The most explicit demand for such a change can be heard from states such as Iran and Libya and a full hand of Islamic schools of thought around the Islamic world. Iranian president Ahmadinejad repeatedly speaks about the “corrupted International bodies like UN -and its affiliated bodies such as Security Council, IAEA, and Human Rights Council, etc- which have been formed and ruled by some very few tyrant powers, ignoring the rights of the other nations”. He goes beyond it to announce that he is able to rule the world by using the model of political system based upon the Islamic ideology. Iranian government has established “Islamic Human Rights Council” to challenge the huge amount of criticism by UN Human Rights Council about the condition of Human Rights in Iran, in an attempt to show that it and its circle of advocates do not believe in such bodies. The same attitude can be seen regarding IAEA and many well established and well-known International bodies, events, festivals, competitions and thousands of political, cultural, economic, scientific and sociological conferences. Apart from the governments, a huge amount of Islamic circles with different ideologies are following the same attitude, ranging from moderate to radical and fundamental ways of achieving to this goal, mostly by advocating the establishment of parallel bodies, based on the Islamic thought and ideology. The September, 11th attacks could be seen as the explicit symbol of denying western symbols of capitalism.
Looking at the concept of Khalifa, regardless of its advantages or shortcoming could be seen in this framework. Is not it better to focus on integrating our own interests in the every day life of the existing international bodies and political systems? Speaking about such a controversial political system, when the West is quite keen on what’s going on in the Islamic world and when the public in the west are growingly being pushed by right parties toward Islamphobia and the danger of Muslims in the west, would not only flourish peace and interaction, but would sharpen the stances of the people in the west toward Muslims, and on the other way round, would fuel the radical Islam to misuse these set of ideas. The best way is to integrate our cultural, political and economic demands in the existing bodies. If we have not had these mechanisms in place, then we could think of theorizing them and demanding for a body to represent them, but of course with a modern, universally accepted terminology!
Mehdi Javadi: Introduction of Khalifa
Nov. 8, 2011, 3:07 p.m.
Long after the establishment of the International bodies, and when most of the Islamic countries regained independence, they have started to challenge the well-established International bodies. Muslims always think that they have been excluded from the process of establishment of these bodies, so there is a growing tendency to introduce new mechanisms, which are mostly in contrary to the existing universal bodies. They think since they have had no role in the evolution of these International organizations, treaties, conferences, etc, there is no need to abide them.