I’m posting here and not in Great Debates, because I don’t have a point to make… And I’m not asking in General Questions, because I want opinions as well as hard facts…
In Iraq, the insurgency is ISIS, right? So how come I keep hearing “ISIL?” John Kerry said “ISIL,” and so have several others on the radio. What’s the deal?
And…what’s the “Caliphate” deal? I keep hearing the word in connection with ISIS. What makes a Caliphate different from any other form of Islamic government? Is there an actual living claimant to the genealogical succession, an heir to the Caliphate? Or would some ISIS leader just anoint himself? Or…what?
Had the same question about ISIS or ISIL, googled it and it turns out that both are ok.
It depends on how you translate the area, “Syria” or “Levant”.
The group had a different name earlier.
For the Caliphate I don’t know.
I don’t think that the Ottoman Sultans had any blood line relations to the Prophet.
I think they were the last to claim to be the leaders of the faith, until Kemal Ataturk “canceled” the Caliphate.
According to Wikipedia, the current pretender to the Ottoman throne, and thus to their claim to the Caliphate, is Bayezid Osman, who is the great-grandson of Sultan Abdülmecid I. (There were six more sultans after Abdülmecid I before the Caliphate went dormant, so I assume those lines all went extinct.)
Bayezid, however, is 90 years old, has never married, and has no children, so he’s a dynastic dead-end as well (and on top of that, he’s a US citizen and a World War II veteran). When he dies, his claim will be inherited by “Prince Şehzade Dündar Aliosman Efendi”, about whom Wiki has next to no information except that he is also 84 years old and childless. His successor is “Prince Şehzade Harun Osmanoğlu Efendi Hazretleri”, who doesn’t even have a Wiki page.
I was confused about this as well. The media have been using ISIS and pronouncing it as a word, but in Obama’s speech last week I noticed he used ISIL and spelled it out. Get on the same page, people!
I thought the fantasy about the “Caliphate” was simply the idea of uniting the whole Islamic world into a single Islamic state, not about any particular leader (apart from the leader of whatever group has fantasies of establishing such a thing). As has been mentioned, the Ottoman monarchs had no connection with the early Caliphs, who were actually (or supposedly) related to The Prophet, and it is those that these fundamentalists would care about, if the line still existed.
It’s all moot, since according to an unimpeachable Republican source, Dr. Jim Garrow, Mr. Obama will soon proclaim that he is the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Mahdī, long awaited by the Twelver Shi’ites, and thus the Final Caliph. Born in 869 AD, ending the Major Occultation whereby he was utterly secluded from the world in anonymity, the only trace of his existence being that he became president of the United States. You mix up the Muslim part of him and you throw in the Marxist part of him, what do you got? You got a totalitarian with a tendency to chop off heads. He has no idea how to act but he is dedicated to the overthrow of America. Since the early years as he was taught, America is an evil thing. It is the Great Satan on the Muslim side and on the commie side from his grandparents he was taught that the proletariat would rise up against the bourgeoisie and the workers’ state could be brought to bear in the United States. Of course, that is partly what he’s after, now that’s after he becomes the Twelfth Imam.
Anyone disposed to doubt Dr. Garrow’s revelation may like to reflect that this ex-CIA member has extensive understanding of the threats posed by Obama, and that he is in good standing with others equally concerned, and a large audience of ordinary palinesque Americans roused by his calls for revolt. In the meantime the meteor of doom continues on its course with the mad man Obama laughing derisively at the “colonialist empire” he is wreaking havoc on and bringing down. The great Satan allowed its guard to slip and a quisling agent to penetrate. His work of devastation is not done and he has spread his manure of deceit across the land again.
Oh, HELL yeah! Though thinking of Joanna Cameron has made listening to the news a lot easier. She was one for the dads on Saturday morning TV, like the Pink Ranger.