"Policy Watch: Can the Caliphate make a comeback?
By Mark N. Katz
United Press International
Published May 13, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Islamic political theory envisions a Muslim world united under the rule of a caliph, who exercises spiritual and temporal authority over all Muslims. Many Muslims now hope for the restoration of the Caliphate. Could this actually occur?
In the early days of Islam, caliphs ruled over most of the Muslim world as it then existed. But divisions eventually prevailed. The Ottoman sultans were the last to be generally acknowledged as caliphs by Sunni Muslims, even though they were losing temporal control over their Middle Eastern empire to the European colonial powers. The leader of Turkey's secular nationalist revolution, Kemal Ataturk, abolished the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Although some have claimed the title, nobody since then has been widely acknowledged as caliph. "
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