Identity Crisis in Islam

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Oct 26, 2020 at 11:58

Identity Crisis in Islam
Which Caliphate is the Actual Head of Islam?
What Stake does Islam have in Zion?
The histories of empires in the Middle East have, for more than 1,400 years, produced many several ascensions of power in Islam, spanning several 'dynasties' and varietal ethnic populations, all claiming their allegiance to the Islamic influences of the Quran. In these modern times, this appears to have taken on some conflicting internal issues as it seems no one entity has enough of its Islamic integrity to assert the leadership role once held by the Ottoman Empire and the previous empires, even as it is the last of the modern national entities that once held such prestige. Even the Iranian Islamic Republic cannot hold such title, for the power of Islam is not said to be a population based political entity; or is it? Does the expected al-Mahdi assume a 'presidency' in such cases?
Modern civilization is heavily inculcated by Islamic influences and presence; this most noticeably true in Africa, and in Europe, where the reflections of colonial intrusions have occurred over the centuries. In this, the clash of opposing societies have manifested themselves by a strange paradox, they have been generated from a central religious core; the Middle East is the claimed as the basis of the two most contentious religious affirmations of the world, Islam, and the Judeo-Christian following of the Abrahamic faith. It is peculiar; that both make claims of Abrahamic descent. As such, the world, in which there is the attempt to make a secularistic break from religious attachments to lead self-indulgent lives of limited acknowledgement to rules and controls, find itself compelled to observe that religion cannot be escaped, for the issues of life and death cannot be defined except by adhering to the ancient observations of such things and histories of men and women of faith are not easily ignored.
Such ancient histories can trace roots to the writings of sages of the ages, but of those, the more evidential writings are those associated with the Hebrew lineage of the Israeli nation, the Jewish people descended from Abraham. Now, the Arabic nation can also claim to be descended from Abraham, through the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah, Abraham's wife, yet the Hebrew historical sources indicate the Divine preference to Isaac, Abraham's son through Sarah. Thus, we can see a source of contention here; which was the preferred generational passage of the inheritance to which both Ishmaelic and Judaic claims are attached. This claim is blurred through the improper naming of current indigenous peoples as 'Palestinian,' a name applied from the improper application of a Roman name of a people no longer extant, the Philistines, a non-Semitic peoples conquered and without modern connections to the existing populations. That these are now Muslim people is due to their conversion to Islam, and not by ethnic associations.
So, what does the identity of these people have to do with the future of the Middle East, since in these modern times, Islam cannot claim sole source of a religious influence in the region, no matter how fully involved the region is. The main reason this is true, is that Islam is no longer solely Arabic, the base religious claim of the original tenets of Islam. Iranians are Persians of the former Medo-Persian empire; Turks are nomadic denizens of Central Asia that invaded west and took over what was Anatolia, formerly Lydia and other empires like the Hittites; Ethiopians and other African tribal associations make up the extension into the African continent, of which one cannot exclude the Egyptians, from which, by the way, came the beginning of the Ishmael name as the son of Abraham, now associated with Islam by conquest.
Now Turkey, through the claim of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who apparently has dreams of being caliph), names Jerusalem as the former part of the former Ottoman Empire, thereby reasserting the claim of Islamic control over the region of what Islamists refer to as 'Palestine'; and evidently he is further making preparations to make that reassertion a reality withing his lifetime, a circumstance that in likelihood will lead to a dramatic and climatic change in the already tenuous dynamics of the Middle East, which is not all that far from exploding when considering the efforts Israel is expending to keep from being overrun by Iranian proxy activities on both the southern and northern borders, all under the anxiously watching eyes of every one from Russian coalition in Syria and the Hamas run PA in Gaza. And let's not forget Jordan, the keyholder of the Waqf. Yet, what seems to be missing is the premise and question asserted here-who is in true 'Islamic' control? Who is leading Islam in order to make good on the claim that Jerusalem is Islam's to rule? That seems way to close to call, doesn't it?
So; how does this all comport to the claim by the Hebrew Holy Writ: that Zion is the property of the Eternal Sovereign of the Jewish Nation?

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