ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the gradual redefinition and adaptation of spatial dualism in Islam by clerical and political elites that have occurred alongside the evolution of the modern post-colonial state, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. It draws on the territorial classification system produced by the Sunni and Shia schools of Islamic jurisprudence and the concept of “buffer spaces” developed by contemporary Iranian scholars of geopolitics to identify variations in the definition of boundaries within and between Muslim and non-Muslim populations as manifest in physical territory. These are applied in order to generate a theoretical framework for modern geopolitical analysis that is compatible with Islamic interpretations of world politics.
