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in category Fiqh (Jurisprudence)

What is Dr Jonathan Brown's opinion on the Caliphate?

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Dr Jonathan Brown finishes a lecture on the Caliphate on 17th March 2016 with a pertinent response that eloquently rebuts any campaign against Muslims who advocate the Islamic concept of the Caliphate:

'People shouldn't be limited in their right to political ideology... That really plays into the hand of groups like ISIS. The key thing that leads people to support groups like that, is because that those groups call out hypocrisy of global systems, or of Western dominated systems, so there's the European countries that get together and say 'we want the european union', you can have NAFTA, you can have Irish Americans who identify as Irish in someway and support Irish causes and Jewish Americans who can support Israel, so everybody has an acknowledged right to some kind the notion of 'confrere-ity' [i.e fraternity] with others who they identify with across nations, who they identify with, you even have the right to supra-national unions of various sorts and in fact there is already the organisation of Islamic co-operation.

Why is it that in great Britain, the UK, believing in a Caliphate is something that would get you put on a list as an Islamic extremist?

Where, it technically, for the majority of Muslim scholars throughout history, they will tell you that Muslims are required to believe in the Caliphate, as we just discussed that could mean a lot of things. It could mean that somewhere way off there is some guy who happens to be called the Caliph who has no role in my life, but he exists and he legitimises my religious contracts. That's very different from saying I'm going to respond to Abu Bakr Baghdadi's call and kill someone in the street, those are two totally different phenomena.

I think it is important...that people be allowed to identify with supra-national organisations. Otherwise, you're basically saying Muslims don't have that right, but everybody else does'

Full article appears here.


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