Ideology of the caliphate … Bernard Levy and others

Richard Labeviere

On June 9, 2014, the "Islamic State" or Daesh, the Arabic acronym of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, came to be known to the world.

This organization succeeded in overrunning Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, even without fighting.

Daesh apparently managed to buy the loyalty of Iraqi army officers responsible for securing the city. Consequently, it captured arms warehouses in the city and also most reserves at the branch of the National Bank of Iraq in Mosul.

Twenty days later, or more specifically on June 29, Daesh promulgated a caliphate by forming a model Islamic state where taxes were abolished and Islamic sharia law was applied.

What does the caliphate mean then? The caliphate symbolizes the state and its Muslim population that lives under the rule of a caliph. In Arabic, a caliph refers to the person who succeeds Prophet Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion. By the same token, a caliphate means the political system in which a caliph rules. It also refers to the period of time during which this political system is applied.

This was why several caliphs took over since the emergence of Islam (1).

The most important caliphates, following the rule of the four Rashidun caliphs, were the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus, the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo. These three caliphates were followed by the Ottoman Caliphate.

Some of the discovered literature of Daesh shows that the organization derived the main lines of its ideology from these four caliphates, without any distinction.

Daesh's literature underscores the greatness of these caliphates. The organization wanted to return to the "glorious" and "golden" age of these caliphates.

The absence of any lines of demarcation between religion and politics is yet another feature of Daesh's ideology. There is no distinction in this ideology between the soul and the mind, or between faith and intellect.

A third feature of this ideology is belief in the caliphate being applicable to all humans everywhere. In this, Daesh shows complete disregard to the historical context of the caliphate as a political system.

It is important to refer to some historical points here before analyzing this brutal discourse. The sectarian foolishness that characterizes Daesh's concept of the caliphate is also a characteristic of our Western ideology.

Concept of time

The ideology of the caliphate cannot be separated from the beginnings of Islam as a religion. The Christian Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire jockeyed for world supremacy then. The Jews, the Arabs and the Pagans lived side by side each other, even as the Christians and the Jews looked with disdain at the Pagans.

Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 when the Red Stone was worshipped. French scholar Maxime Rodinson writes that "Muhammad thinks, moves and lives in front of us. He is astonishingly present so that we can imagine him as he is. He appears as a strong; fully energetic; courageous, and volunteering man. He is emotional; anxious; enthusiastic, and always dreams of achieving the impossible."

German philosopher Martin Heidegger sought to reshape metaphysics by asking the question: Why there is always something? According to Descartes, the church priests and the neoplatonists, this is all about finding the origins of words. Heidegger agrees with this. He wants to get to the origins of words to open the door for the presence of new beginnings.

Muhammad left Mecca because its people refused to recognize him as a prophet. He moved to Medina where he turned it into a city of God. Obstinacy is an important issue in Muhammad's story. He experienced this obstinacy when he reconciled with the Jews. Was not he the new interpreter and the new spokesman of Abraham's God? Muhammad succeeded in overcoming this challenge later when he declared that he was the real heir of Abraham. That was when the Jews refused to obey him.

From the Khmer Rouge to the Taliban

This myth was turned by some people into some sort of reality. A type of witchcraft took place. This was mentioned by French literary theorist Roland Barthes who drained realities of their historical backgrounds to keep them away from any human influences.

Mythologies are made to do away with realities. They are an unlimited flow of illogic. They make everything possible. Making new beginnings just means the abolition of old things.

Following several years of civil war and the formulation of the political system of democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge installed a very violent dictatorship, in an environment that was ready for the abolition of all classes and the removal of traces of the colonialist capitalism. 

The Khmer evacuated all residents from the cities and forced them to work in the rice fields, in conditions that amounted to slavery. The Khmer also destroyed all historical buildings in a systematic manner. They destroyed the heritage everybody left before them.

They used a hammer in plucking out ancient engravings in the historical Angkor site and then sold them to Thai antiquities traders. Before this, they beheaded dozens of Buddha Pine statues that date back to the 12th century.

Taliban did the same thing in Afghanistan in March 2001. The group destroyed three gigantic Buddha statues that were engraved in a mountain, 230 northwest of Kabul.

The message these incidents deliver is that some people do not recognize whatever came or happened before them. This is why they have to make a new beginning, one that considers an enemy or a challenge everything that precedes it.

Daesh followers did the same thing in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and other areas. Like the Khmer Rouge, they stole ancient pieces and sold them to traders. On December 1, 2013, the jihadists reinvaded the Christian Syrian city of Maaloula. They kidnapped 12 nuns from their monastery and then committed a massacre against ancient heritage in the city. They destroyed exceptional church icons and stole the monastery, one of the oldest in the world, which dates back to the 4th century.

Because these criminals live in a digital age, they snapped everything on camera instantly. The city was liberated from Daesh control on April 14, 2014 by the Syrian army and the allied Hezbollah troops.

In all cases, the ideology of the caliphate depends on three main principles, namely suspending time, rededicating it and destroying everything that belongs to another age. This happens within the framework of the old duality of "we" and the "others". This duality portrays the struggle as one between good and evil.

In an article that was published on June 14, 2018, French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy claimed that he was friends with the elite of New York, including the well-known CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour.

Levy wrote, "I had not met Amanpour since the Sarajevo years. A quarter of a century had passed since then. She was one of those editors who viewed the Bosnian war as a Spanish war. She reminded me of Martha Gellhorn, Ernst Hemingway's wife."

This is how this phony philosopher creates mythologies that contradict the historical realities. These mythologies aim first and foremost to pit the good against the bad. But this is one form of Parisian degradation.

In one of his books, namely "Testament of God", Levy tries to imbue the history of peoples with this essential nature. He does this to show the eminence of his coreligionists. The Greeks, he says, stay put, while the Jews immigrate. Consequently, those who stay in their places will be totally immersed in ugly racism, whereas those who travel will be open to the world.

In another book, namely "French Ideology", Levy claims that anti-Semitism was one of the basic historical characteristics of the French people. Anti-Semitism, he says in the book, goes hand in hand with France at heart.

Levy's egoism gives him courage to identify himself with Jean-Paul Sartre.

The life of others is our life too. It is easy to turn a blind eye to the absolute evil that is Daesh or al-Qaeda so that we, as Westerners, can absolve ourselves from blame for its presence. The abolition of history and making the clock tick back are not the preserves of the jihadists. We have invented the machine that totally sidelines the minds of people through this moral duality.

Digital and electronic networks make people like and dislike at one and the same time through a simple click. They give one millions of friends, even as he might not say "good morning" to his neighbors. These devices produce social destruction, isolation and estrangement.

In the German film, "Lives of Others", East German intelligence officers spy on the lives of suspicious people and regime enemies. Critics then considered communism to be an absolute evil. The US, in the meantime, developed a system to eavesdrop on the phone conversations of the whole planet in collaboration with the UK, Poland and Australia.

In other words, the lives of others are part of our life too. We should not allow our differences to make us set our critical view of our evil machines a side.

References

1 – Maxime Rodinson – Sawa Publishing House – 1961

2 – Mythologies: Roland Barthes – Sawa Publishing House - 1975