Nightmare: The House of War

Last night I had a dream that I lived in this large complex of rooms and corridors, and amidst the confusion I had a small apartment. Sometimes I would sit in a chair in the carpeted anteroom outside my apartment, reading a book. And then one time I went wandering the corridors, and I ended up inside this gigantic auditorium.

The auditorium was big, larger than a gymnasium. And there were pews set up inside it. Chairs? No, pews. And people were milling about and gathering, and I realized that a large number of us Christians were gathering here for worship.

I was dressed in a wool poncho, with a wool hat on my head and a wool scarf wrapped around my face. I was sort of wandering around, looking for a place to sit, when suddenly off on the other side of the auditorium I heard voices rising, shrill, as if in panic. Then I heard a loud burst of machine gun fire.

I looked up, and far off, over by the entrance, there were several Arab men in flowing robes and turbans. They were armed with machine guns, and they were threatening everyone, motioning them back, trying to herd everyone together. Now and then someone would break and run, and then one of these Muslims would mow them down with a rat-a-tat-tat from his machine gun.

The auditorium was now filled with terror. I didn't know what to do. Should I flee? But then they would gun me down. Should I hide beneath a pew? But surely they would find me. I stood there, frozen in indecision. Then again a machine gun fired, and as I stood there, it was like Neo in The Matrix: I could see the bullets flying by me in slow motion, as if in bullet time.

Now one of the Muslim men was coming down the aisle, carrying his machine gun, and he sighted me, perhaps because of my distinctive wool clothing. He motioned for me to follow him, and then he led me over to a table by the side of the auditorium, where he ordered me to sit down.

This Muslim man then handed me a paperback book. I looked at its stark black and white cover. On the front was a title, in Arabic, but printed in the Roman alphabet: Darm al-Harb. I looked at the back cover of the book; in a small box was the following text:

Explodes the infidel promises of Romans, the Gospels, etc., in favor of the glorious revelation delivered unto the Prophet, blessed be his name.

Oh, I thought, so this dude must think I'm convert material. No way! But I heard more bursts of machine gun fire around the auditorium: if I tried to flee, surely they would open fire on me.

I prayed to God for deliverance, and suddenly, like Philip in the Book of Acts, I was taken up and was no more to be found in that place. I had a parting vision of the Muslim man coming back to the table, in consternation, nothing there but the book and my wool scarf.

Then I was set down, at twilight, on the roadway out in front of my grandparents' old farmhouse, up in central Wisconsin. I felt guilty that I had been delivered. Should I have stayed, perhaps faced martyrdom? I felt like a filthy coward. But I had been delivered. Now what?

Postscript: When I got up this morning, I checked on the Internet, and sure enough, I found the following: "Dar al-Harb (Arabic: 'house of war') is a term used in many Islamic countries to refer to those areas outside Muslim rule. In some conservative traditions of Islam the world is divided into two components: dar al-Islam, the 'house of submission' or the 'house of God', and dar al-Harb, the 'house of war': the home of the infidels or unbelievers (Arabic: kufr).... The goal of some aggressive Islamist organizations, such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, is to expand the borders of dar al-Islam at the expense of dar al-Harb, and to create a universal Islamic community. According to their philosophy, this is the meaning of the term jihad."

Dar al-Harb, the House of War, the realm of the infidels who are to be conquered: No doubt I'd seen that term before, somewhere in the blogosphere. And now I'm having nightmares about it.