THE NEW KHALIF.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 308, 29 December 1922, Page 5

THE NEW KHALIF.

ACCEPTANCE IN INDIA. " SAVIOUR OF THE KHALIFAT. fßj Cable.—frees Association. — CopyrlghU DELHI, December 28. The Khalifate Conference opened to-day. The President (Dr. Ansari) expressed regret that Mr. Bonar Law had not guaranteed to withdraw from Mesopotamia and and had not committed himself to a sound Near Eastern policy. He emphasised that even if the Turkish question were satisfactorily settled at the Lausanne Conference Indian Moslems would continue to demand freedom.

The National Congress at its concluding session adopted a resolution acknowledging Abdul Medjid as Khalif. and conferring upon Mustapha Kemal Pasha the title of "Saviour of the Khnlifate."— (Reuter.)

Indian Moslems have sliow;i a disposition to accept the change in the Khalifate ever since Mu>tapha Kemal's coup, and their general ruilieiition of the change was then-lore anticipated. Discussing the position recently a '"Time>" correspondent wrote: —

From the institution of the Khalifate after the dVuh of the Prophet Mohammed until 1517 that office was always held l>v a member of the Prophet's own tribe of the. KoreUh. Tt is true that the rival branches of the tribe at times formed rival dynasties of Khaliohs. Then after what is usually '•on.s'ilored to be the main line of the Kh*lirms—the Abbasid dynasty— hail oxerci«ed its spiritual function in C.lirO without enioving any temporal nower for nearly three oentiirie*. the office of Khaliph was bequeathed to the Ottoman master of Esrvpt and ihe Xear East, ami the nnparitioii of an Emir-al-Mumenin. who was ignorant of the language of the Koran and not * memher of the tribe of the Koreteh, was excused by the introduction of the doctrine that the greater temooral Prince in Islam oiitf'it to hqM 'he supreme spiritual authority. The Moslems themselves have not a-lwavs behaved resneotfully towards their Khaliph* in the past.

To take tlie c»sos of those Prince uf (lie dvnatien which huve reivned aa Khalifa in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Constantinople alone —to say nothing of Commanders of the Faithful in Sanaa, Fez. Mnrrakcsh, or Cordova— we find that of some ninety odd men dignified with the title of Klialif no fewer than thirty-six were forcibly deprived of that spiritual dignity, fourteen of them l>eing murdered, seven being deposed and murdered, three being deposed and blinded, and twelve merely dei>o»cd. No account is taken of those killed in open war. even though engaged against Moslems. From this it will be seen thai while Mnetapha Kemul Pacha has ample precedent for laying more or less violent hands upon the person of the SultanKhiilif, it is also open for some other Moslem ruler to put forward a claim to the exercise of the spiritual prerogatives of a Commander of the Faithful. Indeed, the Sultans of Morocco and the Imams of Sanaa in the Yemen, as members of the tribe of the Koreish. havo for years declined to recognise the Ottoman Khalifate just in the same way as the Omeynd Khalifa of Cordova and the Fatimite Khalifs of Kairwan and Ca-.ro declined, in their day, to recognise the Abasid Khalifate in Baghdad.

In the present state of Moslem opinion it is unlikely that any ruler who is under European influence would enjoy any sort of support outside his own immediate dominions were he to attempt to become a Khalif, and even the King of the Hedjaz is probably suspect ac having been an ally of Great Britain in the past, although his genealogical claims are as good as those of the Sultan of Morocco or of the Imam \ehia.

1 The Ameer of Afghanistan, however, is under no foreign influence, is, after . Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the most powerful Moslem ruler, and has the great merit (in the eyes of many of the Faithful) of having recently been at war with the British. On the Ottoman argument of might being right, regardless of pedigree, the Ameer Amanullan Mian would appear to have as much justification in setting up a Barakzai Khalifate of Kabul in 1922 as had Sultan Suleiman Kanun in setting up the Ottoman Khalifate of Constantinople in 1438 after the death of the Abbaside Khalif Motowakkil. Still, the loss of the temporal power by an dynasty of Khalifs is not necessarily filial, for if the Abbasids become the imu-iets of their nominal servants in Baghdad after the death of El Muktafibillah in 008, they regained their sovereicntv under El Muktaflli-emri'llah in m<! but only to lose it (except, for five months in 14121 when El Mustasim was trodden to death under a carpet by the pagan Tartars in February, 1258. Apart from this precedent for a restoration of the temporal power, both in Cordova and Cairo, history shows that, the tendency was for the political authority of Khalifs slowly to fade long before the dynasty's, spiritual prestige had. evaporated.