Umayyad View of Power in the New Issue of Marased
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The BA Futuristic Studies Unit has released the 31st issue of the Marased series, and it includes a study titled “The Caliphate and Rule: A Study in the Umayyad View of Power”.
The study tackles the nature of the notion of caliphate as a system of power during the first epoch of Islam, and addresses its characteristics in the minds and perceptions of today’s Islamists. There were two different perceptions of the notion during the first epoch, the first of which considered the notion of a state as a Godly or divine one. This belief states that the state is established by the Muslim community but ruled by a Caliph who has absolute and divine rights and power. As for the second perception, it believed that the authority is in the hands of the community.
The revival of the idea of a caliphate in contemporary times is the result of several factors, including the religious upheaval resulting from modernity and globalization, the failure that accompanied the second attempt at building national states in the Islamic and Arab Worlds, and geo-cultural and geostrategic conflicts revolving around Islam and Arabs.