What really is the Caliphate (Khilafah)? Separating Fact From Myth

Introduction

For decades Iraq was under a Western backed Baathist dictatorship. Since the invasion in 2003 an army of occupation has asserted that the US will decide the future of Iraq: the form of government which has been chosen for that future is in accordance with the political philosophy of the people of the US. Others may argue and spin that millions have voted in an election. However, if one applies the electoral standard that the United States used towards the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon, or that have been used in Northern Ireland whilst paramilitary organisations operate, the only conclusion could be that the occupier will set the political parameters of the election, and hence the government. Hence there can be no doubt that the government of Iraq is tainted as a proxy government and not one that reflects the political vision of the people.

But the political philosophy of the people of Iraq, their historical experience and current aspirations cannot be disregarded. Iraq will sadly remain in turmoil, like her neighbours, until its people are allowed to truly take their destiny in their own hands - and Islam is the natural ideology to define this destiny because Islam is the root political philosophy of the people of Iraq and has been so for thirteen centuries. For those who have not sensed the overwhelming desire in the Arab and Muslim world for an Islamic system there is good empirical evidence for this in the public domain. In the 2004 Zogby poll those surveyed in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE said the clergy should play a greater role in their political systems and as many as 47% of Egyptians supported a greater role for the clergy [1].

Were Islam to gain ascendancy, what would the future Iraq look like? Our proposal for an alternative form of government, one that the people of Iraq must be allowed to choose for themselves, has a historical precedent of success. This is the Khilafah ruling system – known more commonly in the West as the Caliphate. It was formally abolished after thirteen hundred years of rule in 1924, following the British occupation of modern day Turkey and the installation by coup of a secular movement into the heart of Turkish politics. The result was that Turkey, where the capital of the Khilafah latterly had resided, along with the whole of the Middle East suffered lasting disintegration and instability with attendant ethnic and sectarian violence. The brooding discontent caused by unnatural and despotic governments, including some that are formally considered democratic, are the subject of daily report.

The Caliphate is associated in the minds of the world's one billion Muslims with positive things. It laid the model principles for governance under the Prophet and his first four successors. It is associated with justice, a flourishing culture and civilisation, technological advancement and societal harmony. It is the hope and aspiration of the majority and the political mission of Islamic organisations in the decades since its demise - the overwhelming majority of which were political and non-violent in the methodology.

Despite this, it has become an increasingly maligned term since the onset of Bush and Blair's war on terror. Bush said, when referring to people that share the ideology of Al Qaeda "They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call caliphate, where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology." [2] Tony Blair has also weighed in, when after the 7/7 attacks on London he said that Britain must confront - “an evil ideology”, defining this as “their barbaric ideas.” These included: “the establishment of effectively Taliban States and Shari'ah law in the Arab world en route to one Caliphate of all Muslim nations.”[3]

Thanks to blanket statements such as these, in the United States the Caliphate has been the topic of much ill-informed debate. In the UK, a speech by Conservative leader, David Cameron, has gone even further by stating that "those who seek a sharia state…are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP." [4] The statement was not exclusive to the idea, proposed by no one, that Britain should be the site of the Islamic state. Rather, it is consistent with Blair's judgement that to call for such a state is beyond the pale of political discourse in the modern world.

So the question remains, how can there be such a gap between the neo-conservative and liberal imperialist views expressed in Britain and the United States of America, and the views of one billion Muslims who inherently see the Caliphate as a means of goodness and stability? Some may answer this by arguing that an independent government in the Islamic world - not beholden to corporate interests, political influence, personal incentives and a financial dependency - would end the economic and political exploitation of that part of the world. Hence, those who favour the continued colonisation of the Muslim world would malign such a Caliphate and oppose its re-establishment. Whilst this may be true, it is not the whole picture. There is a profound ignorance about the type of government that a Caliphate would be and numerous misconceptions about those things that are discussed. Our aim is to inform by a brief overview of this distinct system of government and to redress some of the misinformation. The description is not exhaustive, but an introduction.

Khilafah

Iraq's multi-ethnic population comprising many sects lived generally in peace under the Khilafah ruling system for thirteen hundred years until the British invasion of 1917. From that time until now, Iraq has suffered the results of colonial and neo-colonial rule and interference. The return of the Khilafah is the only viable alternative for remoulding Iraq's now fragmented peoples back into a coherent society. The details of this system of ruling that follow are taken from “The Ruling System of Islam” [5] by Taqiuddin an- Nabhani but are consistent with other famous works written on the subject of Islamic governance, for example by Al Mawardi. [6]

An overview of the Khilafah system of ruling

The Khilafah is a political system from the ideology of Islam that enshrines: the rule of law, representative government, accountability by the people through an independent judiciary and the principle of representative consultation. It is government built upon a concept of citizenship regardless of ethnicity, gender or creed and is totally opposed to the oppression of any religious or ethnic grouping. The highest executive post is the post of Khalifah who appoints ministers without portfolio to assist in ruling and governors (Walis) for the various regions. The legislative sources are the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. While differences of interpretation of these sources can occur, as with any legislative sources, the particular interpretation adopted by the Khalifah must be justified before an independent judiciary, which has the power to remove him from his post should he flagrantly deviate from the boundaries of credible legal interpretation (ijtihad) or the terms of his contract with the citizens of the state. The Khalifah is appointed by the people and hereditary rule by supposed divine right is forbidden. Consultation is one of the pillars of ruling and is best served by the establishment of representative councils composed of men and women from all religions and ethnic groupings within the state.

While this system differs from Western liberal democracy in a number of ways, there are some surface similarities. It must however be realised that though Muslims in Iraq [and elsewhere] sometimes use the term democracy it is the Islamic concept of the rule of law, the right of the people to appoint their own leader and open accountable government that they aspire to. This has hitherto been denied them by the Western backed quisling regimes that have taken away all their political rights and whipped their backs.

As an example the darker side of Egypt's façade of democracy is commented upon by Mona Makram- Ebeid, a prominent Egyptian politician and human-rights activist "They [the government] always manage to get a hold of Islamist leaders and put them in jail, then release them when the elections are over." Egypt's President Mubarak has won a majority in each of the four elections held since his appointment twenty five years ago - what helped him was that nobody dared to stand against him and if they did have the audacity to stand, as Ayman Nour did in the most recent elections, then they were jailed on trumped up charges.

The Middle East's experience of democracy to date is of a deceptive formality of elections, which serve only to rubber stamp dictatorial rule. Failure in the West, to realise this has led to frustration in the Muslim world, but perhaps explains why the Muslims of Iraq appear ungrateful to the West for removing Saddam Hussain and offering in his place Western style liberal secular democracy.

The rule of law

The arbitrary rule by the whim of self-appointed presidents and kings that has plagued Iraq and the whole Middle East is anathema to the principle of the rule of law within Islam's political system. The application of the law is in the hands of an independent judiciary that has a special section called the 'court of unjust acts' whose task is to investigate impropriety on the part of members of the executive against the people. As for individual wrongdoing - the Khalifah is subject to the same laws and penalties as the rest of the people because he is not considered a sovereign over his subjects. The same cannot be said for the Queen of England - she is, constitutionally speaking, the law itself making it a logical impossibility for her to be subject and sovereign at the same time. Former US President Bill Clinton's tenure should remind everyone of the events that demonstrate how some men can be above the law in Western government - with or without a monarchy. We prefer that all the people, including the Khalifah, be subject to the law.

Representative government

The finer application of the concept of representation in government is a matter of considerable debate in Western political philosophy. The first political use of the concept is commonly referred back to Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century as referring to: “one (legal) person acting on behalf of a group of people, as in the first and still the most influential discussion in political theory.” [7] The conceptual basis of the Khalifah is also considered one of representation, though the logic by which the concept arises is different to the path taken by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes' representative derives authority from an assumed human state of nature to become an absolute sovereign who predates law. The Khalifah is considered a representative of the people in the sense of implementing pre-existing societal rules that were addressed to the society as a collective whole but require embodiment in an authority tasked with implementation of these rules on behalf of the society. The Khalifah is appointed to his position according to the will of the people. The process is called 'baya' [literally voluntary pledge] in Arabic and can assume many styles including voting by ticking a card, text messaging or email. The consultative (shura) assembly is the arm of state that will oversee the process whenever the position of Khalifah becomes vacant.

Accountable open government

Linked closely to the concept that the Khalifah is a representative of the people in adopting and implementing divine rules over the society is the concept of accountability. It is a right of the people to question or criticise the decisions of the ruler because he is a servant of the people ruling on their behalf. The widely quoted saying of the first Khalif Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq with which he began his rule encapsulates his perception of ruling as securing the rights of all people without distinction: “by Allah, he that is weakest among you shall be in my sight the strongest, until I have vindicated for him his rights; but him that is strongest will I treat as the weakest, until he complies.” The Khilafah system does not permit corporate interests to hijack government at the expense of the interests of the people that it is meant to serve.

Government looking after people's affairs

A fundamental role of government, the Khilafah, in Islam is to look after citizen's affairs, and solve their problems from an Islamic basis. Policy is care, and economic policy is the care for economic affairs based upon the study of the needs of individuals. There are many aspects of this 'caring role' that Nabhani argued should be enshrined in a constitution. For example:

1 Every individual must have all his basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) guaranteed completely by the State.
2 Education at a primary and secondary level should be provided by the State for boys and girls, men and women and for all citizens.
3 The State should provide free health care for all, not prevent the use of private medical services.
4 The State is responsible for looking after the security of all of its citizens, against any domestic or foreign threat.
5 The State should use public property on behalf of any of the citizens' interests. Resources such as oil, gas and other vital natural resources cannot be privatised due to the legal injunction from the saying of the Prophet: 'People are partners in three: water, green pastures and fire' (here 'fire' is understood to cover all fuel types).

The myths surrounding the Islamic Khilafah

The war on terror has transcended hunting out those responsible for the September 11th attacks on innocent civilians in America to a call for the elimination of all forms of political ruling that do not conform to the measure of secular liberal democracy. There is only one source for such divergence from the accepted dogma: Islam. To that end, many objections to the idea of Muslims ruling by a system from their own political philosophy have been raised in the West.

Islamic rule is not theocratic

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spelt out his fears of a clerical theocracy in Iraq: “how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen.” [8] A clerical priesthood running around giving “divine” injunctions in all aspects of human activity is not a feature of the Khilafah. The Khilafah is a human state run by fallible and accountable human beings who implement laws, derived from what Muslims believe to be divine legislative sources, over societal interactions. Areas covered include; taxation, company and contract law, inheritance, marriage and divorce, how to treat prisoners of war, the rights of citizens, the duties of government and its structure and the penal code. The Khalifah himself is a citizen appointed to execute the role of leader by the other citizens and not a leader chosen by God. Unlike the priestly authority of Europe's Dark Ages, Islam does not restrict knowledge to the religious realm. The Khilafah never tried to insist that people believe the world to be flat, and would never ban, as President Bush has done, stem-cell research, with its revolutionary potential for human healing.

We cannot help but wonder, however, about America's own theocratic aspirations if people like Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin say publicly that he sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan. Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group, Boykin said Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan." [9]

Women in the Islamic state

Under the Khilafah system women had the franchise and participated in the political process from the very beginning of Islamic rule. Not only were women able to vote, but they were able to own property - the wife of the prophet Muhammed, Khadija, was in fact a wealthy businesswoman. The right of women to own property is a relatively recent concept in the West. Education is open to men and women and surely this is a necessity rather than a luxury. Women are, however, limited from holding the ruling posts of Khalifah, Wazir or Wali. The limitation is not explained in terms of superiority or inferiority. In this respect the system does limit the political posts a woman can hold - both in practice and principle. That this limitation seems to so preoccupy those who attack the Islamic system is laughable. Other posts of seniority such as the judges, military, managerial, running universities, teaching in schools and civil service are open to women and men upon merit without distinction. Liberal secular democracies may theoretically offer equal access to these areas but in practice the results are so poor, they do not give any license to offer lectures on the woman's role in society. It is understood that in this respect our concept is at variance with the doctrine of freedom as an absolute concept. It may be some comfort to reflect, however, that reality itself is at variance with freedom as an absolute concept. Whilst in principle the President of the US can be a woman there has never been a woman President. Even if one could emerge soon it is despite the fact that in a statistical sense there should be a fifty per cent chance at any given time.

The restrictions upon freedom that do exist in any society where people are free from the terror and insecurity that would result due to their neighbour's unrestrained enjoyment of their freedom, do not pose for us the paradoxical conundrum that they pose for societies that have abstracted the concept in absolute utopian terms.

Furthermore, everyone in the Khilafah - man or woman, Muslim or non Muslim, adult or child - is always afforded justice and rights, whereas responsibilities can differ in specific circumstances, depending on the nature of the role. Ruling is considered a responsibility and the absolute right of no man or woman. Finally, we do believe in the right of women to walk the streets without the fear of rape, murder and abduction. We do believe in the right of women to receive equal pay for doing the same work as their male colleagues. We do believe in the right of women to gain employment and receive promotion, based upon merit, without having to show off their bodies and endure sexual innuendo and worse. We do believe that women should not be considered the property of any and every man who wishes to compare her to, and give her a score based upon, the images in promotional advertising and men's magazines. We do believe that men and women gain honour by their work, and that women have a special privilege in being the mothers of every nation and for that they deserve special regard.

The Islamic state will heal ethnic and sectarian tensions

It is claimed that Islamic rule cannot work because it does not gather competing ethnicities and sects and place them into a shared platform or parliament from which to rule. There are fears of sectarianism in Iraq based upon a Sunni-Shia divide and it is claimed that Iraqis need a secular government to safeguard them against a struggle for domination by one group over the other. This assumption is the most dangerous assumption in the case of Iraq. It is exactly the competing petty interests of different groupings that will sow the seeds of civil strife for years, if not decades, to come. What is needed in Iraq is a unifying force, and a potent one at that.

Western style democracy is doomed to failure in Iraq because of the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have been greatly exacerbated by Saddam Hussein's repressive policies and now subsequently by the policy of the occupying forces. These tensions are too great for a system based upon majority rule when people adhere so strongly to sectarian or racial agendas. In this respect, minorities, who have experienced the harshest repression, have very great fears.

That being said, the majority of the people of Iraq believe in Islam, and Islam alone has proven the only force capable of unifying Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen's and others. It was Kurdish fighters under the command of the Kurdish leader, Saladin, who played the pivotal role in aiding Arabs in Palestine and Syria against the European armies of the crusades. Those Arabs were Muslims, Christians and Jews and the banner they fought under was the banner of the Islamic Khilafah whose justice they believed in regardless of religious affiliation. T. W. Arnold wrote about inter-ethnic relations and the treatment of non- Muslims who lived under the Ottoman Khilafah: "though the Greeks were numerically superior to the Turks in all the European provinces of the empire, the religious toleration thus granted them, and the protection of life and property they enjoyed, soon reconciled them to prefer the domination of the Sultan to that of any Christian power." [10]

Not only is the Khilafah a state for all ethnicities, but also its leadership is not restricted to Arab, Kurd, Turk or other. In fact, the last period of Islamic rule was the Ottoman period, during which Turks ruled Arabs, and there was no disparity in the concept of Turks ruling Arabs until the ill-fated Western concept of the nation state was brought into the imagination of Arabs, Turks and others during the nineteenth century. The objective of ethnic propaganda was to sow seeds of destruction into the Islamic state that was then an obstacle to further colonisation by the European powers in three continents.

Sadly, the destructive notion of racial superiority combined with political weakness during the last decades of the Ottoman Khilafah were effective in precipitating the final demise of the once powerful Islamic state. The people of the Middle East are still suffering from the effects of this pernicious racialism and no Western style governments in the region have proved a match to contain it. If the people of Iraq were to choose the Khilafah form of government it could readily heal the wounds of ethnic hurt because it is blind to the racial distinctions of ethnicity and it could deal with sectarian differences because it is by nature tolerant to faith of whichever brand - even to faith in no faith. The bond that binds the people of the Khilafah is the bond of citizenship - the other option is years of turmoil and strife akin to those bloody years of strife in Northern Ireland or Lebanon.

Sadly, one cannot help but suspect that all this is well known to those who prosecuted the war on Iraq. Certainly, as we see now that Iraq's people are becoming distracted into fighting each other, politically and militarily, it is all the more easy for US diplomats at the American embassy to get on with their shady business of manipulating the growing tragedy which is Iraq for the sake of other interests.

The Khilafah system dates back to the 7th century so how could it work today?

There are four reasons for an argument such as this. First, is the incorrect analogy between things, such as computers, which become outdated by better models, and thoughts that are simply judged to be correct or not regardless of their age. Nothing is detracted from the idea of democracy by observing that it can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, while computers are considered ancient, and obsolete, within the space of a few years. From this point of view it is irrelevant how old the ruling system is, and if modernity were a criterion by itself then communism, which came after both Islam and secular liberal democracy, would have been worthy of universal acceptance.

Second, the seventh century is not considered a very enlightened era in European history. It was a time known as the dark ages. Nevertheless, it came after the far more advanced Roman civilisation fell, ushering in a period of regression that lasted centuries. The dark ages of Europe were in fact running parallel to a golden age for other nations - most notably the adherents of Islam. The association of the seventh century with dark and backward times is, therefore, a purely regional matter.

Third, it is argued that laws may be good for the time they are made but that the reality changes with time making them irrelevant. Islam's legislation dealt with human relationships between people, which are largely fixed in nature. What does change are the tangible means of attaining their interests. When two parties enter into a contract, the legislation of the seventh century is not made redundant by the internet of the twenty first century because the legislation is not tied to the specific instance of the relationship in question. Where uncertainty does arrive, then Islam has established the principle of juristic reasoning (ijtihad) that enables the jurist to use his mind to derive new law based upon analogy and linkage of new realities such as human cloning for example, where existent concepts such as lineage and marriage are considered.

Fourth, the values and social mores of Western society are in a state of constant flux and what seems appropriate now was scandalous fifty years ago. Social mores and values within Islamic society are taken from the same source as the political philosophy of the Khilafah. This means that there is no disparity between morality and law to necessitate changing the law - both are tied to the same anchor.

Islam forbids Ruling by Police State

There is a huge assumption, given that the dictatorships in the Muslim world that seek to portray themselves as Islamic are authoritarian police states, that an Islamic state would be the same. This is utterly false. It is neither borne out in history nor in Islamic thought. Nabhani argued in his book that the Khilafah would be violating Islamic principles if the governing authority became a 'force', citing that the example of regimes in Arab and Islamic countries exemplified how this would lead to harm and poor management of society, He added that the "concepts and criteria [of society] would become the concepts and criteria of coercion, oppression and dominance, and not the concepts and criteria of looking after people's affairs. Ruling would then turn into an oppressive rule that knows nothing but terror, dominance, oppression, coercion and blood shedding." He cites the clear Islamic prohibitions on torture, abusive behaviour and spying amongst other things - as applied to the police, armed forces and security services as well as the general population - as a protection from such forceful rule. These, he argued should be constitutionally enshrined, as well as the Islamic injunction that every individual is innocent until proven guilty.

This latter point would have to be manifest not only by the state, but by independent agencies within the state such as the media, unlike in the West where the media regularly report cases inferring guilt (though not openly stating it) before a verdict.
Similarly, he explained the clear Islamic injunctions to account the ruling authority in this same context, which maintains a healthy public debate and scrutiny about the executive.

The real solution for Iraq

The only solution capable of bringing peace and prosperity to Iraq is government by a representative of its people, on behalf of its people, that is built upon the beliefs and political philosophy of its people. The only serious historical precedent is government based upon the Khilafah model that had ruled Iraq for thirteen centuries. President Bush did speak of another alternative for Iraq when he said that he was "bringing back a 5,000-year-old civilisation" [11] - it seems that he would prefer to resurrect the bones of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar than consider the possibility of the people of Iraq opting for Islam.

References

[1] Zogby International-Sadat Chair Poll University of Maryland, 2004
[2] George W Bush, “President Bush Delivers Remarks on the War on Terror “ Washington Post, September 5th 2006 Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090500656.html
[3] Tony Blair, Downing Street Press Conference, July 16th 2005
[4] David Cameron Leader of Conservative Party, January 29th 2007 Accessed from http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2001267,00.html
[5] Taqi Uddin Nabhani, The Ruling System of Islam
[6] Al Mawardi, Al Ahkam as Sultaniyyah
[7] Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes's Leviathan Chapter 16, 1651
[8] Donald Rumsfeld, CBC News, 25th April 2003 Accessed from http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,943173,00.html
[9] Quoted by CNN, “Rumsfeld defends general who commented on war and Satan” CNN Online, October 17th 2003 Accessed from http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/16/rumsfeld.boykin.ap/
[10] T W Arnold, “The Preaching of Islam: A history of the propogation of the Muslim Faith” 1904 Adam Publishing, Printed January 2002
[11] George W Bush, June 18th 2004 Accessed from http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/06/18/2003175502