Ehsan
Part 10
The Intellectual Foundations of ISIS
2. The Self-Proclaimed Caliphate
One of ISIS’s major intellectual foundations, which sets this group apart from many other jihadi movements, is its claim to have built an “Islamic caliphate” and its presentation of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the caliph of the world’s Muslims.
On June 29, 2014, ISIS officially announced the founding of its “caliphate” and asked all Muslims in the world to pledge allegiance to it. On the surface, this step was tied to Muslims’ longstanding aspiration to revive the system of the caliphate. In practice, though, it came with a completely distorted reading of the concept of Islamic rule, a reading that became a tool for justifying widespread violence and declaring opponents disbelievers.
In ISIS’s view, the caliphate isn’t a political system resting on the ummah’s shura and consensus; it’s a rule won through military conquest and the seizure of territory. They believe that anyone who brings an area under his control and applies Sharia there according to his own violent interpretation counts as a legitimate caliph, and obedience to him is obligatory for all Muslims.
Al-Baghdadi made this very claim in his famous speech at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul. He called himself Amir al-Mu’minin and the caliph of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH), and asked all jihadi groups to pledge allegiance to him. But this claim differs deeply, in several respects, from the foundations of the Islamic caliphate, and none of the caliphate’s jurisprudential conditions and principles were observed in it.
The first and most basic criticism is the matter of shura and bay’ah. In the political thought of Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah, a caliphate can’t gain legitimacy without shura and the pledge of allegiance of ahl al-hall wal-aqd. Military domination in a limited area can never establish a legitimate caliphate over the entire Islamic ummah. ISIS presented al-Baghdadi as caliph at a time when no Islamic body and no scholarly assembly had recognized this caliphate. His pledge of allegiance was made only by ISIS members and former soldiers of the Iraqi army, men who were left jobless after the army was dissolved and later joined ISIS. This limited pledge, lacking the general representation of Muslims, can never guarantee the legitimacy of a global caliphate.
The second criticism is that al-Baghdadi didn’t meet the conditions set for a caliph. The jurists of Ahl al-Sunnah have set a series of conditions for the caliph, such as justice, knowledge, competence, courage and Qurayshi lineage.
On al-Baghdadi’s scholarly ability, Sheikh Abu Abdullah Muhammad Mansur, who was himself one of al-Baghdadi’s teachers and led a jihadi group in Iraq, writes in his book: “I bear witness that he had a weak memory, was bad-tempered and ignorant, and followed his own desires.” He adds that no scholarly book of al-Baghdadi’s has been published, and that he left behind no scholarly writing or work in his whole life.
The third criticism is the lack of consensus of the ummah on al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. No Islamic state and no official religious institution recognized al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. The Council of Scholars of al-Azhar in Egypt, the Fiqh Academy of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, other jihadi groups and reliable religious institutions declared this caliphate void and called the claim misplaced and baseless. The Moroccan scholar Sheikh Muhammad al-Fizazi asks about the people’s refusal to accept ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliph and to pledge allegiance to him: “Who appointed al-Baghdadi as caliph over more than a billion Muslims?”
Citing the saying of Hazrat Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA), “Whoever pledges allegiance to a man without consulting the Muslims, obeying him is not required,” he stresses that a caliphate must come about through the consensus of Islamic states and the scholars of Islam, not through force and military conquest.
It’s worth noting that ISIS, in criticizing other Islamic groups, calls them apostates and disbelievers for not building a caliphate or not pledging allegiance to a caliph, yet to justify its own caliphate it cites the jurisprudential theory of “taghallub” (military domination). Some jurists have put this theory forward under particular conditions, but domination and taghallub in one area has never been accepted as taghallub over the entire Islamic world and as a general principle for the caliphate. For this reason, ISIS’s caliphate claim faces serious problems with the jurisprudential foundations of Ahl al-Sunnah, and it has also become a tool for declaring opponents disbelievers and for justifying its own violent conduct.
Some publications, pointing to the presence of former Baath Party military men in the structure of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate, indicate that many people who had previously served in a secular regime held the high posts of this caliphate. This shows that ISIS’s caliphate was drawn largely from the political structures of puppet regimes, not from a system built on Sharia.
