The caliphate, the hejaz and the Saudi-Wahhabi nation-state

This book, written 36 years ago in 1976, is in fact a chapter of my thesis on ‘Post-Caliphate Islam and the Search for a New Islamic Public Order’ for a PhD in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

I left Geneva in 1979 without defending the (almost completed) PhD thesis and spent the next five years attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. I eventually realized after leaving Geneva, that my research in the thesis subject would remain incomplete without a proper study and understanding of Islamic eschatology.

It took me another 36 years to grasp Islamic eschatology and even then, I must confess that there are parts of the subject which still elude understanding. Nevertheless I have decided to establish Insha Allah, an Institute of Islamic Eschatology, where the subject can be taught. No such institution now exists anywhere in the Muslim world.

This revised edition of the book includes that eschatological analysis of the subject that was missing in the first edition.

We now know, because of Islamic eschatology, that the Islamic Caliphate will be restored with the advent of Imam al-Mahdi and the return of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salam) in perhaps another 25-30 years; but we also know that it is not possible for it to be restored so long as the Gog and Magog world-order persists.