Re: The Caliphate

as-salaamu 'alaikum!

At soc.religion.islam, Uncle_Sinbad wrote:

> The Caliphate's leader is both a religious
> leader and a secular leader.

"Despite their geographical extent and the sophisticated urban
populations they contained, the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates were
rather simple affairs. Their institutions consisted largely of the
citizen army of able-bodied adult male Muslims, and a tax-gathering
apparatus to provide material support for the army. The caliph
presided absolutely over both as supreme military commander, albeit
one who rarely took the field himself."

From The End of the Jihad State, Khalid Yahya Blankenship, p.18.

All other administration was locally autonomous, including civil
and religious affairs within each community. This is why there were
differing schools of thought, differing bodies of hadith, and so on,
which eventually distilled during and after the Abbasid era into the
four Sunni madhahib (there had been at least 27), the Shi'a parties
and the thoroughly heterogeneous Khariji divisions, the various hadith
collections that were accepted as evidence in Abbasid courts of law
and other collections, all of which gave rise to a multicultural
pluralism that remains unique in human history.

The original federal constitution at Madinah vested decisions of
military jihad in the prophet sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam. The
institution of the khalifa continued that function and otherwise left
administration with "the people of loosing and binding" in each
locality. It was not invested with other aspects of sovereign
administration until the effective end of imperial expansion at the
end of the Umayyad dynasty.

Apart from the Qur'an itself, there has never been any "uniform
code" such as we see in modern federal secular republics like America,
where an ostensibly common set of laws and regulations was even
theoretically applied universally through a central governmental
apparatus throughout its branches. The Abbasid attempted this to some
extent, resulting in some codification that was not universally
accepted, and the Ottomans brought bureaucratic administration to its
highest state of art, but it was never, ever, the condition of the
muslim republic. How the Qur'an was applied to civil administration
differed from place to place and from time to time from the very
beginning.

The power ceded to the prophet sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam at
Madinah by the confederating tribes was definition of Islam and
declaration of jihad. The latter power was continued in the khulafaa:
definition was complete, understanding continued for a time, and
differed, as we see, until covered over and buried by history.

was-salaam,
abujamal
--
astaghfirullahal-ladhee laa ilaha illa
howal-hayyul-qayyoom wa 'atoobu 'ilaihi

Rejoice, muslims, in martyrdom without fighting,
a Mercy for us. Be like the better son of Adam.

.