2024 marks a couple of significant anniversaries.  First of all, one hundred years have passed since the Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the venerable institution of the Ottoman caliphate – dating, some might say, back to 1517 when it was forcibly assumed from the Abbasid caliphate of Cairo.  It was a unique institution that had lasted for over 500 years – or, some might say, with a focus on its universal claims, that it was an institution of over 1300 years, dating back to when Abu Bakr al-Siddiq first assumed the caliphate upon the passing of the Prophet Muhammad.  This initial caliphate directs our attention back to the core meaning of caliphate as the anglicized term for khilāfah, denoting succession, or to follow the Prophet Muhammad in assuming leadership of the Muslim community, or ummah.  This act of following is both temporal and substantive.  The successor (ideally elected) to lead the community does so in temporal sequence after the passing on of the beloved messenger of God beyond this material abode.  Yet the new leader also imparts substance, merit, and weight to this succession through following the prophetic legacy in law and spirit.  Hence, the first thirty years of the Islamic caliphate are referenced as the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, not because the period was somehow unmarked by difficulty and strife, but because the ethos of that era was the fully human attempt to emulate, perpetuate, and adapt the prophetic legacy to new sets of circumstances.  Historical change is embedded in the very emergence of the caliphate.

Historical change has likewise been reflected in each of its many iterations since this very beginning.  Perhaps, then, one could argue that the present moment is merely a different era of what an Islamic caliphate means for Muslims across the world.  Perhaps the current moment cannot be described as “after the caliphate” after all – or if it is to be described as such, then as “after the Ottoman caliphate” to signal our intent more precisely, but surely not after the Islamic caliphate.   One of the remarkable aspects about the 1920’s is how the plethora of heated debates, discussions, and intellectual and spiritual introspection surrounding the traumatic loss of the Ottoman caliphate coalesced into multiple trajectories and interpretations of that momentous transition that have (in the closing words of my book, Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History) “persisted until the present in continually evolving, changing permutations.”   To quickly enumerate five pathways that Muslims envisioned in the 1920’s, we can readily identify: the secularist, the Islamist, the internationalist, the legal, and the spiritual.

In at least three of these trajectories, the caliphate remarkably endures.  In some instances, the secularist position seriously engages with Islamic history and sources through a modernist lens – noting that a fully embodied caliphate (conjoining the political and the spiritual into one) ended exactly thirty years after the Prophet Muhammad, precisely when he predicted it would do so, as recorded in authenticated hadith reports.  In other instances of secularist discourse, these reference points are shunted aside as irrelevant and quaint to serious matters of state.  The (similarly modernist) Islamist opposition to this approach rejects this calculus and aspires to “Islamize” the state and its symbols of power through activism and the vigor of politics.  The internationalist approach contemplates international organizations as exemplifying a contemporary vision of the caliphate in a globalized world, with some even considering the OIC (then the Organization of the Islamic Conference and now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation) as the current (though some would also say failed) caliphate of Muslims.  The legal approach concentrates on extending Islamic constitutional law as relevant to Muslim nation-states, through recognizing Muslim heads of state as the caliphs of their independent domains.  And the spiritual approach recognizes that succession to the Prophet Muhammad always had its outer political and inner spiritual dimensions and finds that while the former may ebb and flow, the latter eternally endures.

Both the legal and spiritual pathways intriguingly acknowledge and proffer multiplicity over singularity. These two approaches advocate for multiple caliphs rather than only one at any given time.  In other words, there are caliphs, in the juridical sense, who have assumed the helm of temporal leadership (sometimes called presidents, prime ministers, kings, constitutional monarchs, and so on) for better and for worse, and preferable to a state of lawless anarchy.  And there are caliphs, in the metaphysical sense, who have assumed the burdens of carrying on the prophetic mission to connect people with the Divine through refined character, moral action, and sound hearts.  Perhaps the question is not what comes “after the caliphate” – but rather: in what fascinating forms and details does the caliphate continue to exist in the imaginations, aspirations, and hearts of billions of Muslims around the world?

Yet, secondarily, 2024 also marks the twentieth anniversary of the reintroduction of the term “caliphate” into American public discourse as a strategic part of the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq (which had oil fields – but no prior interest in a contemporary caliphate – and no connection to 9/11 whatsoever).  The caliphate (and more specifically the fabled Abbasid caliphate of cosmopolitan Baghdad) used to signal an exotic land of luxurious mystery and indulgence for Americans and Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the riveting and gloriously illustrated pages of Arabian Nights.  Some authors, like Susan Nance, persuasively argue how it even inspired the American dream!  But the caliphate was effectively redefined in 2004 – in the wake of the Cold War against the Soviet Union – as the next “evil empire.”  It was redefined as the next looming threat to U.S. and European safety, security, and ideals – instead of the aspirational ideal that it once represented for Americans and Europeans in terms of worldly consumption.

In the geopolitical sense, Iraq, Syria, and the world at large have radically changed over the past two decades through the course of this Global War on Terror.  And in evaluating “the state of the world’s human rights,” Amnesty International’s annual report released in April 2024 concludes that “the world is reaping a harvest of terrifying consequences from escalating conflict and the near breakdown of international law.”  So perhaps in the context of 2024, an even larger question looms large: will humanity, as a whole, aspire to achieve rule of law, justice, mercy, and compassion, for all people, for all living creatures, whether at home or abroad?  And, intriguingly, how will the vibrant Islamic legacy of the caliphate, signifying “the potential of the Muslim community to live up to the best interpretations of the Prophet Muḥammad’s teachings, to constitute a model and mercy for the rest of humanity, and to assume a position of virtuous leadership and benevolent guidance” for many Muslims (as noted in Longing for the Lost Caliphate), be a part of that conversation?