Thoughts on the Caliphate and ISIS

I have not found any close associates or friends who were able to answer a question I posed today. The question; "When was the end of the last Caliphate in the Levant?"  The answer by the way is 1924 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the leader of  the 'young Turks') put an end to the Ottoman Empire. This fact was brought to my attention in an article in The Atlantic: What  ISIS Really Wants by Graeme Wood . Although 1924 is  technically correct it leaves out the fact that the Caliphate was largely a toothless tiger for roughly a thousand years before that. The Ottoman empire was on the decline since the 16th century and after aligning itself with Germany in WWI it suffered the ignominy of defeat and dismemberment by the victorious Allies.  The modern states of Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan etc. were created by fiat out of the rubble of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey was reduced to a much smaller state.
ISIS has proclaimed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as Caliph.  It is sad that very few in the west have any idea what this means.  The Caliph is duty bound to institute Sharia law. "In theory, all
Muslims are obliged to immigrate to the territory where the caliph is applying these laws." Without a caliphate most of Sharia is not applicable ie it is in abeyance.  With the caliphate in place the amputation of hands of thieves will resume along with all of the rest of the above horrors.  The prospect of seeing a complete execution of this body of jurisprudence contained is Sharia is about to play out in our living rooms nightly. The West has only had a taste.  The full meal will follow.
The eschatology of ISIS is all about accelerating the Day of Judgement.  The path they follow according to Wood is "the Prophetic methodology."  This means putting some 7th century Islamic teachings into literal actions.  It means following the "prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail."   ISIS is a religious millenarian movement that believes that be-headings, crucifixions, slavery, and rape, are proper and necessary to purify a world that has ignored the actual words of the Prophet.  Another quote is appropriate here; " The Islamic State differs from nearly every other current jihadist movement in believing that it is written into God’s script as a central character. It is in this casting that the Islamic State is most boldly distinctive from its predecessors, and clearest in the religious nature of its mission."
Wood's major point I think, and it is an important one, is that ISIS is in fact very Islamic albeit in a medieval literal way.  Those who doubt this are invited to read Dabiq, the official rag of the Islamic State which condones and certifies these horrors as permissible even required  by Sharia and whats more if one objects to the horrors he is denying or mocking the Koran and thus is himself apostate and deserving of death. 

Ideology and Anthropology

It has been said that "every ideology assumes an anthropology".  What this means in a nutshell is that our idea about the nature of man has a controlling influence on our social theories, philosophies,and favored forms of government. If we assume as does a strict materialist that man is without a "divine spark" ie no soul then we may conclude that life has no meaning and our moral choices are arbitrary at best and have no real consequences now or in the future.  If we assume that man is created "in the image of God", we tend to place great value on life, and live as if our moral choices have very real consequences now and in the hereafter.  Bad behavior tends to increase when no one is watching.  Nietzsche's famous observation that God is Dead was more than a theological construct it was an observation that 19th century European society lived as if their was no cosmic judge.  Many feel that he was prophetic in foreseeing the tragic consequences in the 20th century of the rise of Nationalism and the death of man.     
Much has happened in Europe since Dr. Pangloss stated in Voltaire's classic that  "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds."  We have even more reasons to doubt the optimism of Leibniz than had Voltaire, but we still shrink from the outright pessimism of Schopenhauer. The rise of post modernism is one way to deal with the problems of modernity, but it has it's own issues.  The reemergence of radical Islamofascisim  and the conflict with liberal democracy is a radical conflict of world visions. It is politically incorrect to talk of current events as a holy war, but what other explanation exists for the atrocities that are paraded on You Tube, Facebook, and the evening news?  
 Modern political discourse has left us sharply divided along a progressive/liberal/Democratic vs. traditional /conservative/Republican axis.  I discussed in an earlier blog Sowell's book about different visions.  When discourse is limited by our ability to use language that we agree upon it is impossible to change another s views  on any matter of import.  There seems to be no way out of the impasse.