Caliphate - A Would-be Disaster

Occasionally the western media will bring up the word “Caliphate” and suggest that the War on Terror is ultimately necessary to prevent the Islamic world from establishing a global, fundamentalist, Islamic state. The notion of a Caliphate as understood by westerners generally (although I suspect many don’t understand it at all) is an Islamic state where Shari’a, or Islamic Law, would be the sole source of political philosophy.

Directly translated from Arabic, a Caliphate simply implies “succession,” or the line of authority from the prophet Mohamed. According to Islamic tradition, Islam will one day cover the whole earth and the whole earth will be one big Islamic utopia. This utopia would be a Caliphate. Of course, the definition of the word utopia, in this sense, remains open to interpretation.

The Caliphate is a philosophical term which implies either a state, or the office of Mohamed’s successor. As frequently understood in either western or Islamic society, it is a legitimate Middle Eastern Islamic state which began soon after the death of the prophet Mohamed by dynastic descent, with the ascension of his father-in-law, Abu-Bakr, to the position of supreme religious authority, and continued until the early 1920s when the center of power was the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the Caliphate was dissolved by Ataturk and the government of Turkey reorganized into a secular state. Since that time, the Caliphate has technically ceased to exist.

Many Muslims in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere in the world, believe in and look forward to the resurgence of the Caliphate, when everyone will convert to Islam and the world will be cloaked with peace and prosperity. Depending on which Muslims you listen to, this new Caliphate may be a utopia for any and all who live within its bounds, or it may be a police state where non-Muslims are considered second class citizens. Moderate Muslims believe the Caliphate will be all inclusive and will not regard distinctions of any kind whether religious, racial, sexual, economic, etc. Supposedly, there will be special rights to protect non-Muslims from Muslim discrimination and persecution.

More hard-line Muslims are of the opinion that under the Caliphate, non-Muslims would be required to pay taxes which Muslims are not required to pay, would be prohibited from certain economic rights, such as business operation and ownership, land ownership, etc., and may be required to convert to Islam or face some sort of corporeal consequence.

Of course, the conflict between the two variances lies in the facts. Never has any Muslim government been astonishingly successful at any of the ideals mentioned. Equality of all under the law, freedom from oppression and persecution, the ability to say what’s on one’s mind without the fear of some sort of institutionalized retribution, all these things are idealized in the Caliphate but no Islamic state comes to mind where these things are even insinuated as being standard.

Obviously there are many examples of floundering Islamic governments but two good examples of Islamic influence in government are Turkey and Iran. Turkey, although officially a democratic state, faces constant resurgences of Islamic militancy and broadly supported efforts to over throw the secular government to replace it with an Islamic one. Turkey, as described by the Human Rights Watch, is a facade of western leaning politicians resting on a foundation of corruption, religious persecution, police sanctioned violence against minorities, constant and recurring armed conflict between government forces and militantly extremist minority groups, and ultimately Islamic extremism struggling to exert its influence in a troubled secular state.

The second example, Iran, is an avowedly Islamic state where there is no end to the contradiction between the above described utopia and the reality. Unlawful imprisonment and torture of political opposition, imprisonment and execution of men caught in or accused of homosexual behavior, general oppression of women, institutionalized religious persecution of any religious minority, even minority Muslim groups, prohibition of education to ethnic and religious minorities, etc. all occur on a consistent and massive scale inside Iran. The bigotry is thoroughly and unequivocally endorsed by the current extremist leaders of Iran.

The moderate Muslims outside the sphere of the Middle East who perpetually endeavor to reassure the west that Islam in general and specifically Muslim dominance in world affairs would be supremely beneficial to the world community would do well to cease their efforts to indoctrinate the west on the virtues of the Caliphate, and focus their energies instead on convincing those in their own part of the world on the virtues of basic human rights and the value of common human existence.

I am no Islamic scholar and perhaps Islamic law would indeed be the ultimate form of global governance, but the facts speak for themselves. Why would any westerner begin to assume such a farce when the whole of the Muslim world cannot even get a grip on how appropriately to govern itself?