The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

abodes of Islam, war, and truce

The classical Islamic theory of world order, as outlined in legal treatises on the Islamic state’s relations with non-Muslims (siyar), divided the world into different realms or abodes (in Arabic, dār [sing.], diyār [plural]). The number and names of such abodes varied widely in classical sources, but the three that received the most attention among jurists were the abode of Islam (dār al-islām), war (dār al-ḥarb), and truce (dār al-ṣulḥ). Even these three, however, did not receive detailed or consistent elaboration.

Dār al-islām was generally understood as the territory over which Muslims held political sovereignty and in which Islamic law (shari‘a) was enforced. Dār al-islām was conceived as the abode of the Muslim umma, the community of believers, in which Muslim lives, property, honor, and faith were safeguarded. Dār al-islām also comprised non-Muslim communities (dhimmīs), whose lives, property, and religious autonomy were guaranteed by the Islamic state so long as they did not challenge Muslim sovereignty and paid the poll tax (the jizya mentioned in Q. 9:29) or a land tax (the kharāj).

Dār al-ḥarb was understood broadly as all territories in which Islamic law did not prevail. According to the majority of jurists, it was the duty of the Muslim ruler to undertake jihad—through peaceful means if possible but through forceful means if necessary—to reduce dār al-ḥarb and expand dār al-islām whenever the state was militarily and financially able to do so. An area of dār al-ḥarb could be incorporated into dār al-islām through capitulation (sulḥan) or through conquest (‘anwatan). Conversely, according to jurists of the Hanafi school, three conditions caused a territory to revert from dār al-islām to dār al-ḥarb: (1) enforcement of non-Islamic laws, (2) contiguity with another territory of dār al-ḥarb, and (3) the absence of security for Muslims or dhimmīs.

Dār al-ṣulḥ, or the abode of truce, was a third category posited mainly by jurists of the Shafi‘i school, although scholars from other schools also employed it or analogous terms. It included areas that could not be objects of jihad because of a truce or other agreement with the Islamic state. Drawing an analogy from the treaty of Hudaybiyya concluded by the Prophet and his Meccan opponents in 628, most jurists held that the maximum term for any truce was ten years, although nothing barred the Muslim ruler from indefinitely renewing it if he deemed such a truce to be in the Muslims’ interest.

These terms are not found in either the Qur’an or the hadith. They appear to have entered Islamic parlance during the late eighth century (second Islamic century), perhaps in an effort by the jurists to revive Islamic unity through renewed military efforts (jihad) in order to expand Islamic rule. The theory of world order in which these abodes played an important part was thus never matched by reality. Yet the terms have continued to be used and debated by Muslims until the present. During the 19th century, Indian ‘ulama’ divided over the question of whether India under British rule remained dār al-islām or had become dār al-ḥarb. Similar debates took place from North Africa to Southeast Asia. The terms are still employed today, mainly by fundamentalist writers, although with profound differences from the classical usage. Dār al-islām does not exist; instead, it has been replaced by a new jāhiliyya, or a corrupted, un-Islamic order, as argued by Mawdudi (d. 1979), the founder of the Jama‘at-i Islami in India and Pakistan, and Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), the chief ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. For such theorists and activists, reconstituting an authentic dār al-islām is now the primary goal of jihad.