Democracy or the Caliphate

And that goes to the heart of the difference between a government based on the principles of The Declaration of Independence and one based on Doureihi’s Islam. The Declaration identifies the principles of good government based upon a reasonable understanding of the nature of man and what is right according to that nature. Doureihi proposes a type of government about which there can be no argument, no discussion, no criticism and against which there is no recourse.

If the equality of all men, understood in the way that Jefferson explained, makes the consent of the governed the sine qua non of just government, the sine qua non of the Caliphate can be nothing other than acquiescence and silence. We should, therefore, try to understand the qualification for a Caliph before we adopt it as the political solution par excellence as advocated by Wasim Doureihi.

We get some inkling of the meaning of this Arabic the word "Caliph" from the English translation. The caliph is the “successor”.

Theoretically, a caliph is appointed by Allah. His will is known through the Prophet or through a declaration by the preceding Caliph. However, since the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate, a committee comprising representatives of the separate Sunni nations has been unable to agree who should be Caliph.

The Shia, on the other hand, still wait for the true descendant of the Prophet. The last known descendant disappeared in the 9th century and until he reappears there can not be a Caliph. In the meantime a committee of scholars appoints Imams (such as Ayatollah Khomeini) who rule absolutely.

It is obvious, that neither Shia nor Sunni believes that the consent of the governed is a prerequisite for appointment as Caliph. In both cases, the power to appoint rests with a theological aristocracy, a committee of Islamic experts, but once a Caliph has been appointed, he holds the position for life.

There may indeed be argument about the true lineage of the Caliph, but in essence the Caliph will be indistinguishable from an hereditary monarch albeit one descended from the Prophet.

When addressing himself to the question of hereditary monarchy, Jefferson will say some 50 years after the publication of The Declaration of Independence:

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs nor a favoured few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately.

One might ask about a Caliph, as some men once did about the divine right of kings, what mark does God make on a man that identifies him as Caliph? Those who would restore a Caliph would say nothing. Reason tells us that answer is not sufficient.

The truths of The Declaration are described as self evident and, therefore, truths that can be known by human reason. As The Declaration assigns the authorship of our natural rights to God, the implicit premise of The Declaration is that God is both reasonable and omnipotent and gave man reason so that he might understand what he has been given and how to order his life reasonably. This view of God is confirmed by the Gospel of St John, which begins by stating that God is reason (logos).

In contrast, some Moslem scholars deny the reasonableness of Allah. In the 7th and 8th centuries, Aristotelian Islamic scholars known as Mu'tazilites argued that Allah was reasonable and having given man reason, would not expect man to accept anything not in accord with reason.