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. ----- 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. 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