Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Hizb ut-Tahrir in Turkey Calls for Restoring the Caliphate
By Uzay Bulut
The Begin-Sadat Centre for
Strategic Studies (BESA)
Perspectives Paper No. 435, March 29, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Violence is not the only means by which Islamist groups
and individuals hope to expand Islamic influence, establish Islamic
governments, and eventually restore the caliphate. In addition to the Islamic
State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda, many non-violent, legal groups either overtly or
covertly share those aims. “Are they violent or not?” should not be the main
question while analyzing Islamist groups or governments. “What is their aim?”
is the better question if we are to understand them and take effective
precautions. Methods might vary, but the establishment of Islamic rule is the
ultimate goal of Islamist ideology.
Recent discussions of jihad or political Islam (or Islamism as it is
commonly known) have most often focused on ISIS. But jihad and other efforts
towards establishing an Islamic political order are not the exclusive province
of ISIS. The expansion and institutionalization of Islam by violent (and
non-violent) means is a millenarian tradition and a fundamental goal of Islam
from its earliest days. ISIS is just one Islamist organization seeking to
re-establish the caliphate.
Dating back to the Prophet Muhammad’s immediate successors, the caliphate
(Khilafah) is a form of government, ruled by Islamic sharia law, that
represents the political unity of the worldwide Muslim community (Umma). The
last caliphate of the Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1924 by republican
Turkey, but Islamist groups and organizations around the world have never
ceased attempting to re-establish the venerable institution.
The Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, for example, an international and
pan-Islamic political organization, is quite active in Turkey, with
conferences, publications, and marches. According to its official website,
“Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party whose ideology is Islam, so politics is
its work and Islam is its ideology. It works within the Umma and together with
her, so that she adopts Islam as her cause and is led to restore the Khilafah
and the ruling by what Allah revealed.”
The group also publishes the monthly magazine Koklu Degisim (Radical
Change), wherein it promotes the idea that “violence and all other problems in
the Middle East are caused by Western states.” It opposes the Geneva talks to
end the Syrian civil war and calls for the fall of Russia, Israel, the UN, and
the “infidel” West. An article published in its June 2016 edition said: “Islam
as an ideological and a political idea is permanent, and it will win.”
On March 3, 2017, Mahmut Kar, the head of the media bureau of “the Turkey Province
of Hizbut Tahrir”, and Osman Yildiz, the Istanbul representative of its
magazine “Koklu Degisim” (Radical Change), were taken into police custody when
they went to the Bayrampasa police station in Istanbul to receive a letter of
notification about a ban on their planned conference, “Why does the world need
the caliphate?” due to be held three days later. They were released a week
later.
This detention must have come as a surprise to the group given that, for
quite some time, it had been holding annual conferences advocating the
restoration of the caliphate. On March 3, 2015, on the 91st anniversary of the
abolition of the caliphate, Hizb ut-Tahrir held a conference titled “The
Democratic Presidency Model or the Rashidun Caliphate?” at the AKP-governed
Uskudar Municipality. The same month, thousands of supporters marched in
Istanbul, chanting: “From Turkey to Egypt, from Indonesia to Morocco, from
Lebanon to Kurdistan, caliphate, caliphate!”
The following year, on March 3, 2016, the group organized another
“international caliphate conference” in Istanbul’s Barcelo Eresin Hotel, which
was attended by about 1,000 people with speakers from many countries. “I can
assure you of the disbandment of the United Nations and its so-called Security
Council, the IMF and all these criminal organizations,” Muhammad Ismail
Yusanto, the president of Sharia Economy and Administration Institute and head
of the media bureau of Hizb ut-Tahrir of Indonesia, told the conference. “I can
assure you of the collapse of the superpower and its allies.” Kar, also in
attendance, argued that “Turkey, Iraq, Syria or Pakistan could be the center of
the caliphate.”
According to Kar, his recent detention stemmed from Ankara’s eagerness to
give the impression that it was at war with ISIS. He wrote: “Turkey, in order
to say ‘I struggle against ISIS’ and to prove this to the West and the USA with
concrete statistics, arbitrarily detains many Muslims without doing a detailed
investigation.” This, in his view, was totally unnecessary, since “Hizb-ut
Tahrir absolutely opposes the use of force and violence and armed struggle …
The real issue is reminding Muslims of the caliphate that was abolished 93
years ago. It is about, without prevaricating or beating around the bush,
screaming the fact that the caliphate is the administrative system of Islam.”
That this prognosis was apparently misconceived was evidenced by the fact
that the planned caliphate conference was eventually held (on March 6, 2017),
in the sports hall of the AKP-ruled Ankara municipality with the participation
of over 5,000 people (according to a Hizb ut-Tahrir press release). “We want
the Rashidun Caliphate,” said theologian and author Abdullah Imamoglu. “When we
say this, are there those who say ‘What is the caliphate when there is kafir
[infidel] America?’ We reply to them that a second caliphate is not a dream.”
This desire is hardly limited to Hizb ut-Tahrir. The yearning for the
imposition of sharia law and the restoration of the caliphate is a central
element of political Islam. The open expression of this desire and the means
for its pursuit are simply a matter of timing and tactics. ISIS and al-Qaeda
strive to attain these goals through violent means. Hizb ut-Tahrir, like other
Islamist organizations and governments, does not engage in violence – or at
least will refrain from violence until “the right time” comes.
So before rushing to whitewash Islamist efforts to re-establish the
caliphate by attributing them to poverty, “Muslim grievances,” or Western
foreign policy, one ought to consider the historical continuity and
universality of these efforts as well as their doctrinal foundations.
From Turkey to Indonesia, from Pakistan to Canada, from Egypt to Sweden,
millions of Muslims – regardless of economic, social, or ethnic background –
yearn to re-establish a caliphate ruled by sharia. Their common trait is their
religious piety. Much of the history of Islam is a history of conquest of
non-Muslim lands and the establishment of Islamic rule in them. In fact, that
is Islamism’s ultimate goal.
Before one defends sharia law in the name of “diversity” or
“multiculturalism”, one would therefore be well advised to investigate what
happens to human rights – particularly women’s rights and religious liberty –
once political Islam becomes the ruling ideology.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist. She covers Turkish politics, political
Islam, and religious minorities in Turkey and the Middle East.
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