Source: Quartz

By Haroon Moghul; Senior Correspondent, Religion Dispatches

At eleven o’clock in the morning on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, guns across Europe fell silent. An assassination in Sarajevo that had turned into a grinding, grueling conflict was coming to a diplomatic close—but it was not over.

For Americans, Nov. 11 is celebrated as Veteran’s Day, a time to honor the brave servicemen and women who have fought for our nation. For much of the Muslim world, Nov. 11 marks the end of a kind of order: the Sunni caliphate, an office that had been more or less occupied from the death of Mohammed in 632, to the exile of the last Ottoman Caliph in 1924.

It took several more generations, and another, even worse war, for the new Europe to be born, a continent at peace with itself and with the world.

And yet there is still no lasting peace in the Muslim world, no resolution, no transition to a new order. Maybe, I would argue, this is because there is no longer a functioning caliphate.

In the West, most people now think of ISIL when they hear “caliphate.” In this current, radicalized iteration, the phrase has come to suggest theocratic imperialism; an aggressive, ideological and murderous project.

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