Caliphate

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 16:43, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

   The Caliphate arose in the Middle East after the Muslim-Jewish War, often called the "Dirty War".  Surely someone wants to tell us all about it. -ZM)

Creation

   Turkey and Kurdistan were both Muslim-majority nations with secular governments.  As such, both were able to stay out of the "Dirty War" which saw the destruction of most of the Middle East.
   When the Dirty War ended, the Turkish imams immediately attempted a coup, trying to create a new Caliphate which would in turn impose Shariah on the entire world.  The Turkish military was one step ahead of them and ended the coup by executing all religious leaders found in Turkey but not born in Turkey.  Without the foreign agitators, Turkish Islam was a great deal more peaceful.
   Kurdistan followed the example given by Turkey and cleared their nation of foreign-born agitators, but Kurdistan was not as politically stable.  The imams were able to get a young Kurdish scholar declared their Caliph.  He was acclaimed as a descendent of Salah-ad-Din, the great Kurdish warrior.  Not that this was in any way unique; by the nature of Kurdish society it was safe to say that all Kurds everywhere were at least related to Saladin, and most could claim to be his descendant.
   With a stable Caliphate right on their doorstep which was NOT preaching Jihad, the Turkish imams were able to organize a plebiscite which forced Turkey to join the new Caliphate.  This quickly became a snowball which collected all contiguous Muslim territories as the survivors of the Dirty War appealed to the Caliphate for help.

Expansion

   The Caliph publicly denounced expansion by force.  All Muslims were welcome in the Umma, as were all Christians and Jews (*), but the Caliphate would only annex new territory if the inhabitants petitioned the Caliph to be annexed.
   Since the vast majority of the Middle East had been devastated and no one else was interested in helping them, the survivors were forced to turn to the Caliphate.  Within a year of his ascension, the Caliph controlled all previous Muslim territory from Morocco to Afghanistan and from Turkmenistan down to Ethiopia.
   (* When stripped of all politically-generated confusion, Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, and Islam is an offshoot of Christianity.  All three preach brotherhood and peace.  All strife between the three religions is politically based.) - Note from SGTStoner I vigorously disagree that any significant proportion of these three religious faiths would agree with those statements. We need to approach these perspectives with more understanding than to simply set them up as convenient strawmen to knock down, which isn't going to be believable, nor provide strong storytelling opportunities. Sorry if this really belongs in the 'talk page' for the article, but these don't seem used much.

Border Wars

   The Caliphate was able to avoid major conflict at the Pakistan/India border, but Russia and China both took the opportunity to expand.  Russia withdrew its troops almost immediately when Muslim Russian soldiers started shooting their non-Muslim officers and defecting to the Caliphate, taking their expensive Russian trucks, tanks, artillery pieces, fighters, and in a few cases even bombers with them.  China was more successful, overrunning almost all of Kazakhstan before the Caliphate could stop them.  The Chinese war didn't end until China started having their own nukes go off in their own bases.  Eventually, the Chinese withdrew from all 'liberated' areas and the war ended without any formal agreement.
   The Caliphate was continually at war in Africa, from its initial creation until its destruction by the Sa'arm.  Most modern African nations had borders which had originally been drawn on a map in some European city, and those official borders had nothing in common with the actual political, ethnic, economic, or religious divisions that existed in Africa.  This dissociation led to almost constant warfare between the various nations.  The Caliphate did not start any of these wars, they merely inherited them.
   The Caliphate never fought a major war in the Balkans.  Again, they merely inherited several ongoing ethnic and religious conflicts and did their best to stop them.

Destruction

   The Caliphate was not directly landed on by the Sa'arm.  The Caliphate can be credited with keeping the African swarm penned up in Africa for almost a year, but they were slowly losing that fight and the fighting had already made it to Asia when the second landing happened.  With all of their forces tied up in what had been Israel and Jordan, they were not prepared to stop the Russian or Indian Sa'arm and the Caliphate was crushed between the three forces.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))