The meaning of black flags
over Jerusalem
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| Deliberately upside down |
I returned to my Jerusalem
home with great pleasure. Just two days after my arrival, a cease-fire with
Hamas was announced. Another battle in Israel’s long war against its Islamist
enemies ended. Meanwhile, I was
continuing my work on a much larger, more deadly conflict that still rages in
Syria and Iraq – the broad and bloody sweep of the Islamic State (IS). On Saturday night, I found
myself in the Muslim Quarter in the Old City – a very different neighborhood
from my own – where I joined good friends for dinner. Several mosques are in
full view from their expansive rooftop terrace. Overlapping, high-volume calls
to prayer sometimes caused gaps in our conversation.
But I learned that during the
Gaza conflict there had been another unanticipated change in the surroundings,
besides fire bombs, stone-throwing and increased police activity: Black flags
had appeared on Muslim Quarter rooftops.
“I counted seven black flags flying over various houses,” my friend
said. “Some had Arabic writing in white saying, ‘There is no God but Allah, and
Muhammad is his divine messenger – the shahada.’” Looking around, I saw three
such flags snapping defiantly in the wind, although the others had been
removed, thanks to a new law forbidding terrorists’ flags to be displayed in
Israel.
The murderous Islamic State is
represented by a black flag with white Arabic lettering. That all-too-familiar
banner has even appeared on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and elsewhere in
Israel. I WAS reflecting on this when I
received a video from friends. It showed a huge demonstration in Bethlehem’s
Manger Square from just over a year before. To my amazement, I watched as
angry Arabs chanted beneath a tide of black flags – the same ones I’d just seen
in the Old City. I’ve since learned that
the flag represents radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Like IS, its goal is
the establishment of a pan-Islamist state.
Founded in 1953 by Taqiuddin
al-Nabhani in Jerusalem, and now active in more than 40 countries,
Hizb-ut-Tahrir also promotes the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate. And that, I soon discovered, is the
significance of the black banners. “The real origins of the
‘black flag’ go back further than 1953,” writes Jerusalem scholar and
journalist Seth Frantzman. He explains that the black flag is an early Islamic
concept, pointing out that Arabic scholar Moshe Sharon even titled his book
about the rule of the Abbasid dynasty Black Banners from the East. In the
introduction to the book Sharon notes that “it is the story of a messianic
movement striving and succeeding in establishing the throne of its
Caliph-Messiah.” The Abbasid Caliphate was established in Baghdad in 750 CE.
Most Christians who come to
Jerusalem are familiar with various prophetic passages from the Bible regarding
the End of Days. Jewish teachers and rabbis are also well informed regarding
such passages, and at times write about their significance with respect to
current events. Of course, believing
Christians and Jews anticipate the appearance of Messiah – God’s anointed – and
the dawn of a new era of justice and peace.
- Iraq & Syria Video: “End of Sykes-Picot” — Islamic State Promotes Its Caliphate
- Iraq Daily: ISIS Declares A Caliphate from Eastern Iraq to Syria’s Aleppo
- Iraq and Syria Document: ISIS’s Declaration of a “Caliphate” for All Muslims
The Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham made a dramatic political move on Sunday to accompany its military successes, declaring a Caliphate stretching from Diyala Province in eastern Iraq to Aleppo in northwest Syria.
Renaming ISIS as the “Islamic State”, the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself Caliph Ibrahim: “We clarify to the Muslims that with this declaration of khilāfah (Caliphate), it is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the khalīfah Ibrāhīm and support him (may Allah preserve him).”
The statement, read by spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, proclaimed, “The sun of jihad has risen….The borders are destroyed….The Muslims are glorified”:
By Allah, if you disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the west, and rush to your religion and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and west will submit to you.
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