The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (37 page)

And only the caliph is authorized to declare “offensive” jihad. That’s the kind of jihad that
Reliance of the Traveller
is describing when it declares that the caliph “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
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“Offensive” jihad is an obligation upon the Muslim community as a whole—so that individual Muslims are excused from fighting if other Muslims are doing it.

“Defensive” jihad, on the other hand, is an obligation for every Muslim and requires no caliph. In other words, when a Muslim land is attacked, it becomes the duty of every Muslim to defend it, even in the absence of a caliph to declare the jihad and lead the fight. Thus all jihads since 1924—including even the 9/11 attack—have been classified as “defensive,” by their perpetrators and defenders, who justify them with reference to a long list of grievances. But once a caliph is in power, no such justification is needed.

The Ideal Caliph

One might have thought it an obvious point, but
Reliance of the Traveller
specifies that the caliph must be Muslim, as it is “invalid to appoint a non-Muslim (kafir) to authority, even to rule non-Muslim.” And actually this point has important implications for those who have put their hopes upon the prospects of reform in Islam. For “if the caliph becomes a non-Muslim” or “alters the Sacred Law . . . or imposes reprehensible innovations while in office, then he loses his authority and need no longer be obeyed, and it is obligatory for Muslims to rise against him if possible, remove him from office, and install an upright leader in his place.”

No wonder Egyptian President Abdelfattah el-Sisi, who called for real Islamic reform in his New Year’s Day 2015 speech to the scholars of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, has since dialed back his position. On January 1, 2015, he called for a “religious revolution” pointing out that the “corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.” It seemed that he might even be appealing over the head of the sacred texts of Islam to some more enlightened idea of Allah’s judgment of right and wrong:

           
I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

                
All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

                
I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move . . . because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.
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But just a few weeks later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sisi backed away from this criticism, retreating to the same tired themes of Islamic terrorists as a “minority” who have “distorted” their religion.
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Obviously, even that less courageous language is not likely to pass
muster with ISIS or the Muslim Brotherhood. But the original call for a real “religious revolution” in Islamic thought apparently risked turning even the more moderate Muslims against the Egyptian president. As even minor curriculum changes were introduced into Al Azhar, more traditional-minded students were incensed. One complained, “They want to change the curriculum. . . . They’ve turned it into ‘fiqh-lite.’”
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Fiqh
is Islamic jurisprudence.

Besides being a Muslim, the caliph must also be free, male, and, if possible, a member of Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh of Mecca. (The new caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be a descendant of Muhammad.) He must also be “capable of expert legal reasoning (ijtihad)”; “courageous”; “possessed of discernment”; and “upright,” although “if there are no upright leaders or rulers available, then the least corrupt is given precedence.”

Reliance of the Traveller
quotes scholar Mawardi stating that once the caliph is chosen, “the entire Islamic Community (Umma)” is “compelled to acknowledge fealty to him and submit in obedience to him.” Contrary to the Muslim spokesmen who aver that the Islamic State’s claim to the caliphate is not valid because al-Baghdadi was not chosen by the consent of the entire Muslim community worldwide, the manual asserts that “the caliphate of someone who seizes power is considered valid, even though his act of usurpation is disobedience, in view of the danger from the anarchy and strife that would otherwise ensue.”
⁶

And throughout Islamic history, there have been many who seized power—notably, the first caliphs of the great dynastic caliphates: Abu’l Abbas As-Saffah, the first Abbasid caliph, who supplanted the Umayyad caliph Marwan II ibn Muhammad in 750; the Ottoman sultan Murad I, who declared himself caliph in 1362 in defiance of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mustakfi I in Cairo; and others. The Islamic State is far from the first “self-appointed” caliphate. It is also far from the first whose claim has been disputed by other Muslims.

Declaring the Caliphate

As far as the Islamic State was concerned, restoring the caliphate was a divine imperative. ISIS made the case for it in a document entitled “This Is the Promise of Allah.”

With nary a trace of irony, the Islamic State declaration asserts that without obedience to divine commands, “authority becomes nothing more than kingship, dominance and rule, accompanied with destruction, corruption, oppression, subjugation, fear, and the decadence of the human being and his descent to the level of animals.” By contrast, the caliphate frees human beings from this oppression and subjugation: it is meant “for the purpose of compelling the people to do what the Sharia (Allah’s law) requires of them concerning their interests in the hereafter and worldly life, which can only be achieved by carrying out the command of Allah, establishing His religion, and referring to His law for judgment.”
⁷

To us, the contrast between “oppression, subjugation, fear” and “compelling the people to do what the Sharia requires of them” may seem to be a distinction without a difference—especially considering that Sharia prescribes stoning, amputation, beheading, and even crucifixion for those who fail to do what Allah requires of them.

But as far as the Islamic State is concerned, “oppression, subjugation, and fear” (not to mention widespread decadence and men’s “descent to the level of animals”) come from mankind’s obedience to manmade laws instead of the divinely ordained Sharia. How could what is mandated by the Supreme Being be oppressive? When the Islamic State carries out its beheadings and crucifixions, its jihadis do not consider themselves to be oppressing people, or ruling by fear. Where we see a reign of terror, they see the justice of Allah. And they are his instruments, the executors of his wrath, and the fulfillment of his promise to fight those who disbelieve by means of human beings who obey him: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over
them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts” (9:14–15).

In “This Is the Promise of Allah,” ISIS says that to establish this caliphate and thereby compel people to obey the Sharia, was “the purpose for which Allah sent His messengers and revealed His scriptures, and for which the swords of jihad were unsheathed.”
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On that point all other jihad groups would agree with the Islamic State, even if they reject its claim to constitute the caliphate. All of them share the common goal of restoring the caliphate, and the ultimate purpose of their waging jihad is to establish the hegemony of Islamic law throughout the world.

Justifying the Declaration

Before Islam, according to “This Is the Promise of Allah,” the Arabs were weak and disunited; once they accepted Islam, Allah granted them unity and power. Then followed success unprecedented in world history.

As far as the Islamic State was concerned, nothing had changed—or at least nothing should have changed—since the conquests of Islam’s early days: “The God of this ummah yesterday is the same God of the ummah today, and the One who gave it victory yesterday is the One who will give it victory today.”
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Accordingly, “The time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed on the milk of humiliation, and being ruled by the vilest of all people, after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect—the time has come for them to rise.”
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The “vilest of all people” is a Qur’anic epithet for the “unbelievers among the People of the Book”—that is, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who do not become Muslims (Qur’an 98:6).