The Khilafah obsession

Well, I don't see anyone who talks about or, you know, reestablishing the or what have you. I don't see any any people who do that as serious people. They're not serious in terms of their understanding of politics, of power dynamics, geopolitics, or economics, and they're not serious in terms of their understanding of the religion. That doesn't mean that a serious discussion can't be had on this topic. I just have never found any of the people who do discuss this topic, to be serious people, or capable of serious discussion.

I think that this topic and the broader topic of so called Islamic government or Islamic states, has been irreparably poisoned by dilettants who are neither, experts in the sharia nor experts in politics, but who dabble in both, within the niche of political Islam. And surprisingly and disturbingly, a lot of their completely wrong opinions have been normalized and permeated Muslim thinking around this issue. This whole mentality, this whole mode of thinking, in my opinion, is part of our collective psychological colonization. I know that the the so called Islamists posture as if they're standing up to the West and standing up to the colonizers and so on. But in reality, they have been deeply misled by the West and by their own awe for the West.

Their whole concept is based on constantly, beating the drum of Muslim defeat, Muslim failure, Muslim hypocrisy, Muslim moral and religious decay and decline, Muslim weakness, Muslim betrayal of Islam, on and on and on. And they drill that into our heads day and night. They want us to be in a constant state of lamentation and mourning over the unparalleled catastrophic tragedy that devastated the Ummah in 1924 when the great Islamic caliphate was ripped to shreds by Ataturk. Leaving the Muslims, you know, to just wander the earth, lost and bewildered with a glazed look in their eye. They want us to have, PTSD.

They want to impose PTSD on us. They want us to be traumatized. They want us to feel like victims. And worse than that, they want us to feel victimized by our own people, by our own rulers. And they want us to be filled with resentment over that.

They want us to be filled with resentment over that, supposed victimization. And that resentment is supposed to be directed primarily at other Muslims. And the converse side of that the converse side of that resentment, the implicit message in all of that is how great, how powerful, how cunning, and how advanced the West is compared to us. How organized they are, how efficient and how effective they are, how much better their systems are. That's the unmistakable other side of their message.

Political Islam, in my view, was constructed as a reaction to western colonial and postcolonial hegemony. You know? They have their political ideology. They have their political model. So we have to have our, competing political ideology and our competing political model.

So the Islamists, the so called Islamists, reduced Islam itself to a political ideology that has as its primary purpose the establishment of a state, and that state must be called a khilafa. And the khilafa is the only way that the Muslims can ever stop wandering the earth like zombies. You know? The Khilafa is the only way that we can ever be strong again, that we can ever be formidable again, that we can ever be proud again. It's the only way that we can ever stop being the useless victims that we are now.

The useless victims that we are now and that we have been for the last hundred years. Wallahi, it's an incredibly negative and derogatory message, and it's an insulting message. I mean, truth of the matter is that the daily lives of the Muslims did not change much anywhere in the world, when Ataturk did what he did. Even in Turkey itself, in the rural areas, which is most of Turkey, life went on exactly as it was before. And that was certainly the case, in other parts of the Muslim world, in Indonesia, in Malaya, you know, current, modern day Malaysia, in North Africa, and even across The Middle East.

People's lives did not change. Because let's be honest, how much does any state really have anything to do with the daily lives of the people anywhere? And the changes that did occur in our societies over the last one hundred years would very likely have occurred anyway with or without a so called Hilafa. Most of the changes anyway. Look, ours wasn't the only empire to be dismantled in the twentieth century.

They were all dismantled. The British, the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Austro Hungarian, the Japanese, the Italians, even the Russians came and went in the twentieth century. The only empire that was still standing, by the end of the twentieth century was America. And if you think that everything would have been different in the Muslim world, if it hadn't been for Ataturk in, 1924, why you're delusional. And you're not very familiar with the state of the Muslim world in 1924 or, the state of the Ottoman Empire.

I mean, you know, someone can can can put forward an idea that's so incredibly simple and so incredibly wrong that, because it is so simple and so wrong, it's exhaustingly complicated to untangle and refute. And this is one of those ideas, this Qilafa idea. And this is probably why it's gained so much traction. Because it's so simple, so simple minded, and yet, so complex to debunk. Believing this idea, requires no knowledge, but debunking it does require knowledge.

And knowledge is required in order for someone to even understand the refutation. So it's the kind of idea that can easily have mass appeal. But it's a very dangerous and damaging idea. It's a very destructive idea. I mean, think about the fact that the beginning point of this idea, the first thing that you have to accept in order to accept the rest of the idea is that no government in the Muslim world is Islamic.

Now what are they if they're not Islamic? Well, according to them, they're all governments of Kufr. They're Kafa governments, apostate governments. And according to the Sharia, if a government commits open kufr, if a government is guilty of apostasy, then it is illegitimate, and it should be toppled. So if you're saying that the governments are not Islamic, that is fundamentally a seditious statement in the Muslim world.

It's a statement that carries the implication of revolution and overthrow. And it is a belief, that fosters enmity between the population and the government. It necessitates enmity, in fact, because, being hostile towards an illegitimate un Islamic government is an aspect of faith. It's an aspect of iman. So already, you have undermined the relationship between the rulers and the rule, and laid the groundwork for discontent, for discord, and for conflict within Muslim societies.

You have poisoned your society. And I say poison because it's a lie. If it was true, okay. You know? Then you're saying something right, and appropriate steps should be taken to rectify the situation.

But the fact is it isn't true. Our governments by and large, most of them anyway, are Islamic, and you can't say that they're not. They may not all be good governments. They may not all be just. They may not be as Islamic as we would like them to be, but they are Islamic.

With rare exceptions, none of our governments are actually guilty of Kufr Bawah, of open Kufr, of blatant, overt Kufr, the kind of Kufr, that would nullify their status as Islamic governments. And as a matter of fact, the Islamic character of our government is stronger today than it was fifty or sixty years ago. That's because Islam itself is stronger. Adherence to Islam is stronger. Practice of Islam is stronger.

And the, Islamic identity of Muslims is stronger today than it was in the, say, nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties or seventies. And our governments reflect that improvement in our societies and in our people. But the Islamists, the so called Islamists, they can't acknowledge that. In most, Muslim countries, the declared basis for the law is the Sharia. The primary source of legislation is the Sharia.

Now, okay, you can complain that the Sharia should be the only basis, the only source, But I hate to tell you that was never the case in fourteen hundred years because the Sharia, the fact is, does not legislate everything. Now that's another misconception that the so called Islamists have drilled into our heads. This idea that, every conceivable, issue that could ever possibly arise has been legislated in the Sharia. It hasn't. And that's why there's fiqh, and that's why there's, issues that are considered mubah.

Means it has no ruling. It has no ruling on it. And you can make, whatever rule seems best at that time and circumstance. You can only say that sharia covers everything if what you mean by that or the the argument that you're making is that it covers what it doesn't cover precisely by not covering it, which is an argument that I've actually heard someone use. But that's like saying, that you're inside your house when you're outside of your house, you just happen to be in the outside part of your house.

So make that make sense. But the Islamists have made it like it's an insult, to the Sharia. Like it's denigrating to the Sharia to say that it doesn't cover everything. And they'll say, well, we say it covers everything because Allah said that he didn't leave anything out of the book. But he didn't leave anything out of the book that needed to be legislated.

That's what that means. It means what has been left out didn't need to be there. I mean, if you pack your suitcase for a trip and your wife asks you, did you pack everything? Do you think she literally means did you pack every single thing that you own? No.

She means did you pack everything that you need? Did you pack everything that you're gonna need on your trip? So Allah told us, and legislated for us everything that we need to be legislated. And whatever he did not legislate is because it's fine for us to do on those issues what we see fit, guided by the, values and principles of Islam. And yes, one of the things that Allah did not legislate is a political model, a model of government.

If Allah had legislated a governmental model, then there wouldn't have been any need for any discussion or consultation after the death of Rasulullah for the Muslims to decide what they were supposed to do in terms of leadership, in terms of authority, in terms of ruling after his death. They would have just seamlessly proceeded with the system that Allah had revealed. But Allah did not reveal a system. He revealed rules. He revealed guidance.

He revealed principles. And any government form that implements or seeks to implement those rules, that guidance, and those principles is acceptable. And no, it doesn't matter if it's one ruler or 20 or 50 or 100. And it doesn't matter if he's the emir of 2,000,000,000 Muslims or two Muslims. Anyone who has been granted authority, over either an empire or a state or a territory or a tribe or over one single person, he's supposed to follow the rules of Islam as best he can.

That's the only system that we have. So if you're in a land and the people of that land all recognize a man as the ruler of that land and of that people, and he has authority and he is a Muslim and he is, following the rules of Islam as best he can, well, that is an Islamic government. He is running an Islamic government. No matter what form that government takes, no matter what model it is, no matter what title he has, and you don't have the right to call it illegitimate. And here's the ironic thing.

Every single day, governments in the Muslim world are seeing to the affairs of the Muslims who are under their authority. They're seeing to the needs of the Muslims who are under their authority. They're planning for the futures of the Muslims under their authority. They're providing education to the Muslims. They're trying to ensure that the Muslims have food and shelter.

They're trying to ensure that the Muslims have jobs and have opportunities. They're undertaking projects, you know. They're trying to build and maintain infrastructure. They're keeping trade going. They're managing their economies.

And all that time, they're also trying to navigate and survive the coercion and the pressures and the intrusion of foreign powers, western powers, non Muslim powers. And, yes, the owners and controllers of global financialized capital. They're trying to deal with threats and disasters, you know, droughts, floods, earthquakes, famines, trying to keep hospitals running, trying to provide childcare for their people. Or Allah help them, they're trying to rebuild after wars and invasion, trying to protect people from actual terrorism and violence. These are all real things that Muslim governments are doing every day, day in, day out, not to mention trying to apprehend criminals and maintain order.

And the masjids are open, the salah is established, the adhan is called, people fast Ramadan, they give zakat, they make hajj. But you're gonna act like none of this counts. All of this is nothing. It's all illegitimate. It's all proof of Muslim weakness somehow.

It's all somehow proof of Muslim decay. You can't see any of it. You can't see any of the good. You can't acknowledge any of it. You've got Muslim failure between your eyes.

So you're blind to the successes. You're blind to the triumphs. You're blind to the achievements. You're blind to the advancements. You're blind to the goodness in the Muslim world.

And the goodness that, yes, the Muslim governments do because you've got the idea stuck in your head, that Muslim governments, working, functioning Muslim governments are all, despicable boot licking hypocrites. And no good can ever come, to the Muslims or from the Muslims unless or until they have a khilafa. Meanwhile, most of the people who rant about this all live in the West anyway. And you're gonna tell me that their minds aren't colonized? While they're, slamming Muslim leaders in the Muslim world all day long, while living in The UK or in The US or in Canada or in, Australia, paying their taxes to western governments whose boots they say the Muslim rulers are licking.

Well, you're paying for the boots and then hating on the people who are trying to get, out from under those boots, who are trying to get those boots off of their neck. So who's colonized? Telling these governments in the Muslim world, that they aren't Islamic. Well, what's your threshold? That's what I wanna know.

At what point exactly does a Muslim government become Islamic enough for you? The governments in the Muslim world, already uphold, the indicators, the open indicators of Islam. All of the open indicators of Islam that would prevented from attacking their territories. Don't you know that when sent letters to non Muslim rulers in other lands, he would invite them to accept Islam, and he said that if they did, they would remain in control of their lands. Don't you know that, people like the Bedou, the Bedouin, in the lifetime of Rasulullah they were allowed to remain where they were and to continue operating under the same, tribal system of authority that they always had after they became Muslim.

They didn't get incorporated into some sort of state structure. Don't you know that for most of our history, let's be honest, we didn't have the kind of Khilafa that you envision in your imagination. We had multiple dynasties. We had multiple, Sultanates, autonomous and independent Muslim states. The situation that we have now is not in any way shape or form a day versus night difference from what we've always had.

And I honestly do not believe that our situation today is significantly different than what it would have been anyway even if Ataturk had not done what he did. Because systems, and dynamics of power change over time and circumstances, and they respond to circumstances. Like I said, all of the empires were dismantled or were dissolved in the twentieth century. But this was a formal dissolution in some ways and to some extent. Obviously, British power and influence continued.

Economic control continued. Even after the colonies became independent and the British Empire was officially over, French power and French influence, and French economic, control continued. And we're only seeing now, that influence and that control being driven out in some of the former colonies, like in the Sahel. What remains after the formal dissolution of an empire, shows you what the essence of that empire was, what its nature was, what it was about. And Western imperialism was exploitative.

It was about domination and subjugation, harsh and violent control, indoctrination and so on. That was their imperial model. That was their modus operandi. And that lived on after their empires were formally dissolved. Well, the same is true about the Islamic empire.

What remained and what remains after its formal dissolution tells you what its essence was, what its nature was, what it was about, and that is Islam. That's what remains, the religion, the morals, the moral character, the moral culture, the moral qualities, the love of Allah and his messenger the character, the perspective, the way of being. What remains, after the dissolution of the Islamic empire is an actual Islamic civilization because the civilization did not rely upon state enforcement, but upon belief and taqwa. The governmental system, the imperial system as it were, throughout our history was decentralized. And that was very much the case during the Khulaf al Rashidin.

The Muslim empire was not characterized by heavy handed overbearing state control nor by, subjugation and exploitation and domination and, violence and coercion. The Ummah was made cohesive across vast expanses of territory, across oceans, not by governmental consolidation, but by iman. That was the case then and it is the case now. And unlike, the Western non Muslim empires, what remained after the end of the Ottoman Empire will never fade away because the empire didn't make it. It made the empire.

The empire was just a natural consequence of the people being Muslim. And groups of people, will always have to have some form of some form of authority for organizing and, for organizing their affairs and pursuing their interests, their shared interests. And because they were Muslims, so their leaders are Muslims. Their their leaders have to be Muslims. And as Muslims, they followed the rules of Islam, both the rulers and the rule.

That was the case then, and that's the case now. That hasn't changed. I mean, if any Muslim is given a responsibility, he will approach that responsibility as a Muslim, and he will act in accordance with Islam to the best of his ability. And that's the same with the rulers. Again, regardless of what political system it is, regardless of, what governmental model it is.

Because look, the people are gonna follow Islam either way. And if they're entrusting someone with responsibility, with authority, if they are accepting someone, as a ruler, well, obviously, he is expected to also follow Islam just as they do and to perform his duties as a ruler in accordance with the same beliefs, the same rules, the same principles, and so on that the people follow. And that's not about systems. It's about approaching the responsibilities of government as a Muslim in an Islamic manner and running the society in accordance with what Islam requires as much as possible. And that's what we always had, and that's what we have in the Muslim world today.

So, no, I reject this notion that we're all supposed to feel bereft, that we're all supposed to feel devastated because one system of government gave way to other systems. The quality of the rulers, varied over time anyway. The quality of rulers, of, governors, of sultans varied from region to region, from territory to territory, from province to province, any way throughout our history. And like I said, we went through various phases of, various forms of centralization and decentralization over time, any way. And throughout most of our history, we were provincially ruled anyway, and that's perfectly fine.

There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing un Islamic about that. So sorry to spoil the pity party. But I do not accept that the end of the Khilafa in 1924 was the worst catastrophe to strike the ummah since the death of Rasulullah Rasulullah It was just another transition and we've been through many. And it mostly impacted people in politics, bureaucrats, state employees, and so on.

But it had very little impact on the ummah and no impact whatsoever on Islam itself. And Muslim civilization carries on regardless of any political transitions that might occur. And as I said, power dynamics change, and we're going to change anyway because they always do. And right now, today, in the current world, there are different imperial systems. I've talked about this before.

There are layers of imperial systems crisscrossing the globe. You can't have any political independence today if you don't have economic sovereignty. And I didn't say economic independence. I said economic sovereignty. There's a difference.

Because these days, you might need to use economic interdependence in order to attain sovereignty. The old constructs of empire are obsolete. You're more likely today, to see the emergence of what you could maybe call an economic Qilaf, an economic Muslim empire. Like what I've said about what the, Gulf states are building, The UAE and Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They're establishing a corridor of influence across the Middle East and Africa, primarily through investment and economic leverage, but yes, also through militias and so called security cooperation.

But that's what they're building. And the area that it's covering looks very much like the borders of the old Ottoman Empire, except potentially even, farther reaching and with even growing influence in Europe and the West. I'm telling you, within twenty or thirty years, this is going to be a de facto empire wielding actual real world power that will surpass what was wielded by the Ottomans if they're successful in what they're trying to do. Insha'Allah. That is going to include Palestine.

Look, the Crusaders occupied the holy land for roughly two hundred years, give or take. This isn't our first rodeo. There was, something like six generations of Muslims who lived under crusader occupation. Now today in Palestine, there have been about three generations living under Zionist occupation, and it's not gonna be much more than that. Mark my words.

I'm not saying that the Jews won't be there anymore. They'll still be there, any of them who want to stay, but they'll be staying in an Arab Muslim majority non Zionist state, just like it's always been and just like they were always welcome in. And I think that the Zionist occupation is not going to have the lifespan that the Crusader occupation had. And if you're young enough today, you will live to see this come about. Insha Allah biithmillah.

But you see, if you have khilafah stuck in your head, you'll be blind to all of this. It won't matter to you what the Muslims can accomplish, what they are accomplishing, what the Muslim rulers are accomplishing, what the Muslim private sector, can accomplish, the de facto empire that's being built, the spreading influence and sovereignty that's being built. You will delegitimize all of that. You'll berate all of that. You'll belittle all of that because it's not what you consider to be Islamic.

Because it doesn't look the way you think it's supposed to look. But that's because you have an airbrushed picture in your head of the khalafa. You're getting catfished by an image of the Islamic state that's had so many utopian filters applied to it that it may as well be a cartoon. And I think that you you really ought to think about what that fake image is actually doing to you, What effect it's having on you. Because it's not actually motivational as much as you might tell yourself it is.

It's not positive. It's not useful. In fact, it's the opposite. It turns you into someone who actually spreads hopelessness and resentment. It turns you into someone who demeans the Muslims, discourages the Muslims, and who amplifies their shortcomings and mistakes, and who, implants suspicion and pessimism in the people's minds.

You always see this type of person spreading bad news online. You know? Alarmism, trying to drum up anguish and frustration and feelings of helplessness because they use that as a vehicle, for peddling their so called solution, a solution that they can't even deliver anyway. You know, they'll make Muslims think that if they die without giving bayah to a caliphate, they'll actually die a death of ignorance. But that's because they don't bother studying the religion beyond, whatever confirms their cultish ideology.

Because they don't know that this hadith, the hadith that they refer to is actually talking about someone who withdraws their allegiance, withdraws their obedience to the ruler, and who has departed from the Jama'ah, someone who's turned renegade. In other words, they are actually trying to draw people into the very state that they're telling them that they're already in and acting like they're warning them about it. They're trying to draw people into ignorance. They're trying to draw people into that death that they're warning you about. Do you see how diabolical that is?

They want people to believe that when Rasulullah mentioned the different stages that the Muslim rulership would go through, you know, from the, to kings, to tyrants, and then again back to They want you to believe, that the two middle stages are invalid. Basically, that anything other than is invalid. And that anything other than should be opposed and should be toppled. And that no good, can come of anything other than but that's absurd. When Rasulullah said that the knots of Islam would be undone one by one, he said that the first thing to go would be the rule, the government.

And the last thing to go would be the and we can say, yes, that government has become flawed. Things have appeared in the government that, we don't recognize Islamically, which is something that also warned us about and cautioned us about. But that's just one knot, and it's being loosened maybe, but it hasn't been undone. We still have legislation based on Sharia in most Muslim countries. We still have Sharia courts.

We still have Sharia personal status laws. The knot of rule in Islam has become loose. We can say that, but it's still there. Islam is still present in the society and in the government. And that's why said that you should not rebel against the ruler as long as he establishes the because that means that he is one of the Muslims who's still clinging to whatever nazar left.

Just like the hadith says and just like the rest of the Muslims will be doing when the knots start getting undone one by one. The pillars of Islam are still upheld by our governments, like I said. Which Muslim state prohibits the or or or in which Muslim country is banned? Which Muslim country has no mufti, has no alqaaf? I mean, you even have al Qaaf departments in non Muslim countries that have large Muslim populations.

So I'm asking, again, what is your threshold for Islamic enough? No. This type of people are the same type of people, in my opinion, who rebelled against Uthman bin Athan, because they thought that his rule wasn't Islamic enough. This is the type of people who would probably accuse the Mahdi of not being Islamic enough, Because basically, they don't actually even know what that word means. And you know, I really wouldn't care.

You know? Let them believe whatever they wanna believe. Let them live in their fantasy world. They're only wasting their own lives anyway. But like I said, the problem is that their misconceptions have become normalized, and it's infected the, the thinking of otherwise sensible Muslims.

And it has spread a, negative and counterproductive mentality that is harmful to us and beneficial to our enemies. I wouldn't talk about it otherwise. I know perfectly well that what I'm saying will make me a target for yet more attacks, and I know that a lot of people won't like it. But I will gladly put my record up against theirs any day to see who has been more active and more effective in opposing corruption and wrongdoing by our governments. Them or me, particularly in the Gulf States, are the ones that they hate the most.

And who's been more persecuted by those governments for doing so? Them or me? And who's been more attacked, by the western media? Them or me? No.

It's not a radical position to disparage the Muslim governments. It's not a dangerous and heroic sacrifice to agree with the West and to collaborate with them in sowing discord among our people and trying to indoctrinate our people with a sense of defeat and helplessness and delusional thinking and political simple mindedness and cultish misinterpretations of the religion and disdain for our scholars, both classical and contemporary, because that's what they do. That's not brave. That's not, speaking truth to a tyrant. That's speaking on behalf of a tyrant to obscure the truth and mislead the Muslims.

And like I said, most of them are already living in the West anyway, either born there or immigrated there or they're over there as, asylum seekers. You know they're not gonna say anything that will mess up their status over there. They'll just say things that will mess up their thinking of Muslims over here to undermine our societies, whether they know it or not, whether they're intelligent enough or not to realize the damage that they're doing. But they are doing damage, and it needs to stop. You know, there was a a really wonderful Malay scholar who passed away just a few years ago named, Ustad Zulkefli, Haji Ismail.

And he used to say, don't preoccupy yourself thinking about building an Islamic state. Preoccupy yourself with thinking about building your state of Islam. And I don't think that there's any better advice that anyone could give, to these types of people. And like I've said before, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't criticize the wrong things that the government might do, and that you shouldn't try to make things better. That's what I've always advocated.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to go about doing it. There's an intelligent way and an unintelligent way. There's an effective way and an ineffective way. And if you're not interested in doing it that way, then I don't know what you are doing or why. But going around making takfir on the rulers, insulting the rulers, and shouting about khalafa is a 100% sure way of guaranteeing that you will never accomplish anything useful.