The ISIS Islamic fighters have declared a Caliphate. It stretches (ostensibly) from Syria across to Iraq. It has proclaimed a Caliph--the ruler of the Caliphate--one Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The last Caliphate ended just on one hundred years ago when the Ottoman Empire fell. What is the significance of this development? In the immediate, very little. But it does serve to underscore a number of realities. Firstly, a definition of the Caliphate is required. According to Wikipedia:
A caliphate (in Arabic: خلافة khilāfa, meaning "succession") is an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader known as a caliph – i.e. "successor" – to Muhammad. The succession of Muslim empires that have existed in the Muslim world are usually described as "caliphates". Conceptually, a caliphate represents a sovereign polity (state) of the entire Muslim faithful (the Ummah, i.e. a sovereign nation state) ruled by a single caliph under the Constitution of Medina and Islamic law (sharia)In Islamic doctrine and teaching, the caliphate is a sovereign state representing the entire Islamic population in the world. In principle, the caliphate is a global government. When it comes to its full expression, the Caliphate will be a global empire, into which all the nations and peoples of the world will have been subsumed, by conquest or surrender.
In historical terms, no such caliphate has existed; instead there have been assertions of a caliphate, but like the most recent manifestation in Iraq, they have represented little more than pretentious claims. A caliphate in theory can command the loyalty and devotion of all Muslims everywhere, since it is a state representing the entire Muslim faithful, being ruled over by the successor to Muhammad. Thus, not to submit and be loyal would represent rebellion against Muhammad and Allah.
It is obvious already that claims and assertions consistent with the ideology of the Caliphate are being made.
In a statement distributed online on Sunday – the newly-minted Islamic State declared its chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as "the caliph" and "leader for Muslims everywhere". [Emphasis, ours.]Thus, the loyalty, obedience, and submission of Islamic devotees in New Zealand are being demanded by Mr Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Non-compliance means apostasy. Therefore, non-compliance means a death sentence--something the new Caliphate lost no time in demonstrating.
The first geo-political focus of the new Caliphate is upon Muslims. This, as expected, is evident in the initial proclamations of the new Caliph:
Now calling itself the Islamic State, the group has called on all other related Sunni factions, including al-Qaeda, to pledge their allegiance to the new state, which it says stretches from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq. . . . Its announcement that it has restored the Caliphate “is likely the most significant development in international jihadism since 9/11,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre who studies jihadist groups. “The impact of this announcement will be global as al-Qaeda affiliates and independent jihadist groups must now definitively choose to support and join the Islamic State or to oppose it.”The ruthless executions of Shia Muslims found in Iraq testify to the consequences of non-compliance. In principle, once the Islamic heretics have been subjugated, everyone else is next.
The group’s statement – translated from Arabic into English, French, Russian and German – made it clear it would perceive any group that failed to pledge allegiance an enemy of Islam,” Mr Lister said.
Released on the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, the statement establishing a caliphate, a system of rule that ended nearly 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, reads: “Here the flag of the Islamic State … rises and flutters. Its shade covers land from Aleppo [Syria] and Diyala [Iraq]. “The infidels are disgraced. The Sunnis are masters and are esteemed. The people of heresy are humiliated. The Sharia penalties are implemented, all of them. “The front lines are defended, crosses and graves demolished. Governors and judges have been appointed, a tax has been enforced and courts will resolve disputes and complaints.”The outcome will be more divisions and more factional fighting amongst Islamic peoples. Apparently the Caliphate has set its sights on eviscerating Al Qaeda and taking over its global jihadist causes. But, as has always been the case, the violence and bloodshed will be intra-Islamic far more than against us, the infidels.
We anticipate that the consensus reaction in the West will be to cast aspersions upon the sanity of those involved. How else can one "explain" such grandiose claims, such a divergence from reality? But by its own lights, ISIS is completely rational, albeit terribly deluded.
ISIS members and leaders believe Islamic eschatology. They believe that they and the world are entering the last days, and the last battle. As one commentator has described it:
This explains why hundreds of Islamic believers from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have left their families and host countries to fight in this Last Great Battle. We have not seen anything similar since the early twentieth century when idealists and ideologues of socialism in the West volunteered to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Then , as now, a globalist ideology was the undergirding philosophical perspective, coupled with a belief in world-wide revolution by the faithful."If you think all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight Assad, you're mistaken," said a Sunni Muslim jihadi who uses the name Abu Omar and fights in one of the many anti-Assad Islamist brigades in Aleppo. "They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised - it is the Grand Battle," he told Reuters, using a word which can also be translated as slaughter.
On the other side, many Shi'ites from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are drawn to the war because they believe it paves the way for the return of Imam Mahdi - a descendent of the Prophet who vanished 1,000 years ago and who will re-emerge at a time of war to establish global Islamic rule before the end of the world. According to Shi'ite tradition, an early sign of his return came with the 1979 Iranian revolution, which set up an Islamic state to provide fighters for an army led by the Mahdi to wage war in Syria after sweeping through the Middle East. "This Islamic Revolution, based on the narratives that we have received from the prophet and imams, is the prelude to the appearance of the Mahdi," Iranian cleric and parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian said last year.
Islam is just one more revolutionary ideology, with a violent bloody eschatology to usher in the End Times. The protagonists of the Caliphate are no more mad than the Spanish socialists fighting Franco, whilst calling on socialist brothers everywhere to unite with them in the armed cause.
Their pretensions, however, are deluded. Their fulminating conspiracies against the enthroned Son of God will come to nothing, according to what was promulgated long ago by God Himself (Psalm 2:1-12).
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