A Caliphate is likely to arise out of Syria’s ashes

Article by M.A Niazi , Executive editor of the Nation 4:44 PM September 3, 2012syriaupdateLeave a commentGo to comments One problem that Syria poses is that though the Syrian National Council, based in Turkey, provides an alternative, the Syrian people themselves might have different ideas. The slogan “Ash-shab yarid al-khilafat al-jadid” (“the people want the new Caliphate”) has been raised by protesters, giving rise to the spectre of a caliphate being established in Syria. It must be understood that this is not a revival of the Ottoman Caliphate. It is actually an expression of a desire to have the Islamic system, symbolised and encapsulated in the ruling system. The Caliph will be expected to implement the other systems, such as the economic, the judicial, the social and the educational, all of which will be derived from Islam. Such a caliphate has been said to be the goal of the militants behind 9/11 by US President George Bush. From the perspective of the militants, it would be a perfectly orthodox goal, for the Islamic ruling system has been the Caliphate, something for which the textual evidences abound. Syria has not only been in the Ottoman Caliphate and before that the Abbasid, but was even the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate. Such a Caliphate in the heart of the Middle East would challenge not just the other Arab regimes, but all Muslim regimes. In short, all those at the OIC Summit! The situation becomes more complex when it is realised that the movement for a Caliphate has adherents in Turkey in the form of the Hizbut Tahrir. Though a global party which does not recognise national boundaries, it was founded by a Palestinian, Palestine being part of Syria till the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in World War I, and thus has been operating in Syria now for a long time. The Hizb has not only made waves as far as Central Asia, but also in Pakistan where Brigadier Ali Khan was only recently sentenced, along with four majors, for attempting to overthrow the government and the military leadership and introduce a Caliphate in Pakistan. It should also be noted that, while banned in Syria, it recently won over-turnings of bans placed in Turkey and Lebanon, which sandwich it to north and south respectively. It should also be noted that the Hizb remains banned in Iraq to the east. The American dominance there, reflected by its recent occupation, is also threatened by the fall of the Assad regime.