World leaders, superpowers and religious minorities are trembling at the thought of an emerging Khilafah in the Middle East, writes Reverend Frank Julian Gelli.
Who is afraid of a rising Khilafah in the Middle East? Lots. Muslims like Shia, Kurds, most Sufis, sundry Arab secularist, and Arab Christians of course. All fearing their lives, women, sacred buildings and properties being treated as war loot.
Western leaders too are shaking in their boots – good!
A nemesis is unfolding. A sort of retributive justice, maybe of divine origins. A paying back for the 2003 illegal, unjustified aggression on Iraq. Engineered by the two scoundrels, Bush and Blair. But the roots of evil reach far back. To WWI, the catastrophic, suicidal, mad all-European conflict so many fools are enthusiastically celebrating in Britain.
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)
ISIS is the Jihadist organisation that fights for a Caliphate in the Levant – actually al-Sham, a term covering Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and other swathes of Arab land. The last Caliph, the Ottoman Sultan, ruled over them till 1917. The victorious Allies artificially invented the current Middle East borders – Iraq being at the time three different Ottoman provinces or “wilayat”.
France and Britain arbitrarily created the countries they carved out from their conquests (the Kurds later were ferociously bombed into submission by the British – chief artificer Bomber Harries, eventually of Dresden reputation.).
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Britain was also responsible for the creation of Israel, the “Jewish home” in Palestine, which came out of the Balfour Declaration infamy. The Allies shared the booty. Now ISIS and other Islamists are hitting back – a resurgent Khilafah in the making. Do you dig the nemesis?
Retribution, yes. It may well take the form of martyred Iraq breaking up into three parts, as my friend Dr Tim Furnish suggests. A Kurdish US-friendly north, a Sunni Caliphate in the middle and a Shia state in the south.
Well, they were originally three wilayat, weren’t they?
Khilafah
“The Caliphate is a valid Islamic concept”, a mufti of Bosnia once declared. Historically, he was right. Politically too, perhaps. Nonetheless there were at times two or three Khilafah reigning in different areas of the Muslim world. True, many Caliphs were incompetent or worse but that cannot invalidate the idea, any more than Caligula or Nero could negate the Roman Empire.
And if it is OK for former, pseudo-Christian nations to unite in something like the EU, why is it wrong for Muslim nations to merge into a Caliphate? What is sauce for the goose?
The EU was established consensually, while ISIS wants to force the Caliphate violently on unwilling folks. Alas, Europe too after WWII was violently taken over by the apostles of democracy and human rights. Call it “liberation” but it was by force of arms and national borders were adjusted accordingly.
No one ever took a poll in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and other countries asking the people whether they wanted to be “liberated”.
The Axis had plenty of supporters. So the Jihadi guys, I suppose, could claim that they represent the true will, the soul of the Muslim Ummah, the community of believers. If only they weren’t so fond of slaughtering their prisoners.
The West
Yet, those most truly terrified of ISIS is the West and its degenerate representatives. Wholly natural. There a priori dogmas demand a strict or effective emasculation of religion. It’s real exclusion from public life, the economy, the market, the law and all the things that matter.
With the Christian churches they have succeeded pretty well. Sunday morning religion or “thought for the day” threaten no one. Islam is the harder nut to crack. That religion also has its happy, well-remunerated quislings, eager to pick up the crumbs of parliamentary power and ministerial posts, jobs in the media and the like.
It is crusty chaps like the Jihadis who refuse to play the democratic, establishment game. They frighten to death Cameron, Hollande, Merkel, Obumble, all that depressing gang. Indeed, they should.
An extraordinary anonymous piece posted on Facebook illustrates the gap between Zeitgeist thinking and at least some Islamists. The writer lists a number of putative Shariah legal notions, like jihad, polygamy, child marriages, hudud punishments and so on. He then points out how a Muslim who was to engage in such practices is ipso facto made a criminal in the West.
And he is right. Jihad, often considered like the fifth pillar of Islam, is a duty for a pious believer. But now Prime Minister David Cameron is prepared to pursue British Jihadis who are heading back home from the Levant.
Pity they did not fight for a US approved and dollar-powered jihad. Osama Bin Laden and his ilk were kosher, sorry, halal heroes when they combated the evil Soviets in Afghanistan. Hypocrisy? Yes, as well as old, cynical realpolitik.
Polygamy and child marriages are definitely Western untouchables. To many, as inconceivable and as loathsome as slavery. To be fair, there are Muslim jurists who hold diverse opinions on them. The anonymous fellow claims that amongst the Prophet’s companions polygamy was the rule, rather than the exception. True or not, the Qur’an has only one or at most two verses in which plural marriage is mentioned and it is more by way of permission than anything else.
But Shariah law is more than the Qur’an and “Salafists” prioritise various hadiths from the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad and customs as normative. Still, important not to tar all Muslims over with the same brush. There is a range of scholarly opinions amongst the ulama. The Caliphate boys are only one strand.
Horror of the rising Khilafah engenders odd bedfellows. Iran, formerly part of an “axis of evil”, appears now, wonder of all wonders, as a potential ally in stopping ISIS & co. Of course, that will only embitter and inflame the sectarian strife running through the Middle East and the vast world of Islam: part of a plan?
Will the Caliphate be reborn from its ashes, like the phoenix?
You can follow Frank on Twitter @eugenevonsavoy
