The Caliphate or the Supreme Imamate (book)
Al-Khilafa aw al-Imama al-ʿUzma (; ) was an Islamic political treatise published by Syro-Egyptian Salafi Islamist theologian Rashid Rida in 1923. The book initially had appeared as a series of articles in Rida's Al-Manar Islamic magazine throughout the winter of 1922–23 during the tumultuous events of the abolition of Ottoman Sultanate. The book became the first substantial Islamic scholarly treatise of the 20th century which elucidated the theological basis of a Khilafah and advocated the religious obligation of establishing a pan-Islamic supra-state. The treatise gave an in-depth explanation of the governance and working of the Caliphate system through precedents from Islamic history and decried the newly emerging trends that downplayed the orthodox Sunni doctrines on Caliphate; and equated the absence of Islamic state with the era of Jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance). Rida produced the theoretical framework for an international Islamic order that enforced Sharia (Islamic laws), cementing his scholarly status as "the founding theoretician" for Islamist and Jihadist movements of the contemporary era. In the book, Rida postulated that the Islamic State should ideally be headed by a Mujtahid. The Caliph should enforce the laws of the Islamic Imamate/Caliphate based upon Quran, Hadith and the precedents from the four Rashidun Caliphs.