The Islamic justification for Bin Laden’s early jihad becomes much murkier when one investigates how even the earliest Muslim scholars had interpreted the details of the Prophet’s order. The ‘Peninsula of the Arabs’ may seem an obvious geographical unit on maps today, but its medieval definition was narrower and its Shariah status contested. Bukhari notes that it was the area of the twin shrine cities of Mecca and Medina, extending south to the mountains of Yemen and east across the craggy ridges of the Hejaz to the central Arabian oases of Yamama (near present-day Riyadh). Hence Malik had
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