This article was written in response to Mehdi Hassan’s article: The Hand-Choppers of Isis Are Deluded: There Is Nothing Islamic About Their Caliphate, and expands upon the existing response: Islamic State? Caliphate? Islamic Caliphate? Islamic Caliph-State? Is There A Difference?
The funny thing about religion in the West is that every adherent assumes that their opinion is officially representative of it. This wasn’t always the case, as Europe had centuries of official religious views adopted by the church. But the people fought back against the increasing tyranny of central control and came up with freedom of belief. Now in Britain, theoretically at least, any person is free to believe anything they want. I say in theory; just as long Cameron and Gove don’t feel threatened by it, then it’s OK.
Mehdi Hassan, and adherent of the Islamic religion, has expressed his views on is the idea the Muslims want to re-establish a Caliphate in the world again, yet these are not views that all Muslims would share. Fine, I hear you say, they are free to believe what they want. Well, unfortunately for them this just happens to be one of the beliefs that Cameron and Co. are currently feeling very threatened by.
It is therefore important to separate personal viewpoints from what the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم actually establish. It is true that there is no official clergy structure in Islam, and that each Muslim has the right to interpret the texts, but that does not mean that every interpretation is right. Errors can, and frequently are, made. It is not a valid interpretation of the statement “drink from this glass” to mean “don’t eat potatoes on Sunday”, because there is no negation in the sentence, drinking and eating are not the same, there is not mention of time, etc. The rules and actual usage of the language do not support such misinterpretation. It is the same with the Arabic of the Quran; interpretation should be based upon the actual usage of the language at the time of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم.
It is not a fantasy that the Quran directly orders believers to “judge between them with what Allah has sent down.” Nor is it a wild interpretation to state that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم showed how to fulfill this instruction, as he appointed judges to actually judge between them. He asked them what they would judge by, and when they replied with the book of Allah and way of His Prophet, He was satisfied. Although He صلى الله عليه وسلم was a Prophet, appointed by Allah, he still took a pledge of allegiance from the people before he became their political leader. In fact he said “there will be no Prophet after me. There will be Caliphs and they will number many.” They asked: “what then do you order us?” He said: “Fulfill the pledge to them, one after the other and give them their dues.”
Clearly these texts show that the manner of choosing the Caliph/Imam/president (the name is not important) is by choice, with direct election being a permissible style of establishing that. He said “Whosoever gave a pledge to an Imam, giving him the clasp of his hand, and the fruit of his heart shall obey him as long as he can.” Where the “fruit of his heart” implies contentment and satisfaction, not submission to a usurping authority. A great scholar of Islam Abu Hanifah said: “The Khilafah will take place by the agreement and consultation of the believers.” In fact, Abdullah the son of the second Caliph said to Muawiyah, a later Caliph, that “This Khilafah does not have a Heraclius, Caesar or Chosroes where sons inherit the rule from their fathers. Had that been so, I would have been the ruler after my father.”
The texts also establish that the legislature in Islam is not according to lobbying interest groups, party manifesto promises, or personal opinion; rather He said “And do not dispute with the people in authority, unless you see (in their actions) an open disbelief upon which you have a proof from Allah,” indicating that it must be valid interpretations of shariah law, derived from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. If the interpretation contradicts the Quran, which is the “proof from Allah”, then the citizens should work to remove this ruler, to replace him with another.
Supporters of secular liberalism often misquote Imam Shatabi, as Mehdi did. He stated that the result of applying the shariah is that religion, life, reason, progeny and property will be protected. He is not at all saying do away with the Quran and secure these any way you like. Furthermore, the many victims of theft and murder, the fruits of the free-sex lifestyle, those who hold onto values that Mr Cameron and his Muscular liberalism do not favour, and the countless victims of drug and alcohol abuse might not agree that Britain is doing such a good job of protecting them at all.
The eleventh century scholar Ibn Hazm stated “All of the Sunnis, all of al-Murjia, all of Shia, all of Khawarij have agreed on the obligation of having an Imam. And that the Muslim people (ummah) are obliged to appoint an Imam who will apply the rules of Allah and look after their affairs with the rules of the Shariah which the Messenger of Allah brought, except some from the Khawarij.” Thus, the mainstream orthodox view is that a Caliphate is a necessity, which is rather contrary to Mehdi’s statement “There is not a shred of theological, historical or empirical evidence to support the existence of such an entity.” Actually, in 1925 a committee of the senior al-Azhar university scholars expelled a graduate from among their ranks for making very similar claims to Mehdi’s.
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and the Caliphs did appoint tax collectors, did have scribes, did have emissaries and governors; so how it can be claimed that there was no civil service is beyond me. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم had treaties with states outside of His authority and he received ambassadors from foreign states, which again shows that He did in fact have all the components of a state that should be easily recognised.
His state is very different to the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Sham’ (ISIS), which cannot be said to have established its authority yet, and certainly nor with the willing consent of the people. The Muslims of the world are not naive. They saw that this ISIS announcement was just empty words, as they like anyone with an ounce of reason, can see the difference between an active civil war and an established state. Hence, they are not rushing to support it. In fact, many view this as just a planned step towards creating the separate Kurdish state that America policy has been striving for since 1991.
Just like they did not truly support the Islamists of Egypt, Afghanistan, Gaza or Iran, as they too can see the huge difference between the laws of the Quran and what these countries were actually ruling with. The Islamic laws for organising state and society are neither vague nor unknown, but are well documented in the books of jurisprudence. That some violent groups are ignorant of these rules does not mean that they do not exist, but it does mean that more work can be done to raise awareness of such rules among the masses.
Incidentally, American presidents have been murdered by disgruntled citizens, and standing armies are only a relatively recent feature of Western states. Yet no one would claim that they were not states because of these factors.