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.