WRITTEN FEBRUARY 2024
RELIGION AND TERRITORY
Today, I am going to address a topic related to Islam, which must be known to more appropriately understand whether the creation of a Palestinian state that US President Joe Biden has proposed in recent days will promote peace in Israel and the Middle East.
What meaning does territory have in different religions?
In Christianity, religious issues are separated from political issues. Let us remember the famous phrase: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” which imposes the division between church and state as two separate entities. In Christianity, there is also no idea of national territory or the religious obligation that all Christians must live in a specific country in the future. Christians do not have territorial ambitions or territories that they aspire to conquer or liberate for religious purposes (ironically, the only exception I can think of is “Jerusalem,” but I think that was in the times of the Crusaders.) Although Christianity embraces the ideal of evangelizing humanity, it does not intend to militarily conquer all the countries in the world to achieve that goal.
Judaism is different: we are a political religion. And we have territorial ambitions. Our millennial aspiration is to have our own sovereign state in the land of Israel. However, beyond the land of Israel, we Jews do not embrace the goal of conquering other lands or imposing our Torah on any other people. Not even in messianic times. When the Messiah arrives, we do not intend to conquer the world (as the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” falsely alleges) but rather to live in our land, Israel, guided by our Tora, to serve our God in the Bet HaMiqdash—the Holy Temple of Jerusalem—and living in peace with our non-Jewish neighbors.
Islam is a different story. And it is essential for Israel and for the Jews of the world to know what their actual “territorial ideals” are. We need to understand who we are dealing with and not repeat the mistakes made in the past, for example, in the Oslo agreements.
ISLAM AND OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
For Islam, there are two types of territories:
1. “Dar Al-Islam” defines the lands that are ruled or “were ever ruled by Muslims.”
2. Dar Al-Harb is a land that is not yet under Muslim sovereignty but that one day, eventually, will be. This theoretically includes the entire planet Earth. Because, unlike the Jews, Islam has the “messianic,” “utopian” aspiration that everyone converts to Islam. This explains a little better one of the most serious problems of the West: that Muslim immigrants who arrive in Europe, for example, not only have no intention of “integrating” into the culture of the countries that offer them refuge but also, on the contrary, in the long term, they have the aspiration of imposing Sharia, Islamic law, on the countries they arrive.
(There is also a third category, less known, which is Dar Al-Salam: the land of peace. That is, the planet Earth will enjoy peace when the entire world finally accepts Islam and follows Sharia. Only at that moment will there be definitive and lasting peace. And until then, Muslims must do everything possible to achieve this religious and political vision. For more information, see this phenomenal article in Hebrew ).
WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL?
For Muslims, the land of Israel falls into the first category: “Dar Al-Islam, a territory that Islam once ruled, that is, “occupied territories.” Israel was indeed conquered and ruled by Caliph Omar in the 7th century. And once this occurs, the land becomes sacred, and no matter how much time has passed, according to Islam, it can no longer be ruled by non-Muslim infidels. Suppose non-Muslims want to live in the lands of Dar Al-Islam. In that case, according to Islam, they can do so only if they submit to Muslim sovereignty and accept the supremacy of Islam (dhimmis).
But if non-Muslim infidels rule and inhabit these lands, they are considered an illegal occupying force. For Islamist states like Iran, or those that identify with the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, or Turkey, it is a religious duty to recover those lands. And for the most extreme Muslims, jihadists, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Huties of Yemen, recovering those occupied lands and attacking the invader “is an act of legitimate defense” (sic.), and they must resort to “jihad”, the holy war –which calls for the genocide of the enemy–to achieve it.
AND THERE WAS LIGHT!!!
When this point is understood, it becomes clearer what is seemingly meaningless in the claims and actions of Palestinians and other Arab Islamist and jihadist groups towards Israel.
Let’s look at some examples:
1. The concept of occupation is not a political concept. In reality, as everyone knows, there was never a previous Palestinian state, which Israel is now occupying. In the context of Dar Al-Islam, “occupation” is a religious, Islamic term that refers to the sovereignty of infidels, in this case “Jewish” over a Muslim territory.
2. Therefore, the “occupied territories” claimed by jihadists are not limited to Judea and Samaria or Gaza but to the entire land of Israel, including Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. It is for this reason that one will never hear in pro-Palestinian demonstrations a call for the creation of two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian, living in peace with each other. What the pro-Palestinians demand is “one state,” the Palestinian one, from the river to the sea (from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea).
3. This also explains why Hamas justifies its massacre with the excuse of the Israeli “occupation” when we all know that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and has NOT had any soldiers in Gaza since that year. But for the Palestinians, Gaza or Judea and Samaria are not enough. They have to expel the Jews from all “Palestinian” territory.
4. It is then demonstrated that the conflict with the Palestinians is not territorial in the conventional sense. A classic territorial problem between two countries is resolved through war or negotiating territory. After wars or negotiations, countries established stable and peaceful relations, though this was not always immediate. For instance, despite the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War in the 19th century, the U.S. and Mexico eventually became neighbors with strong diplomatic and amicable ties. However, since the Palestinian conflict with Israel is not merely territorial but rather a religious conflict, there is little room for negotiations or concessions. And it is for this reason that Islamists WILL NEVER RECOGNIZE A JEWISH STATE IN A TERRITORY OF THE “GIVEN TO ISLAM” CATEGORY, no matter how small this state may be.
5. This also explains why Hezbollah attacks Israel. Israel does not “occupy” Lebanon, and Hezbollah cannot have territorial claims against Israel. Still, as a jihadist religious group, it fights against non-Muslim sovereignty in Dar Al-Islam.
6. This is why Iran, an Islamic state, fights for the destruction of Israel, even though it has no border with Israel. And why the Islamist Huties of Yemen have written on their flag as part of their existential mission: “Death to Israel” even though the Jewish State is 5,000 kilometers away from Yemen.
7. The religious obligation to liberate territories occupied by non-Muslims in Dar Al-Islam explains why Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria use their mosques as military bases and hide weapons and ammunition, soldiers, etc. there. After all, the war they are fighting is not for military but religious purposes. It is logical, then, that religious institutions are at the service of jihad. Only in this last incursion into Gaza after October 7 did the Israeli army attack and destroy mosques and expose the hypocrisy of the United Nations, which always demanded immunity for religious institutions, knowing that Palestinians in Gaza and Judea, and Samaria use these facilities for military purposes. Something similar happens with hospitals, schools, and facilities of the infamous UNRWA.
8. The idea of Dar Al Islam also explains why confiscating territory from the Palestinians in Gaza is the most effective measure to punish the October 7 massacre and other terrorist acts and will be the only thing that can deter them when they try in the future. to repeat a similar attack: if they mess with Israel, they will lose territory of Dar Al-Islam (nakba). This will be the worst defeat for them, politically and religiously.
9. The jihadists practice a double discourse: on the one hand, the religious one, the internal dialogue from the mosques, where they tell the truth about their final objective with inexplicable impunity: destroying Israel is the first step, and starting the jihad against the West.
On the other hand, there is propaganda for the ears of Hamas accomplices: the United Nations, the media, the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the International Commission on Human Rights, to name just a few examples. In all these forums, there is a pact of silence by which they will never mention the religious aspect of this conflict. On the contrary, and knowingly, they will describe Israel as the aggressor; they will disguise the problem of jihad as Israeli “colonialism.” And there are also the useful idiots, the atheist leftists, who, in their insane psychopathic deviation from good to evil, end up supporting the most fundamentalist theological doctrine: Jihad.
10. Only once we understand the concept of “Dar Al-Islam” do we know the supreme naivety of the statements of the American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken about declaring a Palestinian state “attentive to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians.” The final aspiration of the Palestinians – and in this sense, there is no difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – is for Israel to disappear from the map, to vacate ALL of its territories, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. But the most immediate “strategic” aspiration of the Palestinians is to create a state that borders Israel. Have Israel at a zero distance from there to produce more and more massacres in the style of October 7, and thus, one day destroy the infidel Jews who occupy “Dar Al-Islam”.
And despite all this, Israel B”H will prevail, free itself from its enemies, and triumph.
How do I know?
וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ
שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ
אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ
וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם
And that promise of protection that God made to our ancestors, which protected them, will protect us, too. Because it was not a single time that our enemies wanted to destroy us; in reality, new enemies that seek our destruction emerge in each generation. But again and again, the Holy One, saves us from their hands.
Rabbi Yosef Bitton
Israel is facing an enemy that does not intend to stop with the destruction of Israel ח”ו, but instead wants to continue fighting against Western civilization.
Israel is at the forefront of this battle of civilizations or religions. And although Israel inexplicably has the world against it, little by little, some countries and world leaders, such as the future Prime Minister of Holland Geert Wilders, are seeing it.
¿AFTER ISRAEL? Spain & Portugal
This phenomenal article from BBC 2016 (Spanish) explains the concept of Dar Al Islam in a little more depth and mentions which countries are in this category: Israel is the first because it is in the Middle East, but it is not the last.
For jihadist … there is a sacralization of the land. Any territory that has been part of Islam at some point will always be part of Islam. It does not matter that control was lost centuries ago, that Muslims do not exist or are a minority in that territory. That is Islamic land and those who occupy it are invaders….
Al Andalus was the territory that remained under Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula from the arrival of the Muslims, in 711, until the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, in 1492 into the hands of Castile.
At its maximum extent, in the 8th century, Andalus covered practically the entire peninsula…
The territory that “must be recovered” extends from Southeast Asia in the East to the Iberian Peninsula in the West.
That doctrine – as Azzam wrote in 1987 – proclaims that “jihad or holy war will remain an individual obligation until all the other lands that were Muslim return to us and Islam reigns in them again before us are Palestine, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, Philippines, Burma, southern Yemen, Tashkent and Andalus [that is: Spain and Portugal .Y.B].
