The Bloody Lines of the Muslim History of Despotic Khilafat: The Lessons Ulema Ignore To Advocate a System of Caliphate Almost As a Necessary Part of Islamic Faith
By
Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef, New Age Islam
15 July
2022
What
Muslim Sultans and Rulers Did In Their Respective Realms Was Very Similar To
What Was Done Before Them in the Times of Alexander the Great of Macedonia and
Darius of Persia Et Al
Main
Points:
1. 1-The power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
2. 2- Revival
of Khilafat is not a solution; rather, it is a part of the problem as its
history tells us.
3. 3-
Highlighting bloody lines of Muslim history may be helpful to awaken the
people's consciousness regarding the jargon of Islamic state.
-----
The
occasion was a sultan's coronation; the Ottoman Sultan Mohammad the third.
There was a jubilant atmosphere in a corner of the royal palace, while the
whole castle was in a serene mournful grip of deep sorrow, grief, and agony.
Because the coronation ceremony coincided with the simultaneous appearance of
19 coffins from the palace. These coffins were of unfortunate doomed princes,
aged, younger, and children; all the male members of the royal family,
brothers, and cousins who would be claimants of the crown in the future. The
Sultan, in his perception, was thus saving his lot. For that purpose, he
managed to get a fatwa from the chief mufti of his court to kill all his male
family members for safeguarding the Ottoman state from court conspiracies,
royal plotting, and insurgencies. Poor mufti was used to issue this kind of
fatwas either by hook or by crook. All the nineteen brothers were strangled by
the hands of dumb slave executioners. The barbaric act culminated when six
conceiving concubines of the slain princes were also arrested, sewn in the
sacks, and drowned in the Bosporus in cold blood so that they could not bear
any child.
Furthermore,
this cruel Sultan had killed his son Mahmoud on mere suspicion of him secretly
conspiring with the rebels against the Empire in Anatolia because the Prince
had wished to leave Constantinople to fight them. The brute took that
otherwise, killed him, his mother, and his close friends. Because of his
suspicious mind-set, he decided that training the escaped princes in warfare
and how to run the state affairs would be suspended. And all the escaped
princes would be confined in a special chamber of the royal palace, where all
the pleasures of life were available to them.
However,
because they were confined and cut off from the outside world, they became
utterly illiterate, cowardly, and unable to cope with life's challenges.
Islamists
and most Ulama aspire to revive the old caliphate system. Very naively, they
have a romantic idea of the caliphate and propagate and convince Muslim youth
that once Khilafat is established anywhere in the world, it surely will remove
all the suffering of the Ummah. That Muslims once again might be a world force
to be reckoned with. In their day-to-day sermons, Ulama preach that once upon a
time, Muslims converted this world into heaven through a caliphate. Where there
was peace, prosperity, the rule of law, justice for all, freedom, equality,
human rights, and so on. Nevertheless, sans the brief period of Rashidun
caliphs and, more specifically, the blessed times of Abu Bakr and Omar, all
Muslim history is a living refutation of all these tall clams.
As a humble
student of Muslim history, I did not find sufficient examples to substantiate
Islamist statements. What Muslim sultans and rulers did in their respective
realms was very similar to what was done before them in the times of Alexander
the great of Macedonia and Darius of Persia et al. For instance, take into
consideration the Ottoman's story, we find that the gory and sanguine brutal
act of fratricide was perpetrated soon after the Ottomans had started their
innings in hegemony, conquests, and power. So when the fourth Ottoman Sultan
Bayazid 1, the elder son of Murad 1, rose to the throne, he strangled his
younger brother Yaqub to death with a bow string. And this too without any
provocation from the victim. Bayazid was no doubt a great warrior and
conqueror, yet because he had brutally shed innocent blood, perhaps he was
punished by God. So when he was lavishly drinking and passing his time in
hunting, Timur Lang, the savage Mongol, suddenly invaded and defeated him. He
would carry the humiliated, crestfallen Sultan with him wherever he went.
Bayazid died soon in his confined, caged humiliation, and Timur Lang returned
to another venture. Though the power returned to Ottomans, with the power, the
fratricidal tradition also went on without remorse and no mercy for nearly one
and a half-century was shown.
The
Ottomans were engaged as ever in the internal power struggle and domestic
conflicts, so there were battles for power among the five sons of Bayazid.
Eventually, prince Mahmood was successful, and he got other brothers killed.
Mahmood was replaced by Ahmad 1, who spared his younger brother Mustafa's life
only because the latter had developed insanity, thereby not threatening his
throne. Or, to some historians, Mustafa became mentally disordered because of
his fearful constant confinement by the orders of Sultan Ahmad. During his
reign, his mother, Grandmother Safia Sultan, who had always been powerful and
used to rule by proxy, and his beloved Armenian concubine Kosum Sultan held all
the authority. There were bloody harem plots, court conspiracies, and power
struggles among all these ladies. When Ahmad died poisoned by his sister's
hands, prince Usman inherited the throne.
Usman, was
otherwise a capable man, yet he also killed his younger brother. The whole
governing system had become so corrupt that when he attempted to reform the
machinery, the corrupt machinery, in collaboration with the mother of the
insane Prince, instigated an uproar and rebellion among the Janissaris
(the special force). Eventually, he was dethroned and imprisoned; then, on the
orders of the mother of his maternal uncle Mustafa the deposed Sultan was
strangled by the same rope used to strangle his younger brother to death on his
order.
So after
the sanguine bloody tradition of fratricide in Ottomans, a new tradition of
killing the kings was started. Moreover, this phenomenon of murdering brothers
and kings was a norm throughout history until the end of this wretched system
of Khilafat in 1923 at the hands Of Mustafa Kamal Atatürk.
Sultan
Murad iv was a powerful ruler who efficiently ended unruly elements in his
realm. However, at the same time, he was a malevolent and mischievous man too.
Once he saw some women swimming on a river bank, he instantly ordered to drown
them all without any crime of the poor lot. Killing people was festive fun for
him. It is said that during his reign, he killed nearly 25 thousand innocent
people and often he himself would behead the poor victim. Even he did not spare
his grand mufti, who dared to criticize him though in very low profile.
The Day
Of The Trench: A Shameful Episode
The lengthy
and checkered history of Islam is full of horrible incidents. For instance,
Karbala, the Battle of the Camel, the Siffin, the Harra Incident, etc. Muslim
brothers' blood was unjustly shed during these fateful days. There was one such
black day in Muslim-majority Andalusia. This nation was governed by Muslims for
eight centuries. They experienced numerous catastrophes and murders. But they
also did a lot of terrible things to one another. The Day of the Trench was one
such horrifying episode.
Hakam bin
Hisham was Andalusia's selfish, autocratic, and cruel ruler. He reached the
throne by murdering his uncle Suleiman, whose corpus had been hanged in the
market of Cordova, his capital for several days. During his despotic rule, the
Muslims of Toledo rose against him in revolt. His general Emir Amros reclaimed
the city. Then the general invited the city's elders to a festive dinner after
the announcement of a general amnesty. With a secret arrangement, the guests
were taken to the venue of festivity one by one. A vast and deep ditch had been
dug out there. When any guest reached near the ditch, the hidden executioners
would take on their prey, beheading him, throw his body in the ditch. All
night, this sanguine and bloody game was played out there. On the second day,
people of the city would ask each other where their elders all had gone. The
blood imprints and rampant and reeking atmosphere around the bloody venue solved
the puzzle then. A total of seven thousand were slain in cold blood and deceit.
Because Sultan Hakam doubted their loyalty and fidelity toward him. A lot of
the poor slain were newly converted Muslims from Christianity. Through this
brutal killing, many of the newly converted Muslims became fully isolated. They
hate Arabs and the Arab ruling class and began to come closer to native
Christians.
There were
many bullying and oppressive rulers in Umayyads. Nevertheless, no one can
justify how the Abbasids eradicated the dynasty. Abu Muslim Khurasani, the
chief instrument in establishing Abbasid rule, is reported to have killed more
than one lakh innocent people in his campaign. Moreover, what the first Abbasid
ruler Abul Abbas al-Saffah, (Saffah, incidentally, refers to a blood shedder in
Arabic) did with the perished Umayyads is beyond human imagination. Abul Abbas
invited Umayyad’s elders to a dinner. The doomed guests ate the poisoned food
and died, then a royal table was laid on the corpses, and a feast was given.
And it is
only a tip of the iceberg, or else volumes are not sufficient to mention all
those Muslim rulers and sultans such as Nadir Shah and Timur Lang did in
killing millions and millions of Muslims. The latter is remembered as he used
to build minarets of human skeletons when he razed a city or defeated an army.
Ironically, he was giving himself the title of a Mujahid!
Muslims
often raise this question as to why the West or the world is not ready to
accept an Islamic state, say, Muslim Brother's establishment in Egypt,
Islamist's electoral victory in Algeria, Hamas's in Palestine, and Taliban in
Afghanistan! I think the answer lies in what Muslims did in their history in
the name of Islam!
Any state
founded in the name of a religion arouses great fear and anxiety in the modern
world.
So, the
point is, buying this notion that the caliphate or Islamic state can resolve
all the problems of the Ummah is necessarily flawed and misleading. It shows
complete ignorance of the gory details of Muslim history. The least Ulema can
do is read Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi's pioneering work Khilafat wo
Mulukiat (Caliphate and Monarchy). Muslims worldwide must rethink their
situations, assume a realist approach, and adapt to new realities that have
come into existence after the Second World War.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Dr.
Mohammad Ghitreef is a Research Associate with the Centre for Promotion of
Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims of India, AMU Aligarh.
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism