The Clash of Civilizations and the Great Caliphate

E mailed to me | Jan. 29,04 | Larry Abraham

[oceanperch]

Wow! Long but for the Avg. Jo like me this was a great history lesson and answered many questions in my mind.

If this is an innaccurate account of Muslim history please speak up.

It has given me the big picture historically speaking and my knowledge of history education started here at FR in 1998.

[rdb3]

The word is getting out.

[mean lunch lady]

This may be a dumb question, but what exactly is a caliphate?

[datura]

Patriotic Democrats are about as common as moderate Muslims. The Left in this nation has our national destruction as one of its' core principles.

[Ah Beng]

Spot on!

[nopardons]

The rule over a nation/s.

[Cacique]

ping

[Musket]

There is no doubt Islam seeks world domination. I was watching a documentary on Sundance the other day called War and Peace (Jang Aur Aman) and it showed a man holding up a world map on which each country was painted red and labeled Muslim(or Islam) - yes, including the United States. Apparently this is a popular wall hanging in Muslim households. And they are Nuke crazy. In addition to allah, they worship the Nuclear bomb. They're totally insane.

[dufekin]

The caliphate is the religious and temporal authority headed by a caliph, a successor to Muhammad the Prophet. Caliphs generally can trace their ancestry back to the Prophet. Remember that Muslims traditionally regard women as somehow less than fully human, so all caliphs are male. There are no caliphates presently, although one might suggest that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan does descend from the Prophet.

In the early days of Islam, the caliphate divided, but it generally passed through Spain, Cairo, and Baghdad. The Mongol and Turkish invasions ultimately destroyed the splintering caliphate.

[NutCrackerBoy]

Leadership of various anti-American groups both here and abroad understood the vital nature of the Bush initiative and thus launched their demonstrations, world-wide, to "Stop The War". -Larry Abraham

I believe most anti-Americans are more deluded than that. They do not understand the Islamist threat or the vital nature of the Bush initiative. Take Michael Moore. He is calling the Iraqi "insurgents" the Minute Men of Iraq. He does this because he is stupid.

They think what is fueling the rise of terrorism is the injustice perpretrated by white Western males. They want to give the terrorists *hugs*. Leftists are the useful idiots of the Islamists.

The author is correct, though, in that the left loves to take advantage of every American disadvantage - for example disadvantages caused by the UN and France's scurrilous abandonment of the very cause in which we most need to be united.

[neverdem]

If this is an innaccurate account of Muslim history please speak up.

General thrust of militant Islam seems about right, but some numbers are wrong, IIRC. There are about 5 million Muslims in France which has a total population of 60 million, ~ 8.3%. Fifteen of the Sept. 11 plot came from Saudi Arabia. The other four were Egyptians.

[oceanperch]

I don't know. I am as remedial as they come in history but this article spelled it out in a way that it showed me exactly what and why we are where we are today.

A wonderful history lesson IMO for those of us that are not buffs ect..

[oceanperch]

Thank You for explaining that.

[Travis McGee]

bttt

[dufekin]

I should explain further. Muhammad the Prophet had a large family, including at least four wives, each of which bore several children. So there was some dispute as to the proper line of succession. These disputes often turned into bloody massacres.

Less than a century after the death of the Prophet, one such bitter division resulted in the splitting of Shia and Sunni Islam. These periodic massacres effectively exterminated most of the descendants of Muhammad, and oftentimes the sole surviving male (willing to do so) would become caliph by default.

Each branch of Islam simultaneously maintained its own caliphate.

After the Turkish invasion, some scholars consider the caliphate to have passed to the Ottoman sultan or some other ecclesiastical official of the Turkish empire. No active caliphate exists today.

The only reigning successors of Muhammad today are the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and they do not use the term "caliphate." The House of Saud definitely is not related to the Prophet Muhammad, despite living in Saudi Arabia.

Nowadays, the term "caliph" is used to describe certain Muslim religious leaders, invariably pro-bin-Laden extremists. Some terrorists in Nigeria and Germany recently have identified themselves as caliphs. Most have thousands of subordinates who they treat like the Taliban treated the Afghan people.

"Caliph" is also used in some smaller religious denominations within Islam. It refers to the leader of the group, who behaves roughly analogously to an Orthodox Christian "patriarch."

[rob777]

"This may be a dumb question, but what exactly is a caliphate?"



The "caliphate" is a supreme leader over a unified Islamic empire who combines the functions of Prophet, Priest and King. Muslems like Bin Laden view the loss of the caliphate as the primary reason for the downfal of classical Islamic civilization. The main goal of those who believe this is to re-establish a unified Islamic empire under the rule of a single caliphate. They see the western tradition, with its separation of political and religious authority, as their primary obstacle.

[oceanperch]

You know I have been wondering lately about when I was a kid visiting the Southern Phillipines it was during Pres Marcos time.

The southern Islands were over run with Gorillas who the natives supported because they hated Marcos and his over taxing and land stealing.

Now I am wondering if these "Gorrillas" were Muslims. Being milky white skinned I was told never to go out alone without an escort male from the family. This was 23yrs ago on the Island of Samar which is down just above Mindenao.

The Gorrillas were known to slaughter families of wealth in Northern P.I. and it got so bad that the woman who raised me said that it would never be safe for me to visit ever again.

I heard they killed Mr. White who had dual citizenship and he was the sole gas supplier on Samar. White dude who lived most of his life on Samar.

A nurse who helped me with KV at one time also new of the Gorrillas as she was a missionary in Mendenao (sp).

Where these Gorrillas actually early Muslims in the Phillipines?

[oceanperch]

Thanks. That explains what I was clueless about the slaughtering of each other and the splinter groups.

I never had an understanding of the history and that is something the news has not explained. I just started getting so confused with all the names of the different groups.

Thanks for adding to the history lesson.

[GoLightly]

The only reigning successors of Muhammad today are the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and they do not use the term "caliphate."

The only reigning successor or is the head of the House of the Hashemite the most direct male dependency with political power? I thought the House of Saud had a claim, but it wasn't as direct, so may have gone through a female or younger son in the line somewhere.

Then ya got that black turban, white turban deal within the leaders of the faith, with only those claiming to be descendants of Muhammad allowed to wear the black.

To put it into a different perspective, there are supposed to be *millions* of people said to descend from the 102 people on the Mayflower & the trip happened in 1620, well after polygamy was practiced by Christians. In 10 or 11 generations, we have millions of people from 102.

[Sir Gawain]

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