The United States of Islam

For a brief window of time after the fall of communism, it really seemed that the world was at the ‘end of history‘. That phrase was coined by Francis Fukuyama, and also was the title of the book in which the American philosopher explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall signified the final victory of liberal democracy. The sole remaining ideology would go on to ‘conquer’ the rest of the world.

Fukuyama’s (essentially Hegelian) view of a dialectic progression towards political perfection has at least one thing wrong with it: to paraphrase Elbert Hubbart’s famous quote on life itself, history is “just one damned thing after another”. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001 were the start of another chapter of history, one that some perceive as a struggle for global dominance between the west and the east (not a communist, but an Islamic east this time).

That’s not how the governments of west (or east) describe the current ‘War on Terror‘, but it’s clear that extremists on both sides believe the current nastiness to be a ‘clash of civilisations’ (to quote another book title, this one by Samuel Huntingdon) – or wish that it were so, and help the conflict conflagrate by provoking the ‘other’ side. This might explain why this map seems to pop up on websites critical of Islam, even though it seems to originate from an Islamic organisation.

The map purports to show a plan for Islamic world dominance. Entitled ‘The Map of the United States of Islam’ – The Dream of 20th Century Muslims Will Be Real In 21st Century.’ That dream, for some Muslims, is the political unity of all Muslims in a religious state called the Caliphate, with the Caliph combining supreme spiritual and temporal powers, as it was in the early days of Islam. The map shows the countries and areas to be included in such a Caliphate in green, mainly, and surrounded by a black line. The list mentions these countries:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Chechnya, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

The list is problematic, as it contains countries mainly non-Islamic, such as Uganda or Armenia, or containing significantly non-Islamic territories, such as Sudan or Nigeria. The Caliphate’s territory on the map is larger than the countries listed above, which again raises some issues:

• it includes the eastern part of China, not only the mainly Islamic area of Xinjiang (East Turkestan), but also Tibet, which is predominantly Buddhist.
• Some areas in central Russia are added, indeed inhabited by Tatars and other traditionally Islamic peoples – but also by many others.
• India, which has a large Muslim population of over 100 million, nevertheless is mainly Hindu.

Strangely, some majority Muslim countries are left out of the Caliphate, notably:
• Albania
• Malaysia
• Indonesia
• Bangladesh

The map specifies that the capital of the Caliphate would be ‘Saudi Arabia’, its head of state the ‘Khalifa’ (Caliph), the currency the Islamic dinar and the law the Quran and the ‘hadees’ (hadith). “The result”, it says, would be “all resources available in Islamic states:”
• strongest army in the world;
• strongest currency in the world;
• largest country in the world;
• atomic & super power country;
• Europe & US can not seize assets in future of Muslim Ummah;
• the heart of globe in Muslim hand;
• half population of world in Islamic state.

The smaller world map in the bottom right hand corner paints picture of a world where the issues raised above no longer apply: after 100 years, the whole worldis coloured green, the colour of Islam, including the by then aptly named Arctic island of Greenland. It is somewhat ironic that the map name and some of the attributes of the Islamic superstate clearly refer to the ‘Great Satan’ itself, the United States – an enemy and an example…

The map refers to an organisation called the World Islamic Mission, which is a real organisation, although its website at first glance doesn’t include this map (which was taken here from the anti-Islamic site savecivilization.org).

The map was suggested to me by several readers, including Ilya Vinarsky, James Cambias and Bruno De Cordier, who remarks: “It’s unclear whether this map is a joke or the dream of some muslims.”

With permission from Frank Jacobs from Strange Maps. 

Jacobs loves maps, but finds most atlases too predictable. He collects and comments on all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006, first on WordPress and now for Big Think.  His map “US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs” has been viewed more than 587,000 times. An anthology of maps from this blog was published by Penguin in 2009 and can be purchased from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.