Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 24

I will give the flag to a man who loves Allah and his
apostle.’ Mohammad then tells Ali, ‘Take this flag and
go with it until God gives victory through you.’”40
According to Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes,
many Twitter accounts of Daesh supporters display
avatars of the black flag of Daesh.41 Just as the original flag was used in the days of Mohammad to rally
and unify Muslims, today Daesh seeks to do the same
with its version. William McCants, director of the
Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the
Brookings Institution, reports that when the Daesh
flag was introduced in 2007, its designers said, “We ask
God, praised be He, to make this flag the sole flag for all
Muslims. We are certain that it will be the flag of the
people of Iraq when they go to aid … the Mahdi.”42

The Caliphate
Some wrongly assume the imamate [religious leadership,
by succession] to be one of the pillars of faith. If it were one
of the pillars of the faith … Mohammad would have appointed a representative, exactly as he had appointed Abu
Bakr to represent him at prayer.43
—Ibn Khaldun

The central pillar of the Daesh narrative is the idea
of the new caliphate, which it announced the first day
of Ramadan in June 2014.44 While not a requirement
of Islam, Daesh has declared it so.45 The caliphate was
never a religious duty. In fact, the Arabic word khalifa, which means successor, is used only twice in the
Quran.46 In the first use, scholars doubt whether the
word khalifa was intended. Some believe the word was
meant to be khaliqa.47 In the other, the word khalifa is
used to refer to David: “O, David, surely We have made
you a succeeding [literally, a caliph] (Messenger) in
the earth, so judge among mankind with the truth.”48
It is not surprising then, that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
alleging himself an Islamic scholar of Quranic phonetics, would avoid referring to these passages to justify the
new caliphate or the supposed Muslim duty to pledge
allegiance to the caliph. The Quran provides no justification for his claims.49
Many caliphs in Islamic history have been assassinated, with the original Abu Bakr being one of few
exceptions. After serving two years, he died, and he
was succeeded by Omar. Omar served ten years before
he was killed, followed by Uthman, who served twelve
years before he too was murdered. The fourth caliph,

(Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Daesh fighters holding weapons stand with the terrorist group’s flags February 2015 in Anbar, Iraq.
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March-April 2016  MILITARY REVIEW