1924 and all that

Admirable though it is that people write passionately in defence of their beliefs, especially in the face of deceptive politicians who can use the might of state machinery to force their propoganda down the throats of many unsuspecting people, I have to take objection to part of this (two-month old) article by Osama Saeed, a member of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) (Saeed also has his own blog).

Saeed writes

It came as news to many Muslims, and probably non-Muslims too, that one of the things "fundamental to our civilisation" is opposition to any recreation of the Islamic caliphate. That is according to the home secretary, Charles Clarke, speaking last month as an honoured guest of the neocon Heritage Foundation in the US.

It follows hard on the heels of similar comments made by both Tony Blair and George Bush. With such luminaries pushing the policy, there must be significance to the words. The caliphate was wiped from the map, the message seems to be, and they want to keep it wiped.

It is true that deceptive politicians, like Dick Cheney, and just plain stupid ones, like Charles Clarke, will use half-truths, misinformation and other weapons in the arsenal of political rhetoric to push home their message and dupe an unsuspecting electorate (afterall, since when was the definition of the caliphate common knowledge?). And for challenging this Saeed deserves credit and my support. But what is false, and perhaps deceptive itself if not borne of ignorance, is the next parapgraph from Saeed's article:

The institution [i.e. the caliphate] they attack is the idea of a united political leadership of the Muslim world, which was destroyed in 1924 after about 1,350 years.

This is a common belief among various Muslim political groups, which include Hizb al-Tahrir (though we should be careful to distinguish each group), whose sole aim is the restoration of the caliphate (Ar. khilafah). But it is an historical fiction. The whole history is a lot more complex. As the historian Khalid Blankinship writes:

The ‘Abbâsids never ruled in Algeria (except briefly in the extreme east of that country), Morroco, and Spain, so that the unity of the state had decisively ended. This actually first happened when the rebelling Berbers of Morocco set up their own khalîfah in 122/740, and it never happened after that year that all the Muslims ever were under one single khalîfah again.

So, the "united political leadership", whose loss Saeed bemoans so much, was lost centuries before 1924! Well over a thousand years before 1924, in fact! And, as Khalid Blankinship points out, there were numerous claimants to the title of khalifah (caliph). From the Ummayads in Spain to the Fatimids in Egypt, and the many petty principalities in between, all declared themselves as the legitimate rulers of Islam. As far west as Nigeria, where Ottoman power was never even smelt, Usman dan Fodio and his sons declared the Sokoto Caliphate. The last Abbasid caliph, himself, was nothing more than a figure head to give the Mamlukes prestige they needed; indeed, this had been the fate of the Abbasid caliphate for many years, first under the Buyids then under the Seljuks. Eventually the Abbasid caliphate was crushed by the invading Mongols. More importantly, there are questions surrounding the legitimacy of the Ottoman claims to being the caliphs and their equally murky -- and, from a Turkish nationalist's point of view, traitorous -- dealings with the British. [1] Further, the official title of caliphate itself had only been discovered by the Ottomans as late as 1774, after their defeat to the Russians at Kuchuk Kainariji.

So my question would be: just which caliphate does Saeed lament the loss of?

The sad fact is that, in my experiences, many Muslims accept this "1924" and One Continuous Caliphate fiction unthinkingly. This shows how ill-thought ideologies, which rely solely on emotionally-charged rhetoric, have penetrated even the critical minds, the bright and the articulate amongst Muslims today. More often that not, the array of political groups who constantly cry over the loss of the Ottoman caliphate, merely wish to recreate Ottoman statism. For why else has the year 1924 reached such a level that it is seen as the point when the last Muslim polity, perhaps Islam itself in the eyes of some, was "destroyed"?

One could also note that rather than restoring the caliphate, there is a more viable option: the monarch of Morocco. Khalid Blankinship again:

The continuity of the use of such titles in the Muslim West also extends down to the present in Morocco, where Muhammad VI is still to this day amîr al-mu’minîn, just like ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb [the second of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs], and that is taken with deadly seriousness in Morocco. Thus, the Moroccans, having their own continuous succession of the title, do not at all now and never before did recognize the Ottoman Turkish sultâns’s claim to the title of khalîfah. Indeed, since the sultâns of Morocco claimed descent from the Prophet (SAAS) and were thus Qurashîs, while the Ottomans were not, it might be held against the Ottomans rather that they did not recognize the Moroccan ruler as khalîfah and submit to him.

But I don't suppose we will see Saeed, and other fans of the Never Ending Caliphate, booking one way tickets to Marrakesh anytime soon.

Notes
[1] Khalid Blankinship mentions questions surrouding the legitimacy of the Ottomans in his article. So does this article by Hamza Alavi entitled "The Ironies of History: Contradictions of The Khilafat Movement". Alavi is interested in the Indian Khilafat movement of the 1920s, but I would recommend the references he cites especially Minault, G. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilisation in India, 1982. Alavi's article also discusses in some detail the intrigues involving the latter Ottoman sultans and the British and the response of Turkish republicans.

Comments

[Osama Saeed]

Thanks for the feedback on that article. My short response would be that any caliphate needs critical mass. I'm no fan of the one established in 1924, as impotent as it was, but it was looked upon by a majority of the ummah as being a focal point. With all due respect to the one in Moroccan leadership, they still aren't.

Any future caliphate, would be no less of a caliphate, if Morocco or anyone else decided to stay out. If you had 99% of the other Islamic nations backing it, one or two on the sidelines poopooing it doens't take away its legitimacy.

[thabet]

assalamu alaykum

I've never questioned legitimacy of having a caliph. That's a fiqh opinion and I'm not a faqih :-) There are questions, however, over the legitimacy of the Ottomans as caliphs (not as a legitimate Islamic form of government), which is also well-grounded in classical Islamic political theory.

My main concern is the abuse of history which sadly occurs at the hands of many proponents of the caliphate. For example, I am highly sceptical as to whether the main focal point of the ummah was on the Ottomans; they happened to be the most powerful Muslim empire of that period -- but Islam and Islamic societies and civilisation didn't die in 1924. The Khilafat Movement aside, I don't recall reading anything about people rushing to defend the Ottoman sultans. Indeed, some Muslims opposed the Ottoman sultan taking the title of khalifah.

[reformist_muslim]

Well said Thabet, I've been meaning to post on this for a while so i've linked your piece on my blog.

Osama, was it seen by the Ummah as a focal point or as an imperialist? As Thabet points out it was only really the Khilafat movement which rushed to defend it. Even then it is interesting to note that those Muslims weren't under Ottoman rule and it probably had as much to do with questions about Muslim identity following the rise of the British rather than loyalty to the Ottomans.

As for the point that it was destroyed after 1350 years, that is historically incorrect. Just looking at it chronologically you had the Ummayyads, Abbasids and Ottomans, not to mention rival claims such as those pointed out by Thabet.

Finally, I think it is worth reflecting on the fact that the Ummayad 'Caliphate' included the massacre at Karbala . In your opinion was Ummayad rule under Yazid legitimate or not? It may seem like a trite question but I think it is an important one.

[Osama Saeed]

I'm not a historian or a scholar - your questions would best be directed to someone more qualified. These points are not related to the thrust of my article - I was not waxing lyrical about the Ottomans or Umayyads. Indeed one of my points was that these historical models are irrelevent. We need to discuss the future.

[Yusuf Smith]

As-Salaamu 'alaikum,

What's of more concern to me with regard to 1924 is not that people give that as a date when the Khilafa was abolished, but that some people insist that the Khilafa be restored as it was - to Istanbul, even under Ottoman leadership - rather than to wherever else the Muslims are able to re-establish it. I have even seen a British Muslim writer claim that the "imperial family" still exists, and the Ummah should find him an office, and refer to the Sultan as "HIM" (His Imperial Majesty), a tradition (to my knowledge at least) entirely borrowed from European monarchy whereby nobles are called "Your Lordship", "Your Highness", etc. Also people don't seem willing to recognise that the wrong actions carried out on the later caliphs' watch (the kidnappings from coastal villages in countries like England, the slave trade and so on) were major contributors to their being brought down. I'm with br. Osama on this; we need to learn from the past rather than just talk of returning to it.

[Yusuf Smith]

Salaams, with regard to the king of Morocco, the fact that they call him amir al-mu'mineen and stand on ceremony with him (and mix this with the your-majesty tradition borrowed from Europe) does not mean he is genuinely respected by the people. I've met many, many Moroccans who have nothing good to say about Hassan II and not much more about his son Mohammed. The last few years in particular have seen secularist politicians grow in power, to the extent that they were able to pass an anti-Shari'a marriage law last year. I have also heard from one brother that some universities there have been making life difficult for women in hijab (such as his sister). One other thing, the Alawites are a relatively recent dynasty - they are certainly post-Ottoman in terms of their rise to power in Morocco.

[George Carty]

The Muslim world has never been politically unified since the 'Abbasid putsch. The kind of monolithic pan-Islamic state advocated by Hizb ut-Tahrir seems ridiculous to me. You only have to look at the map!

Pre-1971 Pakistan failed, because West Pakistan ended up treating East Pakistan like a colony. A pan-Islamic state would have the same problem, as Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia are separated from the great contiguous block of territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Indus and Pamirs.

[Yusuf Smith]

George: in my opinion, the idea of a country of two halves hundreds of miles away could not have been dreamed up by anyone except (a) a western colonial power or (b) someone influenced by them. The British empire was a naval power, and the army was secondary to the Navy (which still is sometimes called the "senior service"). Pakistan, on the other hand, had two parts across hundreds of miles of hostile territory, or at the end of a very lengthy sea voyage at any point during which their vessels could have been intercepted. That it was doomed to failure is not in dispute, I don't think; it would not even have been considered if it had not been for the British (and other western empires such as the Portuguese) which made such a model seem normal.

[Faramir]

Salam

Didn't Syria and Egypt try something similar; a Pan-Arab state? I read that it failed due to economic disparities.

Wassalam

[George Carty]

Yes, it was Nasser's idea. I think he was hoping to combine Syria and Egypt against Israel, much as Saladin did against the Crusaders...

[George Carty]

On the colonial empire issue, I think it was important that both the British Empire and the Portuguese Empire in their own times had close-to-absolute naval supremacy. If they had been seriously challenged at sea (either by native states, or by rival colonial empires), then they may have been more concerned with securing contiguous blocks of territory.

[Fayyaz Khan]

Salam ... Yes, West Pakistan did treat East Pakistan like a colony. But that doesn't mean they weren't compatible. Today, the Sind province of Pakistan (former West Pakistan) is being treated somewhat like a colony by the Punjab province, which constitutes 56% of the Pakistani population and is superior in agriculture and economy to the other provinces. I believe that East and West Pakistan were essentially compatible, but what made one the colony of the other was the fact that West Pakistan was hijacked by politicians who did not represent the masses but represented their own vested interests. These politicians were feudals and capitalists who took on to indulge in corruption like never before. Their stranglehold in Pakistan is evident even today: the members of the National and Provincial Assemblies are mostly the sons or close relatives of the members of these assemblies in the nineteen-fifties.

This talk about pan-Islamism is fruitless if we will continue to be subjects of rulers who do not represent us.