Author Archives: caliphatefoundation

The Ottoman Caliphate and Arab Nationalism

…there was no nationalist fervour among the Ottoman Empire’s Arabic-speaking subjects. One historian has credibly estimated that a mere 350 activists belonged to all the secret Arab societies operating throughout the Middle East at the outbreak of World War I, and most of them were not seeking actual Arab independence but rather greater autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.

When the Judge Ruled Against the Caliph

When [the fourth Caliph] Ali was setting out to Siffin, he found that he was missing a coat of armour of his. When the war was over and he returned to Kufa, he came across the armour in the hands of a Jewish man. He said to the Jew, ‘The armour is mine; I have not sold it or given it away.’ The Jew said, ‘It is my armour and it is in my hand.’ He replied, ‘Let us go to the qadi [judge]!’

T J Winter on the Islamic System

In an authentically Muslim society, the level of government intervention is insignificant by comparison with the situation under secular materialism, whether socialist or capitalist, since a society whose members know that they are answerable to God is largely self-regulating. Spontaneous charity, channelled particularly through the family structure, renders poverty and homelessness a rarity.

The Black Man

At this, Muqauqis said to the delegation, “How could you agree to make him your leader and superior, whereas he ought to have been your subordinate?” To this the delegation replied, “No, despite the fact that you see him as black, he is the best among us in knowledge, in nobility, in intellect and opinion, and we do not look down upon the black man.” Muqauqis said to ‘Ubada, “Come forward, O black [man] and speak to me gently, for I fear your colour, and if you were to talk to me in a harsh tone, my distress shall be all the greater.” ‘Ubada, noticing Muqauqis’ fear of black people, said, “We have in our army a thousand people darker than me.”

T J Winter on Islamic Law

Areas of the Muslim world where the legal systems imposed by the former colonial powers are still in force, and where the lethal virus of secularity has been injected deeply into society, are suffering from a growing incidence of crime, and there is a growing awareness that this can only be combatted through a return to Islamic law and ethics, and the rejection of alien values.

Bernard Lewis on How the Ottomans Treated Jews

More than a century later Samuel Usque, a Portuguese Jew who wrote a famous book called The Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel, expresses a similar view. Usque sets forth these consolations in two categories, the one human, the other divine. Among the human consolations the “most signal is great Turkey, a broad and spacious sea which God opened with the rod of His mercy as He opened the Red Sea at the time of the exodus … here the gates of liberty are always open for the observance of Judaism.” This must have come as a considerable surprise to a traveller from sixteenth-century Portugal.

T J Winter on Our Planet

This harmony of man and nature is an idea alien to the Western heritage, both Hellenic and Christian, and this is one reason why the aberration which is modernity appeared only in the West. In a few short generations, kāfir civilisation has ravaged the earth, poisoned its air and seas, killed thousands of species of birds, animals and plants, and now promises to bring about our own extinction…

Nietzsche and Islam

Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (–I do not say by what sort of feet–) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin…