Is anything preventing muslims from forming caliphate?
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Mookie
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I understand all that. The language etc.. Thats why I said theoreticaly speaking if they wanted to join. I am only interested in outside sources that can stop them. Like UN not recognizing the country, others making a coalition to stop them, world embargoing them etc..
Stuff like that
I understand all that. The language etc.. Thats why I said theoreticaly speaking if they wanted to join. I am only interested in outside sources that can stop them. Like UN not recognizing the country, others making a coalition to stop them, world embargoing them etc..
Stuff like that
The capital of the original Umayyad Caliphate was in Damascus. With secular Assad there i really don't see it happening.
You could get something like this though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Arab_Republics
If you mess with the timeline enough you could probably get a Pan-Arab state in the 60's based around the ideas of Nasser, including Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia. I don't think the arab monarchies would be big on it though.
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Well in theory there is nothing stopping the Muslims from restoring the Caliphate, even if only as a figurehead for the religion, or maybe the official head of the Arab League. However, in practice unifying ALL of the middle east is pretty much ASB. To many differences for it to ever fully work. A supranational entity is the closest thing you could reasonably get.
On the other hand, the Caliphate does symbolize unity among the Muslim world, so maybe years down the road it could be restored. However at this point a restored Caliphate is about as likely as the European Union transforming into a new Holy Roman Empire. Both are cool ideas but pretty much out of the realm of possibility.
On the other hand, the Caliphate does symbolize unity among the Muslim world, so maybe years down the road it could be restored. However at this point a restored Caliphate is about as likely as the European Union transforming into a new Holy Roman Empire. Both are cool ideas but pretty much out of the realm of possibility.
I understand all that. The language etc.. Thats why I said theoreticaly speaking if they wanted to join. I am only interested in outside sources that can stop them. Like UN not recognizing the country, others making a coalition to stop them, world embargoing them etc..
Stuff like that
The problem is that the way you pose the question makes the answer meaningless. You're basically asking "if a bunch of countries could do something and wanted to do it, could they do it?"
It's pretty sure it's a caliph that would be recognised ONLY by the Sunnis OR Shi'as (and in the later case, only a portion), AND probably not by all... You can see the predecessors of a certain arabian peninsula radicals and/or Muslim Brotherhoods not very amiable, depending on who is picked..
Not completly sure, as the title have a complex meaning, and an 'official' caliphe could be in some cases seen as the 'Whore of Rome' for them, to make an analogy using radical protestant terminology... see what I means?
If the Ottomans by example made a caliphe/held him around, by example...
Actually, not quite.. the Ottomans got more and more criticised by Sunnis as much as the rest of muslims, and nobody cared about their caliphal role by the later times... not quite a good fit, but...
It's a bit like Saudi Arabia would have Caliphate OTL. And we know how disliked are the Saudis royals and the nobles and all the system. How corrupt they are seen.
I would say that Geo-politics and a lack of any real will, from leaders to citizens, are the biggest preventers of this.
I understand all that. The language etc.. Thats why I said theoreticaly speaking if they wanted to join. I am only interested in outside sources that can stop them. Like UN not recognizing the country, others making a coalition to stop them, world embargoing them etc..
Stuff like that
They're worried about the noise and mess caused by 10 million far right heads exploding.
The Caliphate regained some political importance for the Ottomans when Crimea was lost to Russia. It was the first time that a Muslim region was lost to a Christian State and the renewed emphasis on the title of Caliph was used as a convenient fig-leaf to continue to exert some kind of control on the Muslim population of the lost regions. After that there were some feeble attempt to invoke again the primacy of the Caliph in the Muslim world but with very poor results. The last attempt was when Mehmet V declared Holy War against the Entente in 1914 (with negligible benefits). Theoretically a Caliph is elected by the community of believers; practically the title was always claimed by the strongest dynasty (after 1453 and till 1920 by the Ottoman sultans).
The Caliph in the Shi'ia community is a completely different concept and must be a descendant of Ali in unbroken line (Imam). There is no election requirement, either one is the true Imam and then he's also automatically the Caliph, or he is not. There have been 11 Imams according to Shi'ia doctrine and the 12th will be the Mahdi who will restore peace and justice on earth.
Other different (and minor) non conformist Muslim sects differ on the number of true Imams (3, 7 or 9) but the principle is similar to Shi'ia.
There is a reason why no one has ever credibly claimed the mantle of Caliph since the abolition of the title in 1920
The Caliph in the Shi'ia community is a completely different concept and must be a descendant of Ali in unbroken line (Imam). There is no election requirement, either one is the true Imam and then he's also automatically the Caliph, or he is not. There have been 11 Imams according to Shi'ia doctrine and the 12th will be the Mahdi who will restore peace and justice on earth.
Other different (and minor) non conformist Muslim sects differ on the number of true Imams (3, 7 or 9) but the principle is similar to Shi'ia.
There is a reason why no one has ever credibly claimed the mantle of Caliph since the abolition of the title in 1920
If all the Moslems in the world decided that they all want to be under a single government, exclusively controlled by Moslems, with sharia law in force...
Question: is this government to have complete jurisdiction over any territory where Moslems live, including all non-Moslems living there, and including territories where Moslems are a minority?
Because if so then Moslems have just declared a war of conquest on most of the world. And I rather think it would fail. (That is by the way a not-unreasonable definition of jihad: war to establish the political supremacy of Islam and reduce all non-Moslems to the status of dhimmis paying jizya.)
What else? Even if Moslem minorities agreed to migrate to the nearest Moslem majority area... there are Moslem majority neighborhoods and regions in countries where Moslems are a small minority, and those countries would not willingly accept the secession of these territories.
Finally, of course, any such effort would lead to extremely bloody fighting among Moslems as to which of them get to rule this state and whose versions of Islam and Sharia will be followed.
Mookie
Banned
No. Just countries where muslims are at least 2/3rds of population are eligible to join. Other places might get "special status" such as alliances or something, but unless muslims are at least 2/3rds of population then the country cant join.
And now I am reminded there like an bulb-of-light-of-inspiration-bit that there is also another part, a facet of Islam rarely brought on in such threads; the 'schools' of scholars, like Deobandi(spelling?) to name one I can remember right now... They are something more subtile and about the formal aspects of religion as well as some technical sides of practical life, but I wonder if those schools could clash, and even violently.
There is... 3-4 for Sunnis, with a more or less geographical and cultural repartition, and 1+ for Shi'as...
But someone more familliar than me with Islam could say way more. How important are those 'schools', do they ahve amiable debates or... acrimonious fights...
There is... 3-4 for Sunnis, with a more or less geographical and cultural repartition, and 1+ for Shi'as...
But someone more familliar than me with Islam could say way more. How important are those 'schools', do they ahve amiable debates or... acrimonious fights...
Mookie
Banned
Not really. The 4 suni schools go along just fine as far as I know. Its just a school of fiqh, law.
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Not to mention the Aga Khans, of whom the incumbent is the 49th imam of the Nizari branch of the Shi'ite Ismaili sect.
If there wasn't an election, how did the mainstream Shi'ites decide which descendant of Mohammed was to be their imam?
Is Mookie perhaps asking, if you handwave internal opposition and have Muslim consensus on a common leadership, would the non-Muslim world intervene to stop this unification?