What is going on? The caliphate of the Islamic State
Col. Mike Walker, USMC (retired)
All,
In the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres, many people ask: What is going on?
One reason for the confusion over this war is our collective failure to understand the threat we face.
A good place to start is to understand what Abu Bakr al Baghdadi means in declaring himself the caliph of the Islamic State. That understanding hinges on two words: caliph and caliphate.
A caliph is the successor of Muhammad, a deputy of God, of Allah, here on earth. You do not have to believe any of that but you must accept that millions do believe it and will kill for and die in the caliph’s cause.
A caliphate is what the caliph leads. In its complete form, the caliphate embraces a dualistic rule over geography and Islamic ideologically, i.e. both the lands and peoples throughout the world.
Once you understand that then you understand that the killers in Paris and San Bernardino were every bit full-fledged members of the caliphate as any adherent living within the confines of Islamic State holdings in Syria, Iraq or Libya.
That is the dualist nature of the caliphate in a nutshell.
Our Western bias is to see only the geographic component, as ideology is too fuzzy a concept to take seriously.
If you add in a denial of the Islamic ideological underpinning the caliphate then you understand how leaders in Washington and elsewhere can wrongly conclude that the Islamic State is contained.
Unfortunately, a conclusion based solely on geography will always be in error.
That is the strategic mistake made by too many: The refusal to admit that the Third Fitnah, the third great Islamic civil war, is wracking the Muslim world and Abu Bakr’s caliphate is one terrible manifestation of the Fitnah.
That leads to this tragic truth:
Those who are persecuted and murdered across the globe (Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, followers of other non-Islamic religions and the nonbelievers) by the Islamic extremists are victims of this conflict but those enduring the greatest suffering at the hands of the Islamic extremists are the Muslims who fight back.
Semper Fi,
Mike
