OPINIONS: THE TOP OF MY HEAD

By : Frank Smitha
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Last week I wrote about terrorism able to make political gains only against locally unpopular targets, for example occupation forces such as the Russians in Afghanistan. This week's subject: the desire among some Muslims for a caliphate whose authority stretches from Indonesia to Morocco.

The last caliphate was in Turkey, in the Ottoman Empire. Like the first caliphate its authority was a matter of military power. The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War and in 1922 ceased to exist. In 1924 Turkey's Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate.

In Arabia the Hashim family considered itself descendants of the Prophet Muhommad and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, declared himself caliph. But in the mid-1920s Ibn Saud drove him from Mecca and conquered the Hejaz and Nejd portions of the Arabian Peninsula. Sharif Hussein ibn Ali Hussein fled to Cyprus and then went to Transjordan where the British had made his son king.

The creation of a new caliphate would require a military operation greater than that which united Islam in the seventh century. Suicide explosians here and there will not do it. Neither will capturing power in a single Muslim nation. Conservative, or moderate Muslim powers allied with the West would never allow such a state to be used as a base from which to conquer all of the other Muslim nations.

And there is something else mitigating against a new caliphate from Indonesia to Morocco - the very thing that undermined the unity of Islam beginning in the seventh century. It is impossible to get everyone agreeing on one authority, or keeping everyone in such agreement. Political authority cannot hold over vast portions of the globe without sharing that authority, and there is always a tendency toward a variety of conflicting views.

Islam was plagued by civil wars in the seventh century. With expansion of Islam three caliphates emerged. Islam, created by Arabs, was swallowed by the areas it conquered. The Abbasid Dynasty weakened a disappeared, eventually leading to the Ottoman caliphate. The Christians split into a variety of sects and Islam did the same and is still divided today - too divided for any such great unity. The United Arab Republic, created after World War II fell apart already in 1961.

The unity that some Muslims are talking about is only a utopian dream. It will never work. These Muslim would be better off adjusting to the reality of diversity. * * *

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