Precis
Analyzing the years leading up to the caliphate’s abolition in 1924 and the post-9/11 period which saw the relentless securitization of Muslim subjectivity, this paper argues that the very act of remembering and imagining the caliphate as a potential political configuration in the Muslim world has been criminalized. Anticipatory fear is the mechanism of criminalization, used to mitigate any substantial challenge to the hegemonic character of the modern nation-state—in this case, Islam. Both periods are defined by a fear of a future potentiality in which Muslims are the writers of their destiny and reclaim their subjectivity. The orientalism latent in both historical moments—projecting the image of an unchanging, uniform, backward caliphate—has held the concept captive, foreclosing its capacity to narrate itself into the future. Notwithstanding this criminalization, the ummatic memory of the caliphate has proven resilient, and actively recalling and narrating it can transform remembrance into resistance. Further, this criminalization begs the question of the extent to which Muslim imagination of the caliphate—as a medieval institution unfit for the modern age—is informed not by Muslims’ own experiential knowledge and history but by a discourse constructed for them.Introduction
Relative to the political history of the world, the current global world order remains in its infancy. Despite this, perceptions of the nation-state model as the model for governance dominate the political imagination of its citizens, to the extent that alternate political configurations seem to only exist in the realm of impossibility. Following two European-led world wars, multiple genocides, intractable and bloody border disputes, mass migration, and the Global War on Terror, the devastation wrought by modernity and the nation-state project has also revealed its fragility. That is to say, the ontological and epistemic incongruencies of the nation-state model, specifically in non-western societies, have posed both political and moral dilemmas. The apparent success of the nation-state as the unequivocal standard of political organization in western societies has drawn the attention of political observers eastward, raising the question of why a purportedly universal model of governance seems to garner such little success in non-western societies. Aside from the contemptuous finger-pointing at Islam as the root of political turmoil in the Muslim world, other more illuminating analyses turn towards the ideological characteristics that undergird the structural foundation of the nation-state project.One of these characteristics inherent to the formation of the nation-state, as argued by Wael Hallaq in The Impossible State is that of “legislative monopoly…over so-called legitimate violence.”1 The exercise of violence is so deeply ingrained in the architecture of the nation-state project that, without this key property, the nation-state model would be unsustainable.2 Additionally, as Charles Tilly posits, war-making and other forms of organized violence are fundamental in the consolidation of sovereign power in the state. Although the “power holders” had no intention of creating nation-states as a by-product of the coercive exploitation of power, these states nonetheless are characterized by their tendency to monopolize violence.3 This exercise of violence is intimately intertwined with the notion that the state possesses a god-like sovereignty because, as aptly noted by Hallaq, sovereign will without any substantial tool to back it is rendered useless. Thus, if the state stands as the supreme agent over its territory, it only follows that the state also becomes “the God of gods,” possessing the exclusive right to sanction violence as it pleases.4 Comparatively, this notion of the state as a supreme authority capable of enacting its will in a god-like manner, compounded with the inherently violent disposition of the modern-nation state, raises deeply contentious dilemmas in the Muslim world.
In response to modernity’s peculiar way of arousing anxiety within the political and civil fabric of society, European nations have been experimenting with a collective European identity grounded in a shared eidos through the formation of the European Union (EU) and other transnational cooperatives. However, concomitant discussions regarding political unification in the Muslim world are unduly regarded as a harkening for medieval theocracy. Despite the historicization of the caliphate and the internalization of the nation-state model as the pinnacle of humanity’s linear ascent towards civilizational triumph, imagining new frontiers for political unity in the Muslim world has been taking place. Alternative political theories and astute critiques of the nation-state have been brought forth in response to the volatile post-colonial political order.
Islamist thinkers of the 20th century such as Abu al-ʿAlā al-Maududī and Sayyid Qutb, who in response to the political and cultural crisis of post-colonial Muslim nation-states, were proponents of a distinctly theological approach to political governance.5 On the other hand, thinkers such as Ali ‘Abd Al-Rāziq of Egypt contended that the caliphate had no religious value in Islam and thus there was no religious obligation to establish it.6 Although such discussions are of paramount importance in the sphere of theology, my intention is to extend beyond the creedal limitations of discussions on the caliphate and explore how the caliphate—as a site of ummatic memory and Muslim imagination—has and continues to be criminalized.
Expounding upon Ovamir Anjum’s conceptualization of the caliphate as a site of ummatic memory representing the spatial continuity or unity of all Muslims,7 I argue that the very act of remembering, and indeed imagining, the caliphate as a potential political configuration in the Muslim world has been and continues to be criminalized. By synthesizing various prominent voices on the matter, as well as integrating my own, this paper will analyze two distinct post-caliphal periods: the years leading up to the caliphate’s abolition during the rise of the Turkish Republic in 1924 and the post-9/11 period amidst the relentless securitization of Muslim subjectivity under the guise of counterterrorism schemes. In analyzing both periods, this paper employs Brian Massumi’s concept of anticipatory fear, demonstrating how it operates as a mechanism of criminalization by way of mitigating any substantial challenge that contravenes the hegemonic character of the modern nation-state—in this case, Islam.8 These two time periods share in the political and social spaces in which the imagination, remembrance, and reformulation of the caliphate have been criminalized. Furthermore, the orientalism latent in both moments—projecting the image of an unchanging, uniform caliphate—has held the concept captive, foreclosing its capacity to narrate itself into the future.9 Drawing upon this commonality between these two periods, the paper also asks how recalling and narrating this ummatic memory in the current global climate is critical for the organization of spatial, social, political, and cultural networks in the Muslim world.
Before delving into the core analysis of this paper, a brief look at why the nation-state model elicits a moral predicament in the Muslim world is needed to understand the premise on which the caliphate and Muslim imagination has been subjected to relentless criminalization for the past century.