Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

150 t CHAPTER SIX
the caliph was left untouched, its divorce from the sultanate effectively
stripped it of whatever powers it may have possessed. On 17
November the last sultan, Muhammad Wahid al-Din, fled on a
British ship to Malta, and two days later his cousin Abd al-Majid
was elected to the vacant caliphate to preside, with severely limited
powers, over a new, laicized Islam. On 29 October 1923 the revolution
was accomplished: the Turkish Republic was proclaimed.
The laicization process went even further, as many of the traditionalists
feared. On 3 March 1924 the Turkish National Assembly
abolished the caliphate itself, an office the Ottomans had held
for 407 years, and finally on 9 April 1928 that same body abrogated
Article 2 of the Ottoman Constitution: Islam was no longer
the religion of the state. Abd al-Majid was informed of the decision
regarding the caliphate on the evening of the same day it was
taken, and was told that he should prepare to leave the country
forthwith. The family immediately began to pack its belongings,
which were loaded onto trucks. At five the next morning all was
ready. Abd al-Majid and his son occupied one car, the women and
their attendants a second, and the cortege, escorted by the chief
of police and patrolmen on motorcycles, left Istanbul and then,
shortly afterward, the country itself.
Iran as a Shiite State
The destiny of Sunni Islam rested for centuries in the hands of the
Ottoman Turks, who extended the borders of the Abode of Islam
deep into the Christian Balkans and even to the gates of Vienna.
Where they had less success was against their own Muslim rivals in
Iran.
The community that later came to rule Iran as a dynasty, the
Safavids began their career as a Sufi tariqa, or religious order,
founded by one Safi al-Din (d. 1334) in northwestern Iran. His
order, Sunni in its doctrine and sentiments, spread widely over
southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq and Iran, and under its
fourth sheikh managed to carve out for itself an autonomous polit-