The Anniversary of the Demolition of the Khilafah (Caliphate): A Lesson in Awareness and the Sunnah of Revival

(Translated)

Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 583 - 21/01/2026

By Ustadh Sami Yahya – Wilayah Yemen

The demolition of the Khilafah (Caliphate) was not a fleeting historical event, nor a sentimental memory to be marked merely by tears and elegies. Instead, it was a political and civilizational earthquake the Ummah had not witnessed since the passing of the Messenger of Allah (saw). That day, it was not only a state that was destroyed; the unifying political framework that preserved the Deen, safeguarded the Ummah, and unified it under the authority of the Shariah was torn down. Thus, Ahmad Shawqi spoke truly when he made the minarets and minabir wail, and made al-Hind, Egypt, Ash-Sham, Iraq, and Persia weep because they realized that what had been demolished was not merely an Ottoman structure alone, but the very entity of the Ummah itself.

On the twenty-eighth of Rajab 1342 AH, corresponding to March 3, 1924, a carefully orchestrated crime was completed, led by European powers, foremost among them Britain, and executed by local hands through Mustafa Kemal. The Khilafah was abolished, and the occupying armies did not leave Istanbul until they had ensured its uprooting from the very roots, the establishment of a secular state separating Islam from governance, excluding Shariah from life, and transforming the Ummah from a single political community into a scattering of states and borders.

With the demolition of the Khilafah, it was not a sultanate or a throne that fell alone. Instead, concepts also collapsed. The concept of a state founded upon the aqeedah fell, replaced by the concept of a state founded upon nationalistic interests. Political ethics collapsed, replaced by utilitarianism and opportunism. The shade of Dar al-Islam, which had sheltered Muslims across the east and west of the earth, was lifted.

Speaking about this anniversary is not nostalgia for the past, nor a revisionist rehashing of history. It is a diagnosis of the disease and an exposition of the divine sunan (laws) of victory and decline. When the Uthmani Khilafah (Ottoman Caliphate) arose, it arose upon Jihad, Shariah, and discipline. When it weakened, this did not occur suddenly. Instead, it followed the accumulation of deviations, neglect of the Arabic language, the closing of the door of ijtihad, abandonment of proper nurturing, and tolerance of doctrinal and intellectual deviation. The result was the removal of empowerment, for the laws of Allah do not favor anyone.

More dangerous than the demolition of the Khilafah (Caliphate) itself is what followed it. A political vacuum was not left by chance. It was filled with two great obstacles that obstructed the revival of the Ummah:

The first obstacles: the ruling regimes that inherited from colonialism and carried its project, forcibly preventing the Ummah from restoring its unification and ruling by Islam.

The second, and more dangerous, obstacle: the distortion of awareness from within, through Islamic and non-Islamic groups alike either by integrating into the game drawn by the colonialists, or by reducing the Deen to individual morals and individual ritual acts of worship, or by raising the slogan of “discharging one’s duty” to convince people that silence, partial work, or abstention from politics suffices before Allah (swt). Thus, the Ummah was sedated in the name of secular religiosity, and the idea of an ideological political structure was distorted, despite the fact that both history and Shariah affirm that the Deen is not established by individuals alone, the message is not carried without an entity, and the Ummah is not restored without an aware, organized structure.

Hence, commemorating the anniversary of the demolition of the Khilafah  is about restoring due consideration to major truths: that the unification of Muslims is not a luxury; that collective ideological, political work is not an innovation; and that the Khilafah  is not a romantic dream, but a Shariah, rational, and historical necessity by which the sanctities are preserved, Shariah hudud are implemented, honor is protected, and the Ummah is safeguarded from fragmentation and dependency.

This anniversary is also a call to connect new generations to their recent history, not to stop only at the era of the Companions (ra) despite its immense stature, but to realize that this Ummah, in the modern era, experienced a state that ruled for six centuries, whose armies reached the heart of Europe and which was a global power reckoned with. The loss of the Khilafah was not because Islam is incapable, but because Muslims fell short and deviated from Islam.

The lessons are clear and unambiguous: empowerment (tamkeen) is conditioned upon obedience and justice, not slogans; enemies plan over long periods and are not confronted by emotional reactions; the unity of the Ummah is the source of its strength, and therefore it was dismantled; the Khilafah is the political framework that preserves the Deen and orders worldly affairs; sound nurturing and doctrinal and political awareness are conditions for steadfastness, not mere rhetorical ornamentation; and all honor lies in Islam, not in importing systems of disbelief, regardless of how they are adorned with the names of freedom and progress.

Secular Turkey tried everything the Ummah is promised today: separating Deen from the state, changing identity, fighting Shariah, yet it attained neither honor, nor European acceptance, nor an alternative glory. Instead, it lost its former glory and remained suspended between two worlds.

Therefore, the Shariah obligation today upon the entire Islamic Ummah is not to weep over the ruins of the Khilafah, but to transform the memory of its demolition into awareness, awareness into commitment, and to elevate both into collective, ideological, political action, so that its return becomes a permanent public demand, not a seasonal slogan, and so that the Muslim discharges his Shariah obligation before Allah (swt) not by words alone, but by treading the correct path to resume the Islamic way of life through establishing the Second Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly-Guided Caliphate) upon the Method of the Prophethood, with Hizb ut Tahrir, the guide that does not lie to its people.