The Caliphate and the Moderates

One of the things that all radical Islamists have in common is the desire to establish a worldwide Muslim Caliphate - literally, the desire to take over the world. As much as they enjoy saying that the Jews are the leaders in their desire for world domination, they actually are working towards that very goal themselves.

Here is an example from Arutz Sheva:

Sheikh Ismail Nawahda, preaching to Moslem masses on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Friday, has brought it out into the open: the call to restore the Moslem Khalifate, or, "Genuine Islamic Rule."

A plan for the "Return of the Khalifate" was published secretly in 2002 by a group called "The Guiding Helper Foundation." The group explained that it wished to "give direction to the educated Muslim populace in its increasing interest in the establishment of Islam as a practical system of rule."

This past Friday, Feb. 24, however, the plan went public. Sheikh Nawahda called publicly for the renewal of the Islamic Khalifate, which would "unite all the Moslems in the world against the infidels."

The Khalifate system features a leader, known as a Khalif, who heads worldwide Islam. Assisted by a ten-man council, his decisions are totally binding on all Moslems.

According to the Foundation's vision of the Khalifate, significant punishment can only be meted out for 14 crimes, including "accusing a chaste person of fornication," "not performing the formal prayer," and "not fasting during Ramadan."

The Foundation recommends working to restore the Moslem dictatorship using a system of small groups around the world. The purpose is so that the "enemies of Islam" who "will definitely try to stop us" will have a "much harder task, if not impossible, if they are faced with a myriad of small groups of differing locations, ethnicities," etc. This method also "ensures that if one group... is found and cut off, other similar groups will remain undetected."

It would be easy to dismiss one tiny splinter group with wild desires. But this is the desire of Al-Qaeda, Hamas and all the other offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the desire of Iran's madman Ahmadenijad.

It is also the desire of Hizb ut Tahrir:

Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da’wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life’s affairs in society are administered according to the Shari’ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State. That state is the one in which Muslims appoint a Khaleefah and give him the bay’ah to listen and obey on condition that he rules according to the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and on condition that he conveys Islam as a message to the world through da’wah and jihad.

Hizb is very interesting. It is not directly linked with terror, but it has been remarkably efficient at gaining political power throughout Asia even with its extremist goals. Its own documents say exactly how they plan to take over the world:

[T]he Party defined its method of work into three stages:

* The First Stage: The stage of culturing to produce people who believe in the idea and the method of the Party, so that they form the Party group.
* The Second Stage: The stage of interaction with the Ummah, to let the Ummah embrace and carry Islam, so that the Ummah takes it up as its issue, and thus works to establish it in the affairs of life.
* The Third Stage: The stage of establishing government, implementing Islam generally and comprehensively, and carrying it as a message to the world.

Their three stages are described in Russia with a bit more alarm:

In what may presage a broader Russian crackdown against Islamist groups, a regional Federal Security Service, or FSB, head says that Islamic extremists in have moved from the "first" to the "second" level of activity, one level short in the Federal Security Service's classification of the point at which such groups will organize "mass disorders" and try to "seize power."

On March 2, Aleksandr Krivyakov, the chief of the Chelyabinsk oblast FSB, told the Interfax news agency that there now existed "definite preconditions for the manifestation of extremism on an ethno-confessional basis" among "persons who profess Islam" in that predominantly Russian region.

He told the Russian news agency that "it is well known that the expansion of Wahhabism in Russia is taking place stage by stage, according to a definite plan. We already over the course of several years have noted cases of distribution in the region of literature and leaflets of Wahhabi content."

"At the present time," Krivyakov continued, "the second stage of this so-called expansion is taking place: the formation of missionary groups among the members of which is being disseminated an anti-government ideology."

And unless something is done and done quickly, he insisted, these Islamist radicals will move to the final, third stage in which there will be "a sharpening of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations," "the activization of national radicals," and even "the organization of mass disorders and the seizure of power."

Three years ago, FSB analysts first began to talk about what they called the "three-stage process" of the Islamist threat to the Russian Federation. At that time, these analysts and others close to them in Moscow said that they had learned of this plan from captured Wahhabist documents.

So even though the UPI story quoted above tries to downplay the threat, it appears that the Russian intelligence was right, and it is reasonable to think that it is a major goal of the export of Wahhabism that fuels Islamic studies worldwide, through Saudi money today.

An interesting manifestation of how Hizb ut Tahrir works was revealed this week with the story of the Muslim girl in England who sued to be allowed to wear her Islamic dress in public school:

A YOUNG Muslim girl yesterday failed in her two-year legal battle to force every school in Britain to allow pupils to decide their own dress code according to their religious belief.

Britain’s highest court ruled to uphold the right of all schools to set uniform rules provided that they consult their local community.

The Law Lords ruled that the human rights of Shabina Begum had not been breached when her school refused to allow her to wear a full-length Islamic dress to class and that Denbigh High School had not acted unlawfully.

A little research in this story finds that the group behind the young woman was none other than Hizb ut Tahrir:

THE image of a pious girl wrenched from her studies for refusing to bare her ankles in school was severely damaged when it emerged that she had taken advice from the radical Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The group, which campaigns for Britain to be subjected to Islamic rule, confirmed yesterday that it had counselled Shabina Begum to insist on wearing a full-length jilbab in lessons.

The extremist party, which Tony Blair wants to ban in response to the London bombings, insisted that it had nothing to do with her legal battle. Shabina was just turning 14 when her brother, then a 19-year-old university student, and another man took her, wearing the jilbab, to school on the first day of term in 2002.

(When I first saw a blurb about the girl, I was sympathetic to her. Only after reading much deeper into the news stories does one see that the public school already allows a Muslim dress uniform that was agreed on by British Muslims a few years ago, and that 80% of her classmates are Muslim. The goal was not modesty - the girl has a very public press conference and is strikingly pretty - the goal is subjugating others under a strict interpretation of Islam.)

This certainly sounds like the strategy of using small groups simultaneously to pressure the world to adapt Islamic law is in place. Whether it is directed centrally or uses a more amorphous structure is not important - the point is that there is a fairly large worldwide movement today, aiming at subjecting all of us to Islamic law. It is highly motivated and it is as active in the West as it is in the East and Third World. The battles between Shiites, Sunnis and Salafists are nothing compared to the desire to subjugate the West and re-establish the Caliphate.

Now the question is, exactly how large is this movement? I think the answer to the question can be found out by asking so-called Muslim "moderates" whether they want to see the establishment of a caliphate and to put the world under Shari'a. Since Islam is not as easily open to interpretation as other major religions, then if this is a central ideal of Islam it would be difficult to find even the most liberal believing Muslim to say publicly that this is not a desirable goal. The impression one gets is that at the very least, they believe that Shari'a is a fair and just system of law for all peoples.

And if even the most liberal Muslim shares the same fundamental goals as Hizb ut Tahrir, then we have a much larger problem than just a few "extremists."