What is this new phrase that Frist and Bush are throwing around like it's a threat to the world; Caliphate? What is a Caliphate and why are they so afraid of it? I wanted to know, so I did some checking around. I went to "Yale Global Online". This is what they said; "The issue of the caliphate provides a valuable space in which to explore the question of contemporary globalization and religious authority. This is not only because a number of Islamic political movements (Al-Qaida among them) aim to re-establish caliphate institutions, but also because wider debates about the waning influence of the nation-state under globalization may render such models of transnational religious polity more attractive."
So what is a Caliphate now that we know who wants them? From Caliphate.eu, this is the definition; "The Caliphate is a unique political system from the ideology of Islam that bears no resemblance to any of the Muslim Governments today. It is a government built upon a concept of citizenship regardless of ethnicity, gender or creed and is totally opposed to the oppression of any religious or ethnic grouping.
Non-Muslims have an honorable status in the Caliphate. They are referred to as dhimmi (people of contract), which means they are equal citizens with the Muslims and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Unlike in Britain they are not given derogatory names like "ethnic minorities" or "immigrants", that implies they are 2nd class citizens and not really welcome. The rights of non-Muslims are enshrined in statutory Islamic Law (shariah) and cannot be reversed by legal precedent or the whims of any government. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) said: "Whoever harms a dhimmi has harmed me." Of course this is a 'Pro-Caliphate site.
Basically from the middle ground perspective (mine if you permit me to use the term middle-ground), a Caliphate can be a benign thing, or a threatening thing. I know that the Republican's have chosen to make it seem akin to the old "Domino" theory that they hawked from 1944 to 1983. It worked well for them then. Maybe that's why they have so much in common with Henry Kissinger and use his "expertise" is their game plan of late.
You can also look at it from a historical perspective. The Muslims have been a fractured religion, much like Christianity is today. The Christians at one time had the Papacy which held the Catholic States of Europe in it's sway until the rise of Martin Luther. Of course the Byzantine Empire had the Greek Orthodox Church. The Muslims have come close to a unified Muslim society, but have never achieved one. They are unlikely to do so in this day and age, with so many secular movements and access to the internet that so many in Muslim lands have. In fact, the days of theocracies are numbered just because of the globalization that is happening in the world today. I am coming to the opinion that this Muslim surge of theocratic violence is not so much as a resurgence of religion, but rather a death throe of another religion that is ceasing to be the mystical holder of "spiritual" knowledge. This is a result of a more educated and empirical way of looking at the world that is being embraced by many people from many nations that can have most of their questions answered by just firing up a computer and logging on to the net. I would hate to see the world go up in flames as major religions near the end of their sway over humanity, especially a war over religious differences.
The Republicans are using this "Caliphate" supposition to back up their new ads that they have launched. I saw one today. They are using quotes from Bin Laden and others to show how much of a threat that they are to America. They are well put together, and with the new terminology will be sure to scare people into voting for the Republicans. People can be coaxed into fearing things that they don't know about very easily, and Karl Rove knows this. All-in-All a Caliphate is just a word. It would be very unlikely that one will emerge in our lifetime in the Middle East. The Republicans will use this word to scare American's and it probably will work. The Democrats should start educating the voters as fast as they can, before the Republicans have a giant conspiracy theory to sell the public again.
http://liberalpro.blogspot.com
Tim was banned from the site for posting private email from the publisher to him on his blog, and then attacking the publisher and the site in emails and articles. OEN has no responsibility to publish articles from people who attack the site.
Tim's accusations that he was banned for his political positions are untrue. Check his articles. He repetitively wrote about and had published exactly the things he claimed he was banned for doing.
Former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. A regular contributor to OpEdNews, he is the author of Kimchee Kronicles and is currently at work on a new novel.
I'm proud of the intelligent insight on this website. This op-ed also points to the evolving strategy of the Bush administration as it tries to terrify as many Americans as it possibly can in the final weeks before the election.
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Dean Powers (125 articles, 8 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 61 comments)
on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 10:37:21 PM
In the Guardian I gently suggested the Jewish treatment under the Moors in Spain was a positive thing.. indeed was referred to as the ' Golden Age of Spanish Jewry.'
Well what a backlash .' It was Caliphate as usual' came the replies.( The first time I had understood the importance of the term.)
What an excellent and wise article this is. My congratulations and best wishes.
H
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Hamish (45 articles, 0 quicklinks, 68 diaries, 210 comments)
on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 1:36:43 AM
Quite simply, without the Moorish culture in Spain, there would be no western society as we know it. The church had for all intents and purposes outlawed classical learning and science because everything that was needed to be known could be found in the Bible and the priests could tell you what it was that you needed to know. The Muslims preserved classical knowledge such as that of Aristotle and mathematics, and without Christian and Jewish scholars being exposed to the knowledge preserved by Muslims, there very well may have been no age of enlightenment or reason, and thus no philosophy of liberalism and the United States.
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Richard Mathis (130 articles, 108 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 120 comments)
on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 8:15:31 AM
If you want a great source then check out the article in Spanish on la reconquista at Wikipedia. I haven't seen the English counterpart but the Spanish article is outstanding and documents that some contemporary scholars view the spread of Islam in Spain as having been more the result of volitional conversion as opposed to armed conquest. Ironically, armed conquest is how Christendom ran out Muslims from Spain. That "Christian" conquest is called the reconquest but as the Spanish article points out that term is a misnomer in that prior to the Moors in Spain there were the Visigoths, whose Christianity was suspect, at best. The inquistion began in Spain in order to drive out any remaining Muslims, Jews and pluralistic Christians. Ironic barely begins describing our current mangling of history to suit propagandistic purposes. To attempt to quote Voltaire from memory: history does not change but our use of it does.
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Richard Mathis (130 articles, 108 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 120 comments)
on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 12:10:09 PM
It was a very good article but it kinda uses the wrong perspective. GOP uses the scare tactics? Whoever wants to win must use something even scarier. How about the perspective of nuclear bombing of the US? How about showing the 'Caliphate' with Bush as Caliph? How about cruel jokes about Condi in Harem?
Folks, at the level where GOP operates logic, education and truth have no meaning. And to rebuff them the same venomous malice is useful sometimes. But that is if you want to win. Dems do not want to win. They are in the ' position' so to speak and they like it.
Otherwise all the comments are great too.
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Mark Sashine (51 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3454 comments)
on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 3:25:36 PM
Many people spend a lot of time attempting to discredit the current "ideological" debate between rationalism and political Islamism by going back in history and providing brief anecdotes of life under the Moors in Spain. While this is all very interesting I think it is unreasonable to consider the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda ,the Taliban, Hamas,Hezbollah or the Islamic Republic of Iran as the ideological heirs of the Ottoman Empire or a reconquista of the Moorish Empire. A contempoary review of the current ideological impulse in the promotion of the restoration of the caliphate would indeed reveal a much different projection then the one promoted by the article of this piece. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC18Aa01.html The contemporary histories of Afghanistan and Iran have much more significance regarding the political agenda of political Islamism then a historical review of the 8th to the 15th centuries. It proposes a restoration of Sharia law as the legal and political foundations of an Islamic suprastate. It has demonstrated an aggressive anti-nationalist perspective, while projecting its own imperial designs on Southwest Asia. There is no obscuring the social movement that exists. It is not merely a response to US actions, but has its own social base and agenda. The presence of large mass movement against political Islam is also significant in defining what movements are popular. The Kurdish movements for independence in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, the Iranian Resistance, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the Worker Communists of Iraq, the Peoples' Mujahadeen, even Fatah are increasingly confronted by the untiring political machinations of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
So, sorry, if I do not accept this effort at negating the character of the social movement that is the driving force behind political Islamism. The Republicans have proven to be the least help to the nationalist and popular forces in the region. It is time for Americans to look harder at the current history and try a little less to romanticize the existing politics by drawing parallels to ancient models.
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Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments)
on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 11:02:41 AM
Listen Zola, I'm not grateful to the Bush administration for anything. If you have problems with Islam, take it to the UN. I have problems with terrorists, not Islam as a religion. I'm not living in Southwest Asia. This is the United States. Arabs with RPG's are not making me quake with fright. Take your anti-muslum rhetoric back to where you picked it up at. People who live in hate are just as bad as people that live in fear. You seem to live in both.Contrary to the opinion of the right, all muslims arenot radical jihadists. They have families, go to work, and raise their kids. It seems as if everyone is always looking for an enemy that they can wrap their nationalism around. That comment was degrading to muslums and you and everyone that despises an entire religion because of a few radicals should be ashamed of themselves.
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Timothy V. Gatto (348 articles, 177 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 574 comments)
on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 12:49:16 PM
Now that you got that out of your system and you've shown everyone how liberal and tolerant you are in accepting other peoples' oppression, let's get down to the nitty gritty. I am not recommending suspending habeus corpus or keeping the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay open, nor am I endorsing torture or invading Iran. You might want to read the substance of an article before you go writing it off so cavalierly as a Repug diatribe for the campaign. There's a real struggle in the region and I don't propose the US military as a solution. I'd like to see one judge take legal action against the Bushies and indict them like Baltazar Garzon did to Pinochet.
I don't need lectures from someone who doesn't seem to recall what happened to all those progressives who opposed the shah "after the revolution". Someone who doesn't even acknowledge the Kurds at this turning point in their history.
I have no problem living in the US with Arabs and Jews and Catholics and atheists and fundamentalists and skeptics. I like it. Just remember a whole lot of people in the world would like the chance to do all those normal things without a truck bomb blowing up their kids when they go shopping. They don't have the choice.
Yes, I'd say they deserve something better then the 7th Cav. There are economic and diplomatic measures that could have been taken from the start. Incompetence is Bush's middle name.
Just tell me when the new Democratic Congressional majority gets behind a Constitutional amendment to limit Presidential war-making powers, or decides to pay reparations to, not only Iraq, but Vietnam, like they said they would. Do something real and stop wringing your hands, you make me nervous.
Finally, the deal is with political Islamism, not Islam. I know the difference and I am sure that you do as well. I am not a zionist, I support Fatah, not Hamas. I'd appreciate the benefit of the doubt as readily as the one that you give to Muslims. I am not trying to crucify anyone or start a new Crusade. I am trying to get Americans to realize that there are real politics in the region and it really is worth looking deeper into the matter before jumping to conclusions.
Don't get so self-righteous, guy.
Peace, bro.
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Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments)
on Friday, October 27, 2006 at 12:10:02 AM
I can live with that. But people just are not making themselves clear. What we need here is less confrontation and more negotiation. As the world gets more and more crowded, there is more of a chance of violence. Even when there were 1/10th the people that there are now, people managed to fight wars.Too many wars are fought over religion (or dogma, take your pick).I'm tired of finding "enemies". I grew up afraid of the Russians and Chinese, then the Vietnamese, then the Sandanista's, then the Iranians, then Yugoslavia, and now the Muslim fanatics. It never stops. Maybe when we make it stop, it will. We spend 300% more than any nation in the world on our military. How come then, we are always afraid? Because someone is always stirring the pot. In my mind, if the Middle East wants to be a Muslum Empire, that's thier right. They live there. I am tired of choosing sides and fighting the worlds's battles. The Middle East is not the only place with oil.Roosevelt was correct when he said "Walk softly and carry a big stick". With the power our country has, that's what we should be doing, instead of expending all our energy in a worthless, useless area that will be fighting amounst itself for decades.
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Timothy V. Gatto (348 articles, 177 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 574 comments)
on Friday, October 27, 2006 at 4:49:46 AM
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