A Religion and/or a State: Revisiting the Abolition of the Caliphate

This conference coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the caliphate’s abolition. Initially sensational, the sense of shock it precipitated dissipated fairly quickly. Thus, it might be asked: why, beyond historical interest, is the caliphate a topic for conversation in 2024? Beyond the endurance of the caliphal ideal, however imaginary, one may point to a turn occurring around the end of the twentieth century. The sense that secularisms had failed to deliver led to interest in revisiting the caliphate and the works of those who had embraced, reimagined, or rejected it. This paper examines the works of two such authors: Rashid Rida and Ali Abdel Razek. While the two were rhetorically opposed, some authorities find that the implications of their discourses actually have much in common. This reading rests on the claim that Rida, in effect, pointed towards a partitioning of religious and secular. I argue that this claim overreaches.