nations, then the United Nations, and finally returned to its ancestral Jewish inhabitants, Jewish Palestine, no matter how small territorially, had to be re-taken by Islam.

Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, asserts the doctrine of sacred space explicitly:

"No Muslim, be he in authority or not, is allowed to abandon any of the lands of Muslims."

HAMAS, the Muslim Brotherhood terror franchise in Gaza, dutifully incorporates this doctrine of sacred space into its Covenant, as well:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

--- HAMAS Covenant: Part III Strategies & Methods, The Strategy of HAMAS: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (Article Eleven)

As Palestinian Arabs petition the United Nations for the right to declare themselves a state, the doctrinal Islamic roots of their campaign to destroy Israel are better understood in the context of this doctrine of Sacred Space.

Source citation: "Shariah: The Threat to America: An Exercise in Competitive Analysis. (Report of Team B II)," Center for Security Policy, 2010.

Clare M. Lopez, a senior fellow at the Clarion Fund, is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, and counterterrorism issues.