The Khilafah Debate: Ustadh Abu Baraa vs Abdur-Rahman Hassan

Documenting important debates and discussions contemporaneously is a valuable academic effort and fruitful future resource for all historians. Understanding historical events without the spin, propaganda, victor's narratives and retrospective bias is a challenge for any true historian. This is especially true in the context of war, where the first victim of the fog of war is always the truth. What follows in this book is the transcript of a unique debate held during the height of a war amidst the 2014 conflicts of Iraq and Syria. That conflict changed the world forever and the way the story is told shapes how it will be remembered. It is only possible to read about what contemporaneous observers, debaters, witnesses and scholars were hearing, saying, arguing and debating, directly from their own tongues if those words are preserved. This debate is part of that historical record. At the time of publishing over a decade later, new generations have already replaced the prominent speakers of the time. Many newcomers will not remember the events of 2014 or the discussions that took place publicly or privately about them. New generations of historians, scholars, and academics will speculate about what people in 2014 thought and said about the global acts of state actors, often with influence from reductive, polemic, and Eurocentric bias. In light of the historical trend of eurocentrism in literature and the rewriting of history, it is especially valuable to document ethnic minority voices, speaking from their own perspective and lived experiences. A true student of history should therefore find this work particularly valuable in the study of statehood in the modern world, and the discussion of Khilāfah, its conditions and place in modern politics in the 21st Century.