The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1917-1918 meant the downfall of the world’s only Muslim superpower. It also meant the collapse of Islam’s caliphate. Muhammad’s armies had been decisively crushed, and the body of the Muslim juggernaut was left headless on the battlefield. What would happen now?
No longer a Turkish Caliphate
Ḥusayn bin ‘Alī was a 37th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, coming from the Banū Hāshim clan (an offshoot of the Quraysh tribe). Though born in Constantinople, his family was from Mecca, and he grew up in Arabia. On November 1 1908 he was appointed Sharif and Emir of Mecca by the Ottoman/Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Less than eight years later, on June 10 1916 he proclaimed himself leader of the Great Arab Revolt and began a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Four months after that, in October 1916 his own son Abdullah declared his father Ḥusayn to be “sovereign of the Arab nation. Then all those present arose and proclaimed him ‘Malik al-Arab’, King of the Arabs.” According to US State Department sources, a formal ceremony recognizing Emir Ḥusayn as “king of the Hedjaz” then occurred in Mecca on November 6 1916. Those American sources added a note that King Ḥusayn was hoping to re-establish the Caliphate: that “a request for the recognition of an Arab caliphate was also advanced; and it is not to be doubted that, even in these early years of the war, Hussein was inspired by dreams of future imperial rank and caliphal dignity.”
Emir/King Ḥusayn (also spelled ‘Hussein’) was not running blind: he was relying on Britain’s secret diplomatic promise going back to November 1 1914. This had been communicated to him from then Consul-General of Egypt Herbert Lord Kitchener. Britain promised to “guarantee the independence, rights and privileges of the Sharifate against all foreign external aggression, in particular that of the Ottomans.” At that time, both Britain and America were generous in promising things to King Ḥusayn that were more flattery than reality, in their attempt to assuage ‘medieval dignity.’ Britain even sent British Army officer T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’; renowned archeologist and Arabist) to help Ḥusayn in military, diplomatic and intelligence preparations. As a bonus, Ḥusayn’s sons Faisal and Abdullah were appointed in 1921 as puppet-rulers of the British Crown – Faisal to Iraq (August 23 1921 – September 8 1933) and Abdullah to Transjordan (as Emir April 11 1921-May 25 1946; then as King, May 25 1946-July 20 1951). Iraq and Transjordan were two new colony-nations, created by Whitehall within the Sykes-Picot framework – part of the United Kingdom’s colonialist strategy for the Middle East.
But a deeper problem was brewing in Araby. In 1916 the new King Ḥusayn had also declared himself ‘Malik bilad al-Arab’ (‘King of all Arab lands’). Arabian warrior Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman al-Saud (ibn Saud), a Bedouin not descended from Muhammad’s bloodline, already had his ambitious eyes set on seizing the Meccan prize. Bad blood existed between these two leaders – the Hashemite and the Saudi – and it would end up bringing disaster to the Hashemite Ḥusayn and to his dynasty.
A short-lived Arab Caliphate
King Ḥusayn was proclaimed as the new Sharifian/Arab Caliph on March 10 1924, one week after Turkey’s new Grand National Assembly abolished the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3 1924. For much of the Arab world, this announcement of a new Arab Caliph was seen as a fleeting consolation, the culmination of a long struggle to reclaim the caliphate from Ottoman hands. On that very day, King Ḥusayn visited the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, situated on the Temple Mount, to discuss the matter with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini (a personal friend of Hitler and the Nazi High Command, and an advocate of the Holocaust). A document of allegiance to the Caliphate of Hussein bin Ali was then issued, stating:
- “We, the muftis, judges, dignitaries, and representatives of the Palestinian land, the people of authority and contract, pledge our allegiance to His Majesty, the Hashemite King of the Arabs, Hussein bin Ali bin Awn al-Hashemi, with the Islamic caliphate, on the condition that the matter is conducted through consultation, as commanded by allah almighty. It is also conditioned that no actions contradict the public interest of Muslims, and that decisions regarding the affairs of Palestine, its government structure, and its opinions are made only with the consent of its people.”
That same month, in March 1924, King Ḥusayn published in Amman a public bay’ah or oath of allegiance sworn to himself as new ruler by the Muslims of Jerusalem and Amman:
- “The act of the Ankara government abolishing the caliphate prompted the distinguished religious scholars of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, as well as those of al-Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding countries, to surprise us and compel us to pledge allegiance with great enthusiasm to the grand leadership and the grand caliphate. This was in lieu of observing religious rituals and the fasting prescribed by clear legislation, due to the inadmissibility for Muslims to remain without an imam for more than three days, as explicitly stated in the recommendations of the venerable Farouk [i.e., ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb]”
King Ḥusayn received support for his becoming Caliph from the second-to-previous Ottoman/Turkish Caliph, Mehmed VI Vahideddin, according to an article published on March 18 1924 in the British newspaper ‘The Times’: “Vahideddin, who is in the Italian city of San Remo, has sent a telegram to King Hussein and announced that he recognizes Hussein as Caliph.”
But Caliph Ḥusayn would only get to rule as caliph for a short 20 months. He was forcibly removed from that office on December 23 1925, when Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi armies (known as ‘Ikhwān man Aṭāʿa allāh’ – ‘the Brotherhood of those who obey allah’) conquered what is now known as the Western Province of Saudi Arabia (the Hejaz). Ḥusayn abdicated and fled to Amman, Transjordan. But Saudi pressure on the British resulted in Ḥusayn soon being exiled to British-controlled Cyprus. Just over five years later, when Ḥusayn became gravely ill, the British allowed him to return to Amman. He died on June 4 1931. As a sharif of Mecca, Ḥusayn would traditionally have been buried in Mecca, but Ibn Saud would not permit that, so Ḥusayn was buried in the al-Arghuniyya Madrasa on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On the window above his tomb is written the following Arabic inscription, acknowledging his brief status as caliph: (‘This is the tomb of the Commander of the believers’; ‘Haḏa qabru ʾamīri ʾal-mūˈminīna ʾal-Ḥusayn bnu ʿAlī’). On January 8 1926, the leading figures in Mecca, Medina and Jeddah proclaimed Ibn Saud as King of Hejaz; the bay’ah ceremony was held in the Great Mosque of Mecca. The non-Hashemite and non-Sayyid clan known as the House of Saud has ruled Mecca and Medina since that time – as kings but not as caliphs.
After both the Turkish abolition of the Ottoman caliphate and the Saudi non-Hashemite conquest of Mecca, a few Islamic attempts were initiated to consider how the Caliphate could be revived. In 1926 the ‘Pan-Islamic Congress for the Caliphate’ was convened in Cairo (text available in Russian) to discuss the revival of the caliphate. But most Muslim countries did not participate, and no action was taken to implement the summit’s resolutions. Various scholars in attendance promoted conflicting claims by the competing Arab sovereigns to the title of ‘caliph’. But, as Marvin Kramer states in ‘The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World,’ “All such efforts were foiled by internal rivalries or the intervention of the European powers.”
A renewed vision for the re-establishment of the Caliphate
Most Westerners didn’t pay too much attention to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate or how this was affecting the Muslim world. Western secularists tended to belittle Christianity and any constructive role it could play in guiding their culture and civilization. Certainly, they assumed, Islam was similarly not relevant for the Middle East. Hilaire Belloc, French writer and historian, notes, “Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.”
But Islamic self-understanding of their own history is significantly different. The Muslim world had watched over centuries as their empires – whether Abbasid, Persian, Fatimid, Indian Mughal or Ottoman – declined in power, honor and influence. Back in the medieval period, Islamic philosopher-scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) adamantly insisted that Islam’s weakenings and defeats were due to Muslim adoption of Western culture, ideas and practices. The modern Salafi movement agreed, believing that these former empires lost their greatness because they had fallen away from ‘authentic Islam.’ Only a return to strict (‘salafi’) interpretation of Islamic shari’a law and a restoration of caliphate government would make Islam great again, was their perspective.
The Salafi movement believes that the first three generations of leaders after Muhammad – the ‘salaf’ – exemplify the purest form of Islam. The writings and traditions of these ‘al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ’ or ‘pious predecessors’ are to be given authoritative precedence over later Islamic traditions. This of course means that Muhammad’s geopolitical goal – jihadi conquest of the world – is to be carried out in the same way as Muhammad himself pursued it.
With the departure of the last Caliph Abdulmejid II from Ottoman Turkey in 1923, a new wave of Islamist thinkers came on the scene. They blended a vision for Muslim renewal with a drive for the restoration of the caliphate. And they saw in Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings a Sheikh, a Muslim leader, who could lead Islam back to power, greatness and world domination through jihad – Muslim holy war. Most Islamist jihadi movements of the last 100 years (including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Syria’s new HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa/Abu Muhammad al-Julani) look to Ibn Taymiyya for inspiration and legal authority. Islamic scholars like Yahya Michot have noted that Ibn Taymiyya “has thus become a sort of forefather of al-Qaeda.”
Egypt – the Brotherhood presents strategic keys
- The age of modern jihadism began in 1928 with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, itself a reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924.
The Muslim Brotherhood (‘Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin’ or ‘Society of Muslim Brothers’) was founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Sheikh Hassan al-Banna (October 14, 1906-February 12, 1949) in March 1927 at Ismailia, Egypt. He was the son of an Islamic teacher who was both an imam and a muezzin (Islamic cantor).
Al-Banna’s memories of his first stay in Cairo as a student in his early twenties is revealing. He was living close to the al-Azhar al-Sharif – the oldest and most respected of Islamic institutions. Yet in Cairo’s adjacent Azbakiyya Quarter, al-Banna saw music and dance, coffeehouses and gambling, drinking, drugs and prostitution – all of which deeply pained him: “I saw that the social life of the beloved Egyptian nation was oscillating between its dear and precious Islam . . . and this violent Western aggression, armed and equipped with all the deadly material weapons of money, status, outward appearance, indulgence, power and the means of propaganda.”
Al-Banna learned of the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, while he was still a student. This event influenced him greatly: al-Banna viewed the collapse of the Caliphate as a “calamity.” He later called these events a “declaration of war against all shapes of Islam.” He attacked “the [falsely] reassuring promises and binding treaties drawn up by the Allies with the mightiest potentate of the Peninsula, King Husayn, stating that they would help him achieve the independence of the Arabs and support the authority of the Arab Caliphate.” What was needed, al-Banna concluded and asserted, was a restoration of the Caliphate: “The outcome of these steps will be, without a doubt, consolidation and a resurrection of the Islamic empire as a unified state embracing the scattered peoples of the Islamic world, raising the banner of Islam and bearing its message.”
The vision of the Muslim Brotherhood as per al-Banna: the formation of an Islamic state governed by shari’a and a return to a society modelled after that of Muhammad and his first followers. According to al-Banna, Egypt’s many problems could only be solved by a return to a society modelled after the example of Muhammad and his followers. As far as the role of jihad in this equation, al-Banna warned his readers against the “widespread belief among many Muslims” that ‘jihad of the heart’ (‘jihad bil qalb/nafs’) was greater (‘al-jihad al-akbar’) and more important than ‘jihad of the sword’ (‘jihad bis saif’). He called on Muslims to prepare for military jihad against colonial powers and against their puppet-regimes:
- “Muslims [are now] compelled to humble themselves before non-Muslims, and are ruled by unbelievers. Their lands have been trampled over, and their honor besmirched. Their adversaries are in charge of their affairs, and the rites of their religion have fallen into abeyance with their own domains . . . Hence it has become an individual obligation, which there is no evading, on every Muslim to prepare his equipment, to make up his mind to engage in jihad, and to get ready for it until the opportunity is ripe and God decrees”
Jihad is central to Muslim Brotherhood ideology. In his booklet entitled “Jihad”, al-Banna clearly defines jihad as violent warfare against non-Muslims to establish Islam as dominant across the entire world: “Jihad is an obligation from allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward.” Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.
The purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood was and remains: to restore Islam to the global power and dominance over Christendom that it had wielded for more than a thousand years; and, to return Islam to its divine destiny. To the Brotherhood, the ultimate goal of human civilization is the unification of all regimes under the banner of the Caliphate – the universal Islamic state. According to al-Banna, the Caliphate must govern all lands that were at one time under the control of Muslims. He states:
- “We want the Islamic flag to be hoisted once again on high, fluttering in the wind, in all those lands that have had the good fortune to harbor Islam for a certain period of time and where the muezzin’s call sounded . . . Then fate decreed that the light of Islam be extinguished in these lands that returned to unbelief. Thus Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the islands of the Mediterranean, are all of them Muslim Mediterranean colonies and they must return to the Islamic fold. The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea must once again become Muslim seas, as they once were.”
Once that is accomplished, the Caliphate is to be expanded to cover the entire globe, erasing national boundaries under the flag of Islam.
World domination – the Caliphate and jihad
Al-Banna was zealous in his stated vision and goals: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is: “allah ghayatuna. Al-rasūl za‘imuna. Al-Qur’an dusturuna. Al-jihād sabīluna. Al-mawt fi sabīl allah asma amanina. allah akbar, allah akbar.” (“allah is our goal. The rasul [Islamic messenger – i.e., Muhammad] is our leader. The Quran is our Constitution. Jihad [military struggle] is our way. Death on the path of allah [in jihad] is our supreme aspiration. allah is great! allah is great!”)
After the British departed from Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed that it could not compromise with modern secular Arab societies or military dictatorships. In the eyes of the Brotherhood’s leadership, Egypt, Algeria and even Saudi Arabia were less than purely Islamic. Most Arab and Islamic states are evil and need to be overthrown. Only strict Islamic shari’a rule and the re-establishment of the Caliphate is ultimately acceptable.
During the 1930’s and 1940’s the Muslim Brotherhood had links with the Nazis. Much of the contact went through Haj Amin al-Husseini, SS Reichsleiter Heinrich Himmler’s man in Jerusalem. The Brotherhood first established a cell in Gaza, and in May 1946 set up a Jerusalem cell in the Sheikh Jarrakh neighborhood. Yasser Arafat joined the Egyptian Brotherhood in in 1952. Brotherhood members in East Jerusalem established a shadow organization in 1953 called Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (‘Party of Islamic Liberation’) which today is another worldwide terror organization. In the late 1970’s Brotherhood members established ‘Egyptian Islamic Jihad’ (Al-Jihad al-Islami; also called ‘the Islamic Jihad’ or ‘the Jihad Group’) led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, and ‘Jamaat al-Islamiyya’ or ‘al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya’ (‘The Islamic Group’) led by the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman served a life sentence in Florence Colorado for his role in overseeing the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as for plans to bomb NY tunnels and bridges and FBI and UN headquarters. These organizations’ goals have been to overthrow the Egyptian Government, to replace it with a Caliphate Islamic state, and to attack American and Israeli interests.
By 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood claimed half a million adherents. The primary state backers of the Muslim Brotherhood at present are Qatar and Turkey. As of 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Muslim Brotherhood has presented the ideological model for almost all modern Sunni Islamic terrorist groups. In his October 22 2003 discussions concerning Hamas, al-Qaeda and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Richard Clarke – former U.S. National Security Council chief counterterrorism adviser – told a Senate committee: “The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood – all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.”
An internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum, released during the terror-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial in July 2007 shows that the Brotherhood’s jihad adopts more subtle and longer range approaches in the West. A memo of May 22, 1991 states: “The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi was a world-respected spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who had been deeply influenced by al-Banna. After meeting him at his school in Tanta, Egypt when al-Banna lectured, al-Qaradawi wrote of the lasting impact of this encounter, describing al Banna as “brilliantly radiating, as if his words were revelation or live coals from the light of prophecy.” Al-Qaradawi had this to say regarding the Jewish people:
- “There is no dialogue between [the Jews] and us other than in one language – the language of the sword and force. allah stated: ‘Fight the war of allah against those who fight you . . . And you should kill them in every place in which you capture them, and you should expel them from all the places from which you were expelled’” [quoting the Quran; Surat al-Baqara, verse 191]
This short look at historical developments since the Ottoman abolition of the Caliphate reveals a blending of two separate but related points: an activist vision for the re-establishment of the Caliphate; and activist vision and preparation for Islamist jihad terror.
How shall we then pray?
- Pray for revelation and courage to be given to Israel’s leaders in political, intelligence and military spheres – to understand and counteract strategies against Israel, the apple of God’s eye (Zechariah 2:8) – as Islamic State/al Qa’eda armies gather at our borders.
- Pray that enemy strategies against the Jewish people and their state, against Middle East Christians and other minorities – will be confounded, and that a great harvest would take place in all of these areas!
- Pray for the protection of Israeli and Jewish people from the assaults of jihadi terror organizations and Western fellow-travelers, and the return of the Jewish people to both the Land and the Messiah of Israel
- There are approximately 44 to 50 living Israeli hostages remaining, kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. Plans are tentatively underway to release a total of 33 out the 98 remaining Israeli hostages – half who are dead. Hamas is holding on to their corpses as cold storage bargaining chips. That would leave 65 hostages with Hamas, some dead, some alive. Pray for the release of all the hostages, and for YHVH’s justice to be brought on the heads of the Hamas kidnappers
- Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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