ISIL Declares “New Caliphate” in Iraq

Jihadist fighters in Syria and Iraq under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have announced the establishment of a new Islamic “caliphate”, Australia’s News.com reported.

“The Shura (council) of the Islamic State met and discussed this issue (of the caliphate)… The Islamic State decided to establish an Islamic caliphate and to designate a caliph for the state of the Muslims,” said ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani.
“The jihadist cleric Baghdadi was designated the caliph of the Muslims,” said Adnani.
The surprise announcement was made in an audio recording distributed online in which ISIL declared its chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “the caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere”.
Baghdadi “has accepted this allegiance, and has thus become the leader for Muslims everywhere,” Adnani added.
“The words ‘Iraq’ and ‘the Levant’ have been removed from the name of the Islamic State in official papers and documents,” Adnani said, describing the caliphate as “the dream in all the Muslims’ hearts” and “the hope of all jihadists”.
The world focus was turned to the volatile area after Al-Qaeda splinter group, ISIL, seized control of Iraq’s second city of Mosul on June 10, storming government buildings, TV stations, banks and hoisting the blacks.
The fall of Mosul followed that of Tikrit, Anbar’s Fallujah and Ramadi as well as other parts since last December.
The situation on the ground has further deteriorated after Iraq’s most senior Shiite Muslim scholar Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged followers to take up arms against a Sunni militant insurgency in Iraq.
Ever since the death of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), a caliph was designated “the prince” or emir “of the believers”.
After the first four caliphs who succeeded Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), the caliphate lived its golden age in the Omayyad empire from the year 661 to 750, and then under the Abbasids, from 750 to 1517.
It was abolished when the Ottoman empire collapsed in 1924.

Source: OnIslam