Islamic unity is the concern not of others but of Muslims

When we speak today of the weakness shown by the 2-billion-strong Muslim world against a made-up Israel of 6 million, the first thing that comes to mind is whether an Islamic world exists at all.

If Palestine is an Arab issue, then the whole vast Arab world's not taking upon itself this humiliating aggression, these assaults...

The performance by the Lebanese artist Julia Boutros of the Palestinian poet Nizar Qabbani's famous poem against this indifference, this heedlessness, calling out "Where are the millions?", is a powerful revolt. But even though this revolt constantly expresses the discontent of the Arab peoples toward their own governments, it makes not the slightest impression on the rulers. Why might that be? Is there anyone who does not know?

If Palestine is an Islamic-world issue, the matter is of course even graver. Those who number up to 2 billion feel, with every child killed in Gaza each day, with every line crossed, with every sanctity trampled, that their own existence is being treated as nothing; they live the shame, they suffer the pain.

Do the 2 billion foot soldiers of the Islamic world suffer the same pain and feel the same shame? Of course, this too is debatable. We readily distinguish between peoples and governments, but among these peoples there are peoples raised by the governments established in the last century. Peoples have also emerged who have been through an education in "being a nation" by their states and who do not care in the least about what is happening beyond their narrow national borders. Among the peoples of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Kuwait there is no serious difference in either the ethnic or the religious sense, yet each of them, within the borders drawn for them a hundred years ago by Sykes-Picot, memorized by rote from their rulers being a nation entirely apart from the others. Today, when the unity of Muslims is mentioned, the mass that will object to it exists in abundance within each of them. It is also in the nature of things that all of them have internalized a colonial mind, a mind that, in Malik bin Nabi's phrase, has prepared itself for colonizability.

When we complain that there is no global political actor today who, as Muslims, will object to what befalls Muslims, it is of course no surprise that those who immediately point to these rulers and to these peoples that are their product, and cling to that as an excuse for their own indifference, appear as well. These people have been trained in the rote notion that Türkiye achieved a very great gain with the abolition of the Caliphate. It is certain that they have not even thought about the meaning of what they recite. Nobody has turned and asked: what kind of gain is there, and where, in having given up a title that made us, one way or another, the leader of the whole Islamic world? Could there be a possibility that such a renunciation was in our favor and to the detriment of our enemies? When this subject is raised even a little, they immediately begin to talk about how the Caliphate had in fact become ineffective and inoperative.

A short excerpt from a talk I gave years ago (I think in May 2022) as a guest on Muharrem Coşkun's Kırmızı Masa on Akit TV has been circulating on social media these days. The subject there was the attacks Muslims are subjected to, probably again in Palestine, in Myanmar, in Kashmir, perhaps in India and in many places of the world. The talk of course comes again to the existence of a world of 2 billion Muslims who do nothing against these. The answer is in fact always clear: what does it matter if the number of people who cannot form a unity among themselves, who do not meet the problems of Muslims as Muslims, who regard Islam as a reason for their existence yet cannot bring forth an organized entity, is 2 billion, or 10 billion? The existence of the Islamic world as a subject can only be concretized through an organization that takes Islam as its reason for being and its reference.

The comments under the excerpt reveal, frankly, not only a century-old emotional rote against the Caliphate, but plainly a hatred of Islam.

Of course there are also those who mix in a little argument and false historical superstitions. For example, "In World War I, while the Arabs rebelled against the Ottomans and supported the British, the office of the Caliphate, and the Caliph, existed. By their conduct, were they not rebelling against the Caliph? An institution that, because it had run its course, could not keep Muslims together even in those hard days, is it now going to be of use?" is a typical expression of a perception of history that is still prominent today.

Evidently he supposes that in World War I the whole Middle East rebelled against the Ottomans and supported the British.

Yet throughout the 4 years of World War I, almost all of the Middle Eastern peoples remained devoted unto death to "their own state," that is, the Ottomans, and fought together with the Ottomans on every front. The fateful moment of the war took place in the last month of those 4 years, and the share of the Arabs who rebelled at that moment in the collapse is not even one percent of the error or the political share of some Ottoman officers.

It is not at issue that the Caliphate had run its course; on the contrary, it was still a power with an international influence that gave the British the most trouble. The support given by the Indian Muslims is legendary even today. The financial part of that support financed the National Struggle, and with what was left over İş Bank was founded. The Caliphate was abolished not because it had run its course, but because it was still seen as an issue that would enable Türkiye to lead the Islamic world against the imperialists. All the arguments constructed afterward, all the discourses put forward, the rote formulas repeated even today without a second's thought, are ideological consolations produced to justify this great renunciation.

As if we had said that Muslims experienced no problems at all in the period of the Caliphate, or that they would face no problems again if it had remained. The issue is not even re-establishing the Caliphate. The issue is the failure of the Islamic world to pull itself together, to be one and together.

This problem is in fact, in the true sense, already the problem of Muslims. It is not a problem that can be felt by those who do not see themselves as part of the Muslim world. That most of those who object are people who do not see themselves as part of the Muslim ummah is a separate oddity.

Ayşe Hür joined the debate by referring to an article she wrote 5 years ago. In the period when we were in alliance with the Germans, the Germans saw that the Caliphate constituted a great power and assessed that a Jihad fatwa to be issued by the Caliph would be very useful.

So the Caliphate is a great power. This is what is to be seen here. Not that the Caliphate or jihad was a product of the Germans, which it was not. It is that the Germans saw very well an existing potential, a power. Here we of course do not at all defend having entered World War I with the Germans. Neither with the Germans nor with the British-French. The Ottoman officers and Unionists-Masons who brought the Ottomans into that war had in any case split among themselves into British-lovers and German-lovers.

Even as the war continued, while the Muslim (Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Indian, African) peoples on the fronts fought at the cost of their lives, devoted to the Caliphate, the officers and government elites cared more about their responsibilities to their affiliations (British or German). It was not the peoples who believed in the Caliphate and made every sacrifice asked of them on this path, but these calculations that brought down the Ottomans. Is there still anyone who does not understand?