Not since the Turkish Republic abolished the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 has any Muslim group in control of territory made such a bid.
Even Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have limited their demands to the creation of statelets (emirates), which they hope will eventually coalesce into a caliphate.
This hesitation can be explained, at least partly, by the fact that neither Osama bin Laden nor Mullah Omar (the Taliban’s leader) can fulfill the conditions for being a caliph, one of which is proof of descent from the Prophet Mohammad’s tribe, the Quraysh. The new caliphal claimant, the Islamic State’s emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, can.
As conceived in Islamic political thought, a caliphate, unlike a conventional nation-state, is not subject to fixed borders. Instead, it is focused on defending and expanding the dominion of the Muslim faith through jihad, or armed struggle.
The statement which announced the new caliphate, entitled “This is the Promise of Allah,” was issued on the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and lays out a radical vision for reconfiguring the Arab world. » | Bernard Haykel & Cole Bunzell | Yje Daily Star | Saturday, July 12, 2014
