Religion of Peace? Islam's War Against the World
Chapter 1: Obscuring the Issue
by Gregory Davis
Like other religions, Islam sees the universe in terms of good and evil; but unlike other religions, in Islam good and evil have expressly political significance. Islamic theology divides the world into two spheres locked in perpetual conflict: the House of Islam and the House of War. The House of Islam (dar al-Islam) embraces those lands where Islamic law (Sharia) is the law of the land, while the House of War (dar al-harb) comprises the rest of the world. The House of Islam is enjoined by Allah to make war upon the House of War until the latter is permanently assimilated into the former. The term jihad, which literally means "struggle", denotes the military effort to bring new lands into the House of Islam. While the state of war between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds is sometimes hot and sometimes cold, it is permanent until Sharia law reigns over the entire planet.
It is crucial to understand that Islam's division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War is not merely a question of practice but of principle. In the Islamic worldview, Sharia law (which comprises the commandments of the Koran and the precedents and teachings of Muhammad) is the only legitimate means of organizing society; any other social or political system violates the edicts of Allah himself. While every religion distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, Islam draws a capital distinction between political-legal regimes: those in submission (Islam) to Allah's law and those in rebellion.
Because most Americans and Europeans misunderstand the political nature of Islam, they talk about Islamic terrorism as if it bears no relationship to Islam proper. But the notion that authentic religion in general is naturally peaceful is a Western prejudice rather than a demonstrated truth. In order to understand the origins of Islamic violence, we must be willing to discard many comforting assumptions and try to see the world from an Islamic point of view. Acquiring a basic grasp of the Islamic worldview does not require learning Arabic or taking a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it does require investment of some time and thought to become familiar with the origins and history of Islam and the life of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad. Few Westerners have made such an investment, preferring instead to assume blindly that Muslims practicing their faith are not so very different from the true believers of other religions. That assumption is not only wrong - it is deadly.
Of course, Muslims (like Christians, Jews, and members of any religion) often fail to understand or live up to the standards of their faith. But what distinguishes Islam from other religions is that when it is correctly understood and practiced, Islam actively seeks the subjugation or destruction of everything that is not itself. Non-Islamic religions may seek the conversion or evangelization of others, and their devotees may employ force against others from time to time. But Islam is the only religion whose basic animating principles pit it against the rest of the world, ensuring that war is the natural and obligatory state of affairs.
The dichotomy Islam makes between the House of Islam and the House of War is suggestive of other, more modern ideologies such as Communism and National Socialism. Both Communism and National Socialism divide the world into two warring spheres based on political orientation. While Communism and National Socialism find inspiration in economic or racial theories of history, Islam is inspired by Allah and Muhammad even while it shares the expansionary political goals of the other two. Islam is not only a religion that orients the individual and collective towards a divinity, but also a political system divinely ordained to encompass the entire earth. Islam is in fact a kind of state, a polity that transcends conventional political boundaries. Once one appreciates that Islam is as much political-territorial as it is religious, one can see that for an individual or society to refuse the rule of Islam is an act not of impiety but of rebellion, which is properly dealt with by force. It is also easy to understand the obligation of Muslims to kill apostates (Muslims who leave Islam) since defecting from Islam constitutes not an act of conscience but of treason.
The secular West would do well to bear in mind that, however strange it may seem today, for most of history civilizations and peoples were defined by the gods they worshipped, and it was the character of those gods that shaped individual and collective action. It has only been in the past few hundred years that the god one worships was eclipsed by apparently more important factors such as ethnicity, nationality, class, or political party. With the current resurgence of Islamic violence and cultural imperialism, we are cast back into the pre-modern paradigm. Today's preachers of "multiculturalism" and "tolerance", who champion Islam at the expense of Western mores, demonstrate ignorance of a suicidal order. They fail to recognize that true Islam embodies a multiculturalist's worst fears: an unwavering conviction in its own cultural superiority, a readiness to use force to spread its dominion, and a systematic disregard for those weaker than or different from itself
Source
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/religionofpeace_ch1.aspx
