This Caliphate of Charlatanism

"For over ninety years, we have been living without a Caliphate."
The sentence, uttered during a discussion on the BBC Sunday Morning Live by a supporter of the Dawlat al-Islamiyya would arouse indignation as well as – possibly – a glimpse of sympathy for the almost absurdly well-spoken Islamist Abu Rumaysah. The recruits flocking to the black-and-white banner now largely synonymous with bloody murder, destruction of a myriad of human heritage and an a particularly insensitive burning of a Sunni Arab fighter pilot are "seeing an opportunity for the Quran to be fully realised", Rumaysah's words. Terms as eloquent as they are frightful.

Lands currently claimed by the IS – Indians and Spaniards, beware!

The blows against our mindsets of this alleged Caliphate, whether from pious submission or a mind for violence, finally realised after a long, painful diaspora and separation of believers from secular-temporal authority conjoined in a necessary beacon, now prepared at last to demonstrate the power and glory of the faith. Owing this notion only a brisk look, and lending the black-and-white banner a few inches of mental credibility, the ninety-year absence would seem as benevolent as it may be true. These days, this very spring, we look back a century to the first burst that opened the century of genocide or – rather  – the final escalating of long-standing build-up of violence and complete eroding of inviolability of subject not of the Ummah, under the auspices of then quasi-reigning Caliph and Medicator of the Sick Man of Europe Mehmed. The intention of complete destruction or expulsion (often combined) of Armenians, Pontic Greeks and others not deemed fit to live under Ottoman-Sunni Islamist hegemony from the Turkish peninsula may not, as Pope Francis bravely pointed out, have been the first act of genocide of the century (if one takes into account the scale of murderous activity of the German colonial authorities in South West Africa) though it certainly saw extents and excesses far more wide-reaching and important in inspiring the later actions of deportation and mass murder against European Jews by the Caliph's former ally, Germany, under its own militant zealotry.

Ridding the world of Kufar in 1915 and 2015 – the violent afterbirth of the presently alleged Caliphate and the death throbs of the last. How will the scene above seem in another century?

In both cases, for different reasons, the regime that drove a culture of exclusion of hatred into Vernichtung was itself overthrown most violently in the wake of blood it unleashed, seeing a string of vengeful actions more or less legally undertaken against its authors. The alleged Caliphate arising out of the shattering beacon of Arab National Socialism (in Iraq largely a construct of its shards) has so far stood against the far superior firepower representing virtually the reminder of the international community and stretched its activities of rebellion and recruitment far beyond its current borders, to bloodletting, heartbreaking results. In a manner perhaps unprecedented, the war for the soul of this Caliphate – a culture of silence and obedience on the matter of its creed – seems to have reached into the homes of the most joyfully godless of this world.

Dividing France and Europe and its different political and ethnic communities – for or against 'blasphemy' and its authors? What is 'blasphemy'?

The attack on Charlie Hebdo, motivated by its ridicule of – frankly – a personality cult still surrounding a 7th century autocrat, by disobedience (by non-believers) to theocratic blasphemy laws perhaps seemed more supreme, more ignominious in its conjunction with the rise of this alleged Caliphate, lending a brand of credibility to actions otherwise ascribed to a few deranged individuals and their lone interpretation of the Prophet's will. When Demetrios Tsafendas stabbed Hendrik Verwoerd to death in the heart of the South African House of Assembly in 1966, his claim of a tapeworm commissioning him to kill the Prime Minister proved absurd enough for him to escape the noose, but if a tapeworm had been Muhammed's claimed source of God's final and unique message to humanity, Tsafendas' apology might have warranted not only his own death as a dangerous fanatic, but a wave of destruction and loathing against Muslims across South Africa. France is not at the frontline of the Islamic State, despite the blood shed in a war of bullets against the pencils of some of the capital's foremost writers, artists, editors; Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Mustapha Ourrad, Charbonnier (who even posthumously raised his pen against less dignified critics in a book in condemnation of attacks or bigotry against European Muslims). Nor were the proto-French armies of Charles Martel – smeared by Adolf Hitler in one of his less famous speeches for preempting the possibility of a Islamised Germanic culture ready to wage Jihad on the rest of the world – the first to stand against the warriors of the faith. A century before Poitiers, the Arab (and staunchy anti-Islamic) poet and satirist Abu Afaq lamented the fall of unbelieving Arabs to the stupefying cries of Halal and Haram by its adherents;

Long have I lived but never have I seen
An assembly or collection of people
More faithful to their undertaking
And their allies when called upon
Than the sons of Qayla when they assembled.

Men who overthrew mountains and never submitted,
A rider who came to them split them in two

 [denoting] "Permitted", "Forbidden", of all sorts of things.
Had you believed in glory or kingship
You would have followed Tubba. 

Tubba, a non-Islamic statehood on the peninsula, was perhaps insufficient to stand against the popular tide rising in the first years of Islam, but echoing Victor Hugo's statement that "one resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas", these lines of sardonic poetry do show how a (once) mighty nation can be broken and divided at the onset of an idea – as does the breaking of a long line of Bourbons and a short line of Bonaparts in his own time and place. Of the fate of Abu Afaq we ought not to speak, or of the Jewish satirist Asma bint Marwan, who after his sudden demise chose to follow his example rather than the Prophet's, commencing a long line of true martyrs now reaching into the headquarters of a newspaper in Paris putting those same words of doubt and refusal into colourful, glib imagery. The story of Muhammed and Abu Afaq, recreating itself to and beyond this day, the thick range of allegedly exemplary behaviour embodied in the Sunnah, the perverse beyond-Ceausescu level of leader worship on which such examples and ethics thrive (the most extreme save for the actual deification of political leaders) must necessarily cast a crescent light over more recent atrocities – in Paris, amidst the ruins of Kobane and Palmyra, along the shores of Libya. The example set by this man ought never to be emulated, making the cry of Je Suis Mohamed seem more ominious still.

Perhaps not the "glory and kingship" of Abu Afaq, but a far preferrable example to follow. Gazing into the unknown, for one thing, far exceeds any recitation.

Revelation is not the solution, divinely inspired (?) law is certainly not the solution, unless one happens to believe in the strictly and explicitly monoculturalist (and ofttimes, it should be said, monoethnic, with all its implications) assumption preached by the Caliphate – not solely against those of us proclaimed as Kufar, who regard the work of divinely authored and perfectly memorised audiobook received during nightly intercourse with an archangel as laughable and nonsensical, but against Shia, Sufi, Kharijite, Alawite (the Ali ibn Abi Talib-worshipping fools) and any other branch deriving its creed from those very sessions of intercourse – but the necessarily critical approach to any will seeking to embody a divinely ordained will on earth, always in accordance with, if not dictated by, a personal private ethic and interest. The foehood of taboos and views derived from consensus seems here to be the greatest enemy, bent on the notion that something "a billion people deem as sacred" ought to be handled differently by the human intellect, or preferably not at all. I refuse to believe a billion people or even half that figure would swallow the claims of Muhammed if asked privately, behind a metaphorical veil of secrecy. If circumstances in the remnants of the first Caliphate were now different and secular, non-segregated education prevalent, the figure would be significantly lower still. Education and a code of law conceived from human ratio are the push and flow of an enema capable of flushing out the most long-held clusters which, stocked in sufficient quantity, build the menial blockade of theocracy. 

The Book of Mormon – not now, nor ever previously the constitution of the United States, though its teachings of revelations have influenced not only Republican nominee Mitt Romney but the inclusion of firing squads in the Utah criminal code, where it was reinstated months past.

When facing more recent religious constructs in nations purposedly more developed, such as the much more recent (than it claims to be) Book of Mormon – that most obvious work of a charlatan and a con artist – the same mark of respect drops significantly. And nobody would deem a review of Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, or The Lord of the Rings as a mark of insensitivity against their readers or the speakers native to the English language. This notion, a fandom worthy of protection, an unknown figure clinging to huge popularity only through secular institutions, human-maintained torture and fear and an eerily increasing set of laws interpreting slander of fantastic and sometimes fanatical claims as criminal offences must be overturned for the political results and oppression arising from that same fanaticism to be quelled, its tenets broken, its authority bent in halves and hurled into the corner of the private sphere. Without a constant, outragedly scathing debate on the ethics and messages of any scripture and the questioning of personality cult as a phenomenon for human exemplary behaviour, the source and cycle of allegedly Medieval (by any reasonable estimate, human) hatred and strife of the most unnecessary and constructed kind will never see an enlightening break of dawn.

Great Leader, Eternal President – at which number of (alleged) followers ought any faith or creed be held above satire and when, if ever, should its tenets be protected in common law?

 Muhammed, Commander of the Faithful, divinely appointed example to all faithful. His claim is also enshrined in secular law and a contentious debate on 'religious freedom' concerning the need of protection against inconstructive or insensitive criticism. When, if ever, ought that protection be afforded posthumously to political figures readily claiming divine support?

Franco also returned from exile to conquer his homeland with a mainly Muslim (Moroccan) army and ruled, as he demonstrated from pulpit and peseta, 'by the Grace of God'. Which of his critics ought be denounced or put on trial for insulting his claim? Who of them, if any, are so insidious that their dissidence by definition spells hatred against the people he conquered? Of the divinely appointed, who are worthy of the term 'sacred'?

For those wishing an honest try and plunge deeper into the subject of the roots of religious violence in possibly violent religious discourse, press here, here, here or (for those well-versed in their Swedish) here or here. As for the Intelligence Squared Debate brave Somali-Dutch-American freethinker and apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali's premonition "if sexual emancipation were to occur in the Muslim world..." truly aroused me, as I am sure it aroused anger in her most aggressive critics. But so did – in both senses – Maajid Nawaz' sour, stiff, wonderful cynicism; "Every Muslim questioner from the audience today is not a true Muslim, and every one who may be a Christian is not really a Christian, and any who may be a Jew is not really a Jew, for I have the absolute monopoly of defining all three of those religions for all of you." Whatever the results in next month's race for Westminster, few results would come close to as interesting as his entrance into the Commons. Looking to the polls, we see looming a grim tide for Clegg's club. But, as "Charb" once stated, and Zapata long before him and neither under the wave of gunfire, it is better to die standing than to live on your knees. For the generations present in the discourse of violent fundamentalism on the rise, and the generations to come who may see a conflict expanded against further charlatans' attempts to establish caliphates and a pious, silent Ummah, they constitute a dire truth to which many yet blissfully ignorant may have to make a horrendous, but sublimely simple choice.