What the heck is an Islamic Caliphate anyway?
Read more about the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in eastern Syria here.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Caliphate is the political-religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion in the centuries following the death (632 CE) of the Prophet Muhammad. Ruled by a caliph (Arabic khalīfah, 'successor'), who held temporal and sometimes a degree of spiritual authority, the empire of the caliphate grew rapidly through conquest during its first two centuries to include most of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Spain. Dynastic struggles later brought about the caliphate’s decline, and it ceased to exist as a functioning political institution with the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258.
The concept of the caliphate took on new significance in the 18th century as an instrument of statecraft in the declining Ottoman Empire. Facing the erosion of their military and political power and territorial losses inflicted in a series of wars with European rivals, the Ottoman sultans, who had occasionally styled themselves as caliphs since the 14th century, began to stress their claim to leadership of the Islamic community. This served both as means of retaining some degree of influence over Muslim populations in formerly Ottoman lands and as means of bolstering Ottoman legitimacy within the empire. The caliphate was abolished in 1924, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish Republic.
In the 20th century the reestablishment of the caliphate, although occasionally invoked by Islamists as a symbol of global Islamic unity, was of no practical interest for mainstream Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It did, however, figure prominently in the rhetoric of violent extremist groups such as al-Qaeda. In June 2014 an insurgent group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and the Islamic State [IS]), which had taken control of areas of eastern Syria and western Iraq, declared the establishment of a caliphate with the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph. Outside extremist circles, the group’s claim was widely rejected."
As Hugh Kennedy describes in Caliphate: The History of An Idea, "You can choose what you want to take from this tradition, but the choice is yours. If you want a caliphate which is aggressive and fiercely controlling of the Muslim population, you can find precedents in the vast historical records. If you want a caliphate which is generous and open to different ideas and customs while, of course, remaining true to its vision of God’s will and purpose, then you can find that in the historical tradition too. The past bears many different messages. There are those who see caliphate as a vehicle for imposing their particular and often very narrow view of Islam on the umma (i.e. the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion); there are others who see caliphate as a justification for aiming at world conquest; but there are equally those who see caliphate as simply providing a framework in which Muslims can strive to live a godly life and make up their own minds about the best way to this."
Unfortunately, the aggressive, fiercely controlling type is what ISIL embraced in 2014. Below is a portion of the document – their "Contract of the City" – this new de facto government released to civilians in Nineveh, a province Iraq's northeast that contains the major city Mosul. The document was signed by the "Media Office for Ninawa Province":
All Muslims will be treated well, unless they are allied with oppressors or help criminals.
Money taken from the government is now public. Whoever steals or loots faces amputations. Anyone
who threatens or blackmails will face severe punishment.
All Muslims are encouraged to perform their prayers with the group.
Drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes are banned.
Rival political or armed groups are not tolerated.
Police and military officers can repent, but anyone who insists upon apostasy faces death.
Sharia law is implemented <total and unqualified submission to the will of Allah (God)>.
Graves and shrines are not allowed, and will be destroyed.
Women are told that stability is at home and they should not go outside unless necessary. They should be
covered, in full Islamic dress.
Be happy to live in an Islamic land.
Evidence:
"Caliphate." Encyclopedia Britannica. 30 Mar 2018
Adam Taylor. "The Rules In ISIS’ New State: Amputations For Stealing and Women To Stay Indoors." The Atlantic. 12 June 2014
Hugh Kennedy. "Caliphate: The History of An Idea." Basic Books. 2016
"Sharia." Encyclopedia Britannica. 13 Apr 2018