Daniel Pipes on the Attempt To Reinstitute A Caliphate Whose Time Has Long Passed

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

The Caliphate Brings Trauma

by Daniel Pipes
Aydınlık (Turkey)
August 24, 2014

http://www.danielpipes.org/14791/caliphate-trauma

Without warning, the ancient and long powerless institution of the caliphate returned to life on June 29, 2014. What does this event augur?

The classic concept of the caliphate – of a single successor to Muhammad ruling a unified Muslim state – lasted just over a century and expired with the emergence of two caliphs in 750 CE. The power of the caliphate collapsed in about the year 940 CE. After a prolonged, shadowy existence, the institution disappeared altogether in 1924. The only subsequent efforts at revival were trivial, such as the so-called Kalifatsstaat in Cologne, Germany. In other words, the caliphate has been inoperative for about a millennium and absent for about a century.

"The Kaplan Case," a German magazine cover story about the "Caliph of Cologne."

Barry Rubin: Who Gets to be the Caliph?

Who Gets to be the Caliph?

by Barry Rubin

Who gets to be the caliph? After all, if you want to have a caliphate , as revolutionary Islamists do with much popular support among Muslims, somebody has to get the job and he has to have his capital somewhere. And that’s why the caliphate issue, beyond the most abstract demagoguery, is a potential suicide machine.

Once the issue is raised the battle begins. Should the caliph be Sunni or Shia? In all of Muslim history there has never really been a Shia caliph and today’s Shia would not accept any Sunni caliph. The starting point, then, would be a Sunni-Shia war or, rather, a set of such wars.

As for the Sunnis, who among them might be a legitimate candidate? Ironically, the two who have the best credentials are anti-Islamist monarchs: the kings of Morocco and of Jordan who both claim—a claim that is generally recognized—descent from Muhammad, Islam’s founder.