1865-1935: The Syrian scholar, political and theoretician Rashid Rida asserted the need for a Caliphate whose establishment is considered to beobligatory because it was based on the commandments of the religious law of Islam.
He considered the Caliphate to be canonical in origin and wanted it to be established at some place between the Arabian Peninsula and Anatolia.
Rida was also pragmatic enough to realize the situational impossibility of establishing a single Caliphate for all the Muslims of the world in a milieu wherein numerous independents states have come into effective existence with string sense of local political authority. His recognition of the growth of territorial states from the run of the Ottoman Empire forced him to like Al-Mawardi and AL-Ghazali in order toreconcile the idea of Arab territorial nationalism with the notion of a single universal caliphate.
“The fundamental facts of the situation confronted by Rida were similar to the problem faced by the Jurists of the late Abbasid period caused by the growth of strong centers of dynamic political power in the far-flung parts of the Muslim empire of the caliph. Muslim ideological framework to incorporate the reality of many independent kingdoms or sultanates within the very definition and architecture of the Caliphate itself. Therefore, it became possible for twentieth century political thinkers of Islam to accept and rationalize the idea of nation-states within the ideological framework of a religiously unified umma. It was argued by them that the Caliphate , as a universal symbol of an Islamic state can be disaggregated and conferred severally upon every political state that Muslim communities set up for themselves.”
References
Sharma, S. (2004), Caliphs and Sultans. rupa, New Delhi.
Rashida, Rida.
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