Hugh Fitzgerald

When such contemporary would-be “reformers within Islam” as Canadian Irshad Manji are given attention, the admiring interviewer does not bother to raise the awkward question – just how does one “reform” a religion when all of its canonical texts, Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, are immutable.

In the modern history of Islam, the heyday of supposed “reformers” was the period 1900-1930. This corresponded to the revelation, to the most advanced people in the Muslim world, of the weakness of Islamic societies, and the understanding that their political and economic and intellectual and social failures were attributable to the tenets of Islam itself, and the attitudes they engendered. But there is no such recognition today. Islam is cushioned from its failures by the accident of geology that provides oil wealth to some, by the solicitousness with which Infidel countries hasten to supply foreign aid, including military aid, to others, and by the attitude of extreme deference toward Muslim sensibilities that, if continued, will have catastrophic consequences for the Infidels themselves, and for those who, within Islam, would like to create the conditions where Muslims themselves will have to do something about Islam, whether to interpret away its literalism, or to constrain its practice in the manner of Atatürk.

In Islam, no Infidel state, whatever its dimensions, can be permitted, for that would violate the essence of Islam. Islam, said Mohammad, is “to dominate and not to be dominated.” No land once part of dar al-Islam can ever fall under Infidel control again. The land on which Israel now sits, and other lands, including the Balkans, much of south-central Europe, much of Russia, most of India, and of course Spain, were once all part of dar al-Islam, and must be returned to it. But Israel, an Infidel sovereign state run by the despised Jews, and sitting smack in the middle of dar al-Islam, is particularly disturbing.

If the Islamic basis for Arab opposition to Israel were understood, then much that confuses commentators would become clear. It is irrelevant what Israel’s borders are; if it exists, it remains an affront, an outrage, a catastrophe, the greatest injustice in the history of the world (as Arab spokesmen routinely say).

The very phrase a “final peace settlement” rings hollow to anyone familiar with the tenets of Islam. For there can never be a “final peace settlement” between Moslems and non-Moslems. The model for treaties is the agreement made between Muhammad and the Meccans in 628 A.D., the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. It was supposed to be a “truce” treaty that would last 10 years. It lasted scarcely 18 months, when Muhammad, feeling that his forces had grown sufficiently, breached the agreement on a pretext, and attacked the Meccans. As Majid Khaddui notes in War and Peace in Islam, this Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya became the model, and the basis, for all future “treaties” with Infidel peoples and polities.

Public discussions about Arab-Israeli negotiations and assorted peace-processes never devote attention to the long and grim history of agreements and treaties between Israel and the Arab states. The Arabs were not interested in any agreements with that Infidel state for, despite the Israeli victory in 1949, they thought they could, within a reasonable period, go in for the kill. And so there were no "peace treaties" but, at Arab insistence, only agreements that did not recognize any final borders, just armistice lines. Despite the fact that those agreements included a cessation of hostile acts, more than 19,000 separate acts of terrorism against Israel took place between 1949 and 1956, from Egyptian-held territory alone. The Sinai Campaign of 1956 was launched to end that terrorism; Israel won the entire Sinai. In the mid-1950s, the heyday of John Foster Dulles, Islam was seen not as a threat to the West, but only a much-touted “bulwark” against Communism. At the same time, it was believed that certain Arab Muslim states had to be bribed to keep from falling into the Communist camp. Both beliefs, though contradictory, led to American pressure on Israel to withdraw, for some flimsy guarantees, from the Sinai.

When he was President of Egypt, Nasser broke every commitment he made to President Eisenhower about freedom of shipping in the Straits of Tiran, about allowing Israeli ships to pass through the Suez Canal, about terrorist attacks launched from Egypt. That the Israelis continue to be surprised that the agreements they make with Muslim Arabs are eventually breached by the Arab side, testifies to their own remarkable insouciance, in failing to investigate what the law of war and peace in Islam expresses in such crystalline fashion.

And today Israel prepares to make "peace" based on some “road map, ” in order, it is hoped, to arrive at something called a “two-state solution.” This time there is a more plausible, milder-mannered "Palestinian" leader than the late Arafat. Yet the doctrines of Islam remain, and those doctrines will continue to fashion the deepest impulses and beliefs of Muslims. Whatever Arafat or Abbas or anyone else claims or feigns, and whatever any war-weary Israeli hopes, or whatever any useful Western tools or fools Muslims may exploit believe, no real and durable peace can be made with any Infidel sovereign state. It is the duty of Muslims, mandated by Islam and the example of Muhammad, to renew conflict, whatever agreement has been signed, as soon as the Muslim side is stronger. This means that deterrence, and only deterrence, can keep the peace. The doctrine of necessity, or darura – i.e., the fact of an Infidel enemy possessing, or seeming to possess, overwhelming power, is the only thing that Arab leaders, or at least those reluctant to make war, can use as an excuse not to do so. This is why, if one were genuinely interested in preserving peace between Israel and the Arabs, one would be looking at every possible way to strengthen the perception of Israel as impregnable – and to do nothing which, to Muslims looking at a map, might make them gain a different impression.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost. This is excerpted from a much longer article Islam for Infidels that can be read on www.Jihadwatch.org.