What Was Worse than Getting Bombed by a Nuke?

If you were Japanese, perhaps you'd say, "Nothing!"

But reconsider. Japan recovered from the devastation of the firebombs and A-bombs that America dropped upon it in World War II. It rebuilt and recovered national pride and international recognition. Even Germany, literally crushed into rubble in the same era, managed to rise from its ruins and restore its economic and political power.

Think yet again. There exists another great nation, crushed with a single blow. That blow was, in its way, far more deadly than even a hydrogen bomb, for the nation that suffered it has not recovered to this very day. If you guess that we are talking about the Muslim Ummah, then you are right.

Eighty years after the tragic abandonment of the Khilafah, Muslims are the losers of the earth. Few people expect them anytime soon to resume the role that their mission and ideology calls for.

To borrow Bernard Lewis' question (but not his answer), what went wrong? Call this, if you will, a 500-billion-dollar question (This represents the cash that Muslims have drained from their own countries and stashed in the West, according to Forbes Magazine). Fortunately, the answer is not expensive at all; it's free for any regular visitor to halalfoodforthought.com. In a nutshell, the Muslim Ummah lost its recipe for survival, i.e. its special ideology, and the complete system of life that stems from it.

Khilafah (a.k.a. the Islamic State) did not fall overnight. The sad story started when Muslims, led by their scholars, decided somewhere in the Fourth Century after the Hijrah that all questions worth asking already had been asked-and answered. From this came the closing of "the door of Ijtihad." This abandonment of what was, in our terms, Islam's version of "R & D," left the Ummah unprepared for the rising challenge of kafir capitalism. Nevertheless, until the past century, Muslims still possessed every tool they needed to defend and revive themselves within the institutions of the Islamic State.

Unfortunately, the enemies of Islam were more aware of the importance of the Khilafah than Muslims themselves. They worked extremely hard to destroy it following various routes. History has recorded all the stories about the stirring up of ethnic divisions within the Muslim ummah at the edges of the Khilafah, as well as attempts to actually invade the Khilafah and knock it down physically, beginning with Napoleon in the late Eighteenth Century C.E. After that came the kuffar's attempts to provoke "rogue" uprisings within the Islamic State. The most notorious of these were the Ibn Saud movement in the early Nineteenth Century C.E. and the Hashimite family movement in the early Twentieth. Furthermore, the kufr forces launched an aggressive campaign of intellectual contamination in the Islamic State through missionary establishments in Egypt, Ash-Sham, and even Anatolia itself. Under their influence, the Ummah accepted many kufr concepts and rulings, all implemented in the Islamic state through what was known as "al-Majallah."

The saga of the Ummah as "sick man" continued, until the Khilafah in Islambul (an old spelling of "Istanbul") committed the "mother of all mistakes" in World War I, allied itself with Germany, and lost the war. The Allies then vivisected the Khilafah and worked closely with the quisling Mustafa Kemal (no "Ataturk" he) to deliver the coup de grace. That happened March 3, 1924.

This story is not over yet, as we serve you with the hot question: how do we get Khilafah back? It should be no surprise that this question was never mentioned in the standard books of fiqh; their authors never even imagined that the Khilafah would ever disappear, so we need new Ijtihad urgently for that, don't we?

But wait! The Islamic State has been built from nothing once before. Wasn't this what Muhammad (SAAW) was doing for over half of his life as a Prophet? For 13 years, the Prophet struggled in Mecca to establish Islam in life, as a state. This resulted at last in an Islamic State at Madinah, when the Prophet declared the "Sahifah" (constitution). This achievement was the result of the great effort of ordinary humans, without any miracles whatsoever (except, perhaps, Allah's protection to his Prophet during the Hijrah). What humans did once before can be done again: from the Prophet's Sunnah comes our political agenda to re-establish the Islamic State. In fact, it is obligatory to follow him in that, just as it is to follow him in his prayer or his fasting.

So what was Muhammad's method to establish the Islamic State, that method we must repeat today? First, he brought together a group of people that he diligently educated. Then, he launched a determined campaign to change the ideology, and consequently the system, in Makkah. Then, as now, the target was Jahiliyyah, a condition of ignorance where people simply do not know that they could have a better life, and better prospects. (How little things have changed!). In the final stage, when the Prophet (SAAW) had done all he could in Makkah, he sought the support of other tribes and other communities to implement the Islam-based system. The scholars of Seerah called this process talab al-nusra (the seeking of support), where Muhammad (SAAW) was not just after protection, but power! After many attempts, he succeeded; and a new era of human history began.

It is Fard (obligatory) upon Muslims to re-establish the lost Khilafah; it is the only way to implement all of Islam and revive the Ummah.

The Prophet (SAAW) promised that it would return. He said:

The Prophethood will last among you for as long as Allah wishes, then Allah will take it away. Then it will be (followed by) a Khilafah according to the ways of the Prophethood. It will remain for as long as Allah wills, then Allah will take it away. Afterwards there will be a hereditary leadership which will remain for a long as Allah wills…(and) Afterwards there will be biting oppression, and it will last for as long as Allah wishes , then He will lift it if He wishes. Then it will be a Khilafah according to the ways of the Prophethood (again).

May Allah bring it back sooner than later. (Submitted 2/23/2000, revised 3/4/2005)