Photo Credit: Getty Images By Joel Richardson.

Two weeks ago, our illustrious President Obama stood in the White House and made the following statement:

“[T]he truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be – if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

On Sunday afternoon, my Twitter account lit up, as the various radical Muslims I follow erupted with jubilant declarations that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) had officially declared a caliphate – an Islamic state ruled by Islamic Shariah. No longer is it ISIS, but simply the Islamic State (IS). After an official meeting of ISIS’ shura (religious) council, they named their shadowy leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, to be the Emir al-Mu’minin, or the commander of the faithful – the first “caliph” in roughly 90 years. The caliph is essentially a Muslim pope, president and general all rolled into one.

The potential implications for the world are absolutely profound. First, according to Islamic jurisprudence, once a caliph has been declared, it is mandatory upon all Muslims to make a pledge of allegiance to the sitting caliph, known in Arabic as the bay’ah. The bay’ah translated is as follows:

“I pledge my allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful, to hear and obey, in hardship and in blessings, to establish the religion of Allah, and to enforce Allah’s Shariah, and to expand the order of Allah, to establish the global Islamic state.”

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Photo Credit: Global Research The Islamic State, the “Caliphate Project” and the “Global War on Terrorism”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky.

The Al Qaeda legend and the threat of the “Outside Enemy” is sustained through extensive media and government propaganda.

In the post 9/11 era, the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda constitutes the building block of US-NATO military doctrine. It justifies –under a humanitarian mandate– the conduct of “counter-terrorism operations” Worldwide.

Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which in turn oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.

While the US State Department is accusing several countries of “harboring terrorists”, America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”: The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) –which operates in both Syria and Iraq– is covertly supported and financed by the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Moreover, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan, among others.

The US-led Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) constitutes the cornerstone of US military doctrine. “Going after Islamic terrorists” is part and parcel of non-conventional warfare. The underlying objective is to justify the conduct of counter-terrorism operations Worldwide, which enables the US and its allies to intervene in the affairs of sovereign countries.

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