ABSTRACT
In the Middle East and the United States this is particularly clear, but it is also apparent throughout much of what we used to call the Third World. In the end, on the Day-of-Judgment, Christ hurtles all non-believers into everlasting hellfire. Religion and geopolitics have always had ties of one sort or another. Russian, Spanish, French, Dutch, British, and American imperialism has also always found some logic in the conversion of natives or in the use of religious differences to explain why others should be subjugated. Beyond the holy sites, it seems to me that every other territorial boundary is secondary in importance to the universal moral imperative of Shari'ah. The problem is that in classical Islamic law Muslims were not expected to live permanently among non-Muslims. It is the use of their founding texts as utopian templates that gives the fundamentalists the particular source of authority upon which their geopolitical claims rest.
