دار الإسلام
Dār al-Islām
Topic
Classical legal terms dividing the world into the “house of Islam” and the “house of war”, which are not in the Quran or hadith.
What it means
Jurists of the eighth and ninth centuries, among them the Hanafi al-Shaybani, used “house of Islam” for lands under Muslim law and “house of war” for those at war with them. A third category, the “house of treaty” (dār al-ṣulḥ), was added for lands at peace with Muslim rulers. The terms arose from the political division of the age.
Often misunderstood as
That Islam holds the non-Muslim world to be in a permanent state of war.
What the sources say
The terms are legal constructs and not revelation, and many scholars today regard them as outdated. Muslims live as citizens in many countries and are told to keep their covenants (5:1). Contemporary scholars have offered other terms, such as “house of covenant” or “house of testimony”.