Ismail Kamdar – What is the Caliphate
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses the history of the Khalifa, a political system created by the Muslims after the British Empire. The traditional understanding of the term was not enough to educate on its significance, and the waover of the traditional Khilaba was a political obligation for Muslims to have a political leader. The history of the Khalifa's political and monetary power, including its involvement in construction of the Church of the Lord, and its political and monetary involvement in protecting laws and setting up J bills is also discussed.AI: Transcript ©
Today, I want to do a brief summary
on a
important concept in Islam
that is missing in our times, and that
is one of the most misunderstood
topics of our time.
And I'm hoping in this brief utpa I
can at least
clear up some of the misunderstandings of this
topic.
And that is the concept of the Khilafat,
the caliphate,
the Islamic
political leadership.
This topic,
we don't discuss it enough.
We don't teach about it enough. We don't
educate our people enough on what is a
khalifa, what is the role of the khalifa.
And because of this,
in the past 20 years, a lot of
extremist understandings of this topic have popped up.
And we really saw this reach its height
about 13 years ago,
when a certain group in Syria claimed to
be a Hilafat,
yet what they did was so far away
from the teachings of Islam, you wonder how
could this happen?
I believe this happened because we,
the people of knowledge,
failed to educate our people on what a
Khalifa is.
And if we are not educating people on
what the Khalifa is, they're going to get
their ideas from somewhere else.
And so what happened in over the past
100 years,
not many Muslim scholars are talking about the
khilafat.
But the west
are putting out stereotype
upon stereotype
and misconception upon misconception
about what a khilafat is and what the
sharia is. And And the Muslims are absorbing
that.
And they're trying to revive that instead of
trying to revive the real thing.
So this is a first step
towards
reeducating
ourselves on what the philosophy is. And whatever
I'm going to say today is taken, number
1, from the history books, number 2, from
the Hanafi books of.
Right? So this isn't my own things. This
is what has been documented historically
as the Khalafat,
as it happened, and as the scholars feel
it should have been. Right? Because you'll find
one of the,
one of the sad things about our history
is that for the bulk of our history,
the khilafat was never as it should have
been. There was always some human flaws to
how it was implemented.
So let's start off with some very basics.
The word,
which Allah
used in Surah Baqarah to describe the human
beings. When Allah says that he creates the
human beings, he says,
The word khalifa in this verse has two
meanings.
Some of the mufassirun
say that on an individual level, we all
represent Allah's will on earth. We're supposed to
live a life that is pleasing to Allah,
call towards Allah, be a representative of what
Allah wants of of us. That's one level.
The other level of meaning of creating a
on earth is that
there should be a land
ruled by the laws of Allah,
so that people
can live a life that is pleasing to
Allah, and others can see what a land
ruled by Allah's laws looks like. And that
land is called the Hilafat, or the Darul
Islam.
The Hilafat
was a political system
that the Muslims had in place
with a few breaks here and there.
From the time of Abu Bakr,
right up to World War 1,
for over
1300
years.
When Rasulullah SAW ALI AWAI WASLA passed away,
and the people of Madina
elected Abu Bakr
to be their leader,
they gave him the title of Khalifa to
Rasulillah.
The successor of Rasulullah.
And that's where the term khilafat came from.
Right? Abu Bakr was called the khalifa of
Rasulullah,
and every successor afterwards is also called a
khalifa.
The khilafat went through many forms.
There was the golden era of the
Then there was the dynasties,
the empires,
or the monarchies that existed for 100 of
years.
Then there was a point in time when
the khilafud was just a puppet. He was
just a figurehead.
We didn't really have any real power.
And then
came the weakest point,
World War 1.
The British conquer the Muslim world.
The secular Turks take over Turkey, and the
Khalifa is abolished.
And now for the past 100 years, we
have not had a Khalifa,
which is
abnormal in Muslim history.
It's abnormal that Muslims don't have political power.
So let's break down what is a Khalifa,
what was its history,
and
why is it important?
In terms of fiqh,
the scholars of fiqh are unanimous that the
Khalifa is a fund rectifier.
It is a communal obligation for the Muslims
to have a political leader that is
that is allowing the sharia to be applied.
Right? That this is a communal obligation.
A communal obligation that we have failed to
fulfill for 100 years.
And he defines the khalifa
as a king who has authority above other
kings.
The khalifa
is the king who has authority over other
kings. So for
example, in the time of the Abbasids,
you had the Abbasids,
you had the Mamluks,
You have, before the Mamluks, the Ayubis.
You have the Seljuks.
All these other dynasties
report to the Abbasid dynasty.
They are all kings, but he's the king
who has authority over them. At least, that's
how it's supposed to be. See, historically, never
ever or never always worked out like that.
The Hanafi books of fair
don't actually talk too much about the because
number 1, it was considered something that's always
gonna be there. Right? You never imagined a
time would come when you would have a
khalifa. Although there was one of the scholars
who did hypothesize on what would we do
if this ever ended. Right? But in general,
they never imagined a time would come when
there's no Khalifa. It's because it's something that's
by default, it's gonna be there. Number 2,
in Islam, the khalifa didn't have that much
power compared to modern states.
So they would speak more about the power
of the Bali or the Mufti than the
power of the Khalifa.
Nonetheless,
you will find when they do talk about
the Khalafat, they usually mention between 3 to
5 responsibilities of the Khalifa.
3 to 5 responsibilities of the khalifa.
Number 1, the khalifa is in charge of
jihad.
Right? The khalifa is in charge of defending
and expanding the borders of the Muslim world.
So this was a role that the Khalifa
played throughout our history, and we see this
in every era. When Abu Bakr sent the
armies out into Persia and into, Asham, when
Omar al Anhu expanded that into Palestine and
into Egypt,
we see this later on when Waleed King
Waleed sends the armies to take over Spain
and India and Samarkand. We see this in
the time of Suleiman the Magnificent when he
sends the armies throughout the Balkans and and
Europe.
This is the road of the Khalifa.
Jihad. Right? The Khalifa in charge of the
army. Ensuring that the borders of the Arab
Islam are secure.
Sometimes this is through defense, sometimes it's through
offense.
Right?
But he's in charge of the military.
Number 2.
The second responsibility of the Khalifa
is to facilitate
the application of the Sharia.
Meaning, if there is a khalifa and a
Darul Islam, the law within that land is
the Sharia.
And sometimes they break this up, they say
the Sharia and the hudud. The hudud is
the Islamic criminal law, but the hudud is
part of the Sharia.
Now it's interesting
that the books of Fiqh say that the
Khalifa
facilitates the Sharia. He doesn't make the Sharia.
Because they make it very clear, the Sharia
is Allah's law.
The ulama are the interpreters of the law.
The Muftis and the Qalis are the ones
who
make the the judgments that people have to
follow in the community.
The Khalifa
simply allows all of this to take place.
In the early years of Islam,
the khalifa was himself an ally,
and so he will play both roles.
Abu Bakr, Omar, Usman, Ali, the Allah will
be pleased with all of them. They wear
Khalifas, but they also wear olamah. So you'll
find that they judge between the people and
came up with fiqh rulings, but they also
led the armies and did all of this
as well.
But later on, it splits up, becomes too
much for one person. And so what you
actually find in our history is that there's
2 different levels of power. There's the political
power of the haditha,
and then there's
the communal power of the ulama.
And actually, people's day to day lives, it
was the ulama who had the real power.
Right? This is why throughout our history, when
we talk about the great figures in our
history, it's like Imam Al Ghazali and even
Tamia. You know, these are these are ulama.
Right? Abu Hanifa,
ulama. Right? Abu Hanifa, Imam Ali, these are
ulama. They had actual influence on the community
and a say in how the law was
interpreted,
and the the the khalifa did not have
this power.
So the khalifa simply was there to ensure
that Sharia was applied.
He would leave the interpretation
and application of sharia to the ulamaq,
specifically the Qadis, the judges. They would be
the ones who actually would lay down the
law.
So if somebody had a dispute, they won't
go to the khalifa, they will go to
the body. If somebody had a question about
fiqh, they won't go to the khalifa, they
go to the mufti.
Right? But the khalifa, his role is to
ensure that this is the law of the
land.
That's why when the Khalafat fell, sharia as
a law system fell apart as well.
The 3rd duty of the khalifa
was to collect and distribute the taxes,
whether it was the wabhuji,
or zakah, or jizya, or any of the
other types of taxes that existed in the
Muslim world, it was the Khalifa who would
send people out to collect it. They will
be in charge of the treasury and ensure
that it's used for administering the kingdom and
taking care of the poor.
The 4th one, and this is interesting,
The books of Fiqh emphasized that the Khalifa
has to lead the jumah and the eat
salah or delegate someone to do so.
So one of the things that we don't
do optimally while living as minorities
is how we do jumma and id as
minorities. Right?
The actual process of Jum'ah and Eid is
it's meant to be the entire community gathers
together.
Right? And it's the khalifa
or the governor or the head imam who
delivers the chutba.
It's actually meant to be a very political
thing.
The the Khutba is supposed to be very
political.
Right? It's meant to show a sign of
political power and unity of the community. And
this is why Muslim countries, you have your
masjids and you have your Jummah masjid.
And the day of Friday, all other masjids
are closed, everybody goes to Jummah masjid.
Of course, living as minorities, we can't really
organize it on that level. Right? You won't
be able to put all everyone in the
community to together behind 1 imam, and that
way, you're gonna gonna fight about which group
that imam is following. So we end up
having split up into many different Jumas. But,
actually, in an Islamic land, the Khalifa is
the imam for Jumah and Eid. And in
Adi said, this is the person he appoints
is the imam for Jumah and Eid. Right?
And it's all done
in his name in a sense that in
the Jumah Khutba, people would praise the Khalifa.
They would praise Allah, praise Rasulullah, some praise
the sahaba, and praise the khalifa himself.
And so the khalifa was in charge of
organizing
Jum'ah and Ir, Right? And delegating it to
others. Finally,
the khalifa was in charge of ensuring that
peace
and justice and social cohesion and unity was
the norm within the Muslim borders.
Right? This was the overall goal of the
of the Khalakat.
It wasn't
a specific duty. It wasn't a specific formula
on how to do it. It wasn't something
that was always accomplished, but this was the
overall
goal. Why is there Adar al Islam? Why
is there a Khalafar? Why is there sharia?
So within these lands, there will be peace.
Within these lands, there'll be justice. Within these
lands, people can live their best lives without
having to worry about crime, without having to
worry about being invaded by the enemies, without
having to worry about public indecency.
You could live your best life within these
borders, and the Khalifa's job was to ensure
that this land remains secure and intact.
One of the things people get wrong about
the hilafat is they imagine someone with supreme
power.
Right? Because this is again a Western stereotype.
The khalifa is a man of supreme power.
Someone who lays down the law, someone who
forces everyone to be pious.
In reality,
most of the Khalifas in history were not
pious.
Right? The majority of Khalipas in Muslim history
were not pious. Right?
And it was well understood that the khilafat,
or the Islam, or the Muslim world, will
be full of every type of person.
Both the sinner and the pious, and everyone
in between.
One of the mistakes we've seen in recent
times, that people when they think of reviving
the khilafat, thinking of, like, just whipping everyone
into piety. That's never existed in our history.
That's never what a hilafat was. This is
a very modern
understanding of akhilafat.
Right? Historically, even in the time of Rasulullah
salallahu alayhi wa samael sahaba, there were people
in Madinah who had sins. There were people
in Madinah who were known for their addictions.
There were people who were known as not
being the as as, pious as others, and
he understood a community made up of all
types of people. It's impossible to have an
entire community that's pious, and that's a misunderstanding
of our times.
So very briefly,
I just wanna go over the the brief
history of the khilafat in 2 minutes or
maybe max 5 minutes. Right?
The khilafat was never optimal except in the
1st generation.
Humans are weak,
and humans are human. And so the human
application of the khilafat
always had weaknesses throughout our history.
The only time where the khilafat is truly
optimal was in the time of Abu Bakr
and Omar Radiallahu Anhu, and maybe you can
say
the as a whole. Right?
And that was the golden age. That was
the role model.
Now, again, at that time, the ummah was
small.
Right? It wasn't this massive empire. It wasn't
millions of people. It was a much smaller
group of people.
And what was unique about that era was
that the khalifa was a Sahabi,
a scholar, a pious person, a humble person,
and a man of the people.
So like Omar Rajan, who could sit in
the masjid, and people will come to him,
and he will advise them, and he will
listen to their problems, and he will help
them. Right? It was a very humble position.
And they made it very clear that they
don't have ultimate power. Abu Bakr said, very
clearly, if I'm wrong, correct me.
Make sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.
Right? That they would then see in the
position of absolute power. But as the ummah
grew,
it became
difficult
to maintain that level of of perfection.
Right? And so the hilafat began to develop
flaws over time, necessary human flaws. And so
we see that after time, the sahaba becomes
a monarchy, becomes
a a a sort of kingdom.
With the Umayyads and Abbasid, the khilafat became
a kingdom. So you would have a king,
and he would have his governors, and they
would be in charge of the jihadi, they
would be in charge of protecting the border,
they would be charge of ensuring that Sharia
is the law of the land. They would
be in charge of collecting the taxes, but
it stay out of the law system completely.
And so the ulama in that time developed
into a separate power with their own,
systems of of training ulama and their own
positions of authority, and these became 2 separate
systems within the Muslim world, the ulama and
the Khalifa.
At its weakest, in the later Abbasid era,
the
khilafu just became a figurehead.
Really, for over 300 years, the Abbasid Khalifa
had absolutely no power. He was just a
figurehead. People just claimed they're following him, but
they had more power than him. Think of
it like,
the king of England today. Right?
Supposed to be the king over Australia and
Canada and many other lands. In reality, he
has no real power. Right? It's just it's
just a position of authority
where you don't actually have the real power
that you think you do. And that's how
the Abbasid was in the times when the
Crusaders invaded and the Mongols invaded. The Abbasids
had no real power. It was the Seljuks
and the Montluks and the AUBs and others
who had actual real power at that time.
In the Ottoman era, it returns to being
a monarchy,
a very powerful monarchy. And I think one
key difference here is the Ottomans actually work
very closely with the.
So while the Umayyads were, like, separate from
the ulama, as were the Abbasids,
the Ottomans put established a position called the
Sheikhul Islam.
And the Sheikhul Islam was like the main
mukti of the community. And the Sheikhul Islam
and the khalifa were often friends, and they
would work very closely together in establishing the
Sharia and ensuring the Sharia was practiced. So
this became the form of the Khilafood in
later times.
And then came
colonialism.
The British colonized the Muslim world. One of
the key goals being to destroy the system
of the Khilafat. And then came World War
1 where everything fell apart. And then enter
the modern era when there is no Khalifa,
we have nation states that have a mixture
of secular law, Sharia law, and everything in
between. All of it is actually
British colonial law that they think is Sharia
law,
and
we are in the mess that we are
entering.
Nonetheless, the khilafat is a very important system.
And we just remember these few key points.
Number 1, it's not an absolute power.
It's not an absolute power. There are checks
and balances in the Khali, Khilafat.
Right? Number 2, it's about protecting the ummah
and allowing the sharia to be practiced.
Right?
And the third thing is, for the bulk
of our history, it was never perfect. And
I think that's a problem in our time.
We think it either has to be perfect
or it doesn't exist.
No. We are humans. We all never never
be perfect, but
even when it's not perfect, still is functional
and still has many benefits for the,
as we're seeing right until it collapsed in
World War 1.
So I just want to share very briefly
three reasons why I believe the is important
today.
It's been a 100 years since
the fell apart,
and many people are scared to talk about
this topic. Many people feel like it's impractical.
Many people feel like it's impossible to happen
until the time of the Mahdi. I actually
believe the Ummah is in a very strong
position to revive.
We are at the end of an era.
Right? There are there are shifts taking place
in global dynamics right now, and new powers
are rising and old powers are falling.
If Allah wants one of those new powers,
it could be an Islamic power. And there
are many Muslim lands that are starting to
build power and wealth, there could well be
a hilafat in the future.
And it's time that the Ummah starts to
think about this, to sit and to ideate
and to research and to try and figure
out how do we get back on track
to having a khilafat. Now some people say,
what's the point? What's the point? I would
also mention 3 things. Three benefits, I believe,
for the Ummah today if the khilafat is
restored. Number 1,
Muslims have a place to make hijrah to.
There are many Muslims around the world who
feel like they don't have a land of
their own.
A khilafat, Idara al Islam would be a
place where any Muslim can gain instant citizenship.
It's a place where any Muslim can move
to and live in peace. This is what
the Khalafat ideally is, and this is how
it function for the bulk of our history.
And this would solve a major problem in
the Muslim world today, and many people just
don't know where to go and where to
live. Right? And we know the current citizenship
issues in in the Middle East is it's
impossible to get citizenship in many Muslim countries.
The could solve this. Number 2,
Sharia.
Many Muslims, now that there's an Islamic revival
happening on an intellectual level and a spiritual
level, Many Muslims want to take the next
step. They want to live a Sharia compliant
life. They want to live under Sharia,
and the khilafah would solve this. It will
give them a place where you could live
a Sharia compliant lifestyle. But number 3 and
most important,
a
could fix
the political problems of the Middle East, specifically
the problem of Israel.
But remember, Zionism started in the time of
the Ottomans.
And Sultan Abdul Hamid made it very clear,
as long as we control Palestine, you can't
have that land.
So the Zionists worked very closely with the
British to ensure that the Ottoman Hilafar fell
in World War 1, so they could take
that land.
If the Hilafar were to be restored,
a number one priority of that Hilafar in
terms of jihad would be liberating the Muslims
of Palestine and getting rid of the oppressors
in that region.
And so for those who think that this
is not important,
I would say this is very important. For
those who say it's not a priority, I
say it's one of the most important priorities
for the Ummah. We need people to think
about this. We need people to talk about
this. We need people to ideate on this
because as the Ummah goes through this revival
phase, a hamdullah, over the past 50 years,
we have seen an intellectual revival in the
Ummah. We have seen a spiritual revival in
the Ummah. We have seen economic revival in
many parts of the Ummah. What's next?
The political revival of the Ummah. That's what's
next.
And you cannot have a political revival of
the Ummah if you don't understand this topic.
We don't talk about this topic. We don't
think about this topic. And this is why
it's very important that we now start to
revive revive discussions
about the khilafat, about sharia, about what would
it look like in a modern world, how
would it function in the modern world, and
what would a 21st century or a 15th
century be going with the Hijri calendar, khilaf
would actually look like? We ask Allah to
allow us to be part of the revival
of Islam. We ask Allah to help our
brothers and sisters in Palestine and all over
the world where they are oppressed and to
grant victory to the Muslims.
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