Caliphate from the Perspective of the People of the Sunna, Relying on Ghazali's Views

There are differing views among Muslims on leadership and caliphate after the holy Prophet and different sects of Islam are oriented towards one of these two (either caliphate or leadership). This paper seeks to identify the most significant factors leading to the generation of the idea of caliphate in the mind of the people of Sunna, especially in Ghazali's views. To this aim, we hypothesized that the most important reason of the promotion of such idea is the attention to the realities of the political life ofthe early Islam and reference to the lifestyle of the caliphs, and then we tested this hypothesis. The people of Sunna, particularly Ghazali, have always been concerned with caliphate and have regarded it as a phenomenon taking place with the advent of Islam;they match their views with the idea of caliphateand specially with the conduct of the companions of the Prophet and assume the same duties and rights for caliphs as areassigned toand granted Imams. As a result, the people of Sunnabase their views onwhat actually happened in reality and so we may call them justifiers; the point deserving attention is that from their perspective, practice comes before theory and instead of relying on a prioritheories, they draw ona posterioriones.