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Georgetown University panel shows how Islamic State’s caliphate has justification in Islamic history and appeal for modern Muslims

Nov 11, 2014 4:34 pm By Robert Spencer

Emad Shahin2Georgetown University panel shows how Islamic State’s caliphate has justification in Islamic history and appeal for modern Muslims
by Andrew Harrod

The caliphate “is not something bad . . . for the majority of Muslims,” concluded visiting professor Emad Shahin during a recent briefing titled “Boko Haram, ISIS, and the Caliphate Today” at Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). A small conference room housed around twenty people, as panelists pledged to “help explain” the allegedly “confusing phenomena” of Nigeria’s Boko Haram and the Islamic State (ISIS)’s “overlapping language of political Islam” and the “caliphate and . . . sharia.” The panel, however, merely reinforced that ISIS’s brutal “caliphate” has ample justification in Islamic history and appeal among modern Muslims.

According to Shahin, a “very idealized historical legacy” of past Muslim caliphates, such as the Abbasids (c. 750-1519 AD), dominates Muslim thinking. It was then that Islam’s “expansion and extension” occurred, he noted, alluding to a brutal “legacy” far less appealing to non-Muslims. The Turkish Republic’s 1924 abolition of the last caliphate—a “symbolic unity of Muslims”—was a “devastating shock.”

Since then, the concept of the caliphate, something Shahin pointed out has been “embedded all along” in Islamic political programs, became the “raison d’être” of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim intellectuals advocating a Muslim confederacy alongside a caliphate envisioned “something like the Vatican and the European Union.” Shahin concluded that the caliphate, as exemplified by Tunisia’s Ennahda and Turkey’s AKP Islamist parties, signifies “good governance” for many Muslims.

Shadi Hamid of the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution—and a former student of Shahin’s at Georgetown—continued this analysis, stating that there is “something powerful about the idea” of a caliphate for the “vast majority of Muslims, even those who are quite secular.” Growing up in Pennsylvania, he heard Muslims ask, “How did we go from there to here?” while contemplating Islamic society’s fall from its supposedly glorious past to its all too dismal present. Consequently, the Islamic State’s caliphate declaration was a “pretty great marketing move,” even though, he claimed, the “vast majority of Muslims disagree profoundly with” the group.

Hamid described the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the “deeply illiberal” yet “mainstream Islamist movements committed to the democratic process” which, in the wake of Egypt’s popular uprising in 2013, provided a source of recruitment for groups like the Islamic State. Recruits who are initially “vaguely sympathetic” to ISIS and join for economic reasons, “over time . . . start to take on the ideology.” It helps that ISIS is “perhaps the richest extremist group in modern history,” having captured oil reserves and received “a lot of private funding from Gulf countries,” often while governments turned a “blind eye.”

Hamid explained that ISIS supporters see Muhammad’s “prophetic model” as a guide. It is a popular assumption that Muslims are “just like anyone else” in respecting humane values, but, he stressed, “Islam is a construct” requiring interpretation. He conceded that “very problematic and uncomfortable” doctrines exist in the orthodox “pre-modern Islamic tradition” desired by Salafists and other Islamists. Sharia law, for example, legitimates slavery, an abhorrence that ISIS practices today.

Shahin attempted to counteract ISIS’s legitimacy by referencing “benchmarks” from the “rightly guided” caliphate that existed for thirty years after Muhammad’s death. Under this “prophetic model of the caliphate,” a caliphate proclamation was an orderly process requiring territorial control and consensus among Muslim leaders. Yet Shahin referenced no such development amidst Islam’s past successive caliphates, regimes no less turbulent than other historical empires, beginning with the strife-torn “prophetic model” itself. Caliphates have risen and fallen according to the violent tides of Islamic history, a pattern ISIS clearly seeks to emulate.

Hamid considered “governance and democracy” central concerns to any anti-ISIS strategy in a Middle East marked by widespread “collapse of the regional order.” ISIS, which he described as “primarily not a terrorist organization,” had exceeded the “very low bar” of regional governance “in recent decades.” Hamid criticized an American-supported, regionally dominate “Saudi counter-revolutionary axis” and instead advocated a “get serious” approach to an insurgent overthrow of Syria’s Bashar Assad, however unlikely to combat ISIS or regional instability. Meanwhile, in yet another erroneous analysis of jihad, Shahin cited the “root causes” argument that seeks to blame Western colonialism, poverty, and oppression rather than acknowledge its roots in classical Islam.

Tamara Sonn, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam at Georgetown, complained of ISIS and Boko Haram using “similar language” concerning the caliphate, claiming that the result has been “a great deal of confusion of what actually Islam stands for.” Given that Sonn’s chair is named after the former ruling emir of Qatar, one of ISIS’s primary funders, it is little wonder that such “confusion” reigns.

Sonn’s protestations notwithstanding, her fellow panelists unwittingly exposed the longstanding caliphate visions anchored in Islamic canons to which ISIS has pledged allegiance. The panel also revealed that there is an abundance of support for ISIS from Muslims worldwide, demonstrating that, for many Muslims, there is nothing confusing about ISIS. The analysis of ISIS’s governance, meanwhile, indicated that this brutal movement cannot simply be written off as crazy and raised doubts about hastily considered Middle East democracy promotion. Ultimately, the panelists offered nothing to blunt Islam’s often dangerous political edge.

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project; follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

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Filed Under: academia, caliphate, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. pongidae rex says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 4:54 pm

    The extent to which the West has allowed Islamist countries to use petrodollars to compromise our most respected academic institutions into little more than centers of Islamist indoctrination is truely breathtaking. The extent to which supposedly ethical academics have allowed themselves to be recruited into little more than apologists and shills for Islamist movements worldwide is similarly breathtaking. The West, despite its Trillion dollar military machine, is in a state of socio-political collapse. The mechanisms leading up to this seem to evade any serious analysis.

    • Clare Spark says

      Nov 11, 2014 at 5:51 pm

      There is no mystery about the origins of multiculturalism. It was invented by German Romantics in reaction to French style materialism in the late 18th century. I quoted from the sources here: http://clarespark.com/2010/07/20/german-romantic-predecessors-to-multiculturalism/. Included is one influential American popularizer, writing to fellow progressives in 1916.

  2. Emily Winters says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 6:00 pm

    Who are they kidding? The world apparently.

  3. Bamaguje says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 6:08 pm

    Unusually brutally frank for an American university.

  4. William August says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 6:18 pm

    That is a very nice history however there are really not enough English adjectives to describe the egregious nature of these monstrous actions aimed at any and all who even look askance at these Muslim Extremists groups by any other name. There is no way to soften the catastrophic blow to civilization that these absolute barbarians are perpetrating upon innocents wherever these locusts-like creatures happen to wonder. Their completely unwarranted attacks upon Christians, Jews, women and child, or those who in anyway might offend the sensibilities of these unabashed killers usually end up with beheadings, sex slavery, rape, and assundry other human atrocities too numerous to list here. Any civilized person of the 21st century can only look aghast at such absolute wanton criminality that only serves to indict anyone who calls themselves a member of the Muslim religion whether deserved or otherwise by mere religious association sadly with this cult-like ISIS group composed of the most abased of human thugs arguably ever seen in the annals of world history!!

    • Jacksonl03 says

      Nov 11, 2014 at 8:04 pm

      “Any civilized person of the 21st century can only look aghast at such absolute wanton criminality that only serves to indict anyone who calls themselves a member of the Muslim religion whether deserved or otherwise by mere religious association sadly with this cult-like ISIS group composed of the most abased of human thugs arguably ever seen in the annals of world history!!”

      Very well put William. I’ve not seen the point made so clearly or so eloquently.

  5. Gary Fouse says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 6:52 pm

    Confirmation for the argument that the West needs to stop Islamic immigration.

  6. Darren says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    I emailed CAIR and asked them about this hadith, here is another link from yet another site. I figure they will know being muslims, ironically the CAIR website has Pamella Geller on their islamophobe profile page. Mr Robert Spencer I’m disapointed I was sure your name was on there, then again the page said more coming soon so there is still hope for you. I wish you the best, hopefully you will be included on the CAIR islamophobe profile page soon enough. This is yet another site talking about the homo erotic adventures of the prophet mo (may shit be upon him) I can’t proclaim to call myself an expert of islam like many of you, I know enough to not like what I hear though, can anyone care to comment on this site? How legit and mainstream is this hadith? I enjoy eviscerating stealth jihadists on social media sites in debate using facts, and i want to use to cite this as well, I just want to be sure it’s correct. There is no reason to give false testimony against this death cult, since citing facts is all I need to do to shut up most stealth jihadists.

    https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/hadith-prophet-muhammad-kissed-the-penis-of-small-boys/comment-page-1/

    • pumbar says

      Nov 11, 2014 at 11:27 pm

      It’s from Bukhari;

      Sahih al Bukhari #1183, Talkhis al-Habir, Ibn Hajar, #60-61 – Narrated Ibn Abbas: “I saw the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) putting Husein’s (son of Ali) legs apart and kissing his (little) penis.”

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        Nov 12, 2014 at 2:18 am

        There was a regular poster here, some years ago, one Isabellathecrusader, who dubbed Islam “Mo’s Worship-The-Penis Club”.

        Not a bad description, really.

        Islam removes all moral constraint from the most destructive and demonic aspects of the male id, and *sacralises* them.

        • pumbar says

          Nov 12, 2014 at 4:16 am

          I remember her DDA (I’ve been lurking here for over a decade). I’m not sure a lot of this is part of the male Id; I know conquest and aggression are but a lot these incidents speak more of a neurotic or psychotic individual than something generic to human males.

  7. mortimer says

    Nov 11, 2014 at 11:18 pm

    ISIS is respected by most Muslims. Professor Emad Shahin is right.

    60% of Muslims want a caliphate with strict Sharia law. That is what ISIS provides. Most Muslims see ISIS has the right program.

  8. Beagle says

    Nov 12, 2014 at 12:39 am

    This post and the post on the Wahhabi cleric a few above this one are two of the more interesting posts I’ve read in some time.

    Is Shahin paving the way for western analysts to begin the search for “moderate IS” as I pessimistically predicted here some months ago? Or is this a sign even the Saudi-funded Georgetown Islamic studies racket is beginning to allow some truth to be told? Either this is a disastrous and predictable result of the academy grappling with the horrors and popularity of IS or, surprisingly, a good sign.

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