At a conference attended by about 1000 people in Sydney held over the weekend of 2 and 3 July 2011, calls were made for Australia to join an international theocratic constitutional republic, a caliphate.
Turning into an elective monarchy, the caliphate was eventually absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, only to be abolished by the Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in 1924.
According to Tim Vollmer in Sydney's Daily Telegraph ( 4/7), the 2011 Khilifah Conference, “Uprising In The Muslim World….On the Road To Khilafah”, was a daylong conference with many international and local Muslim speakers giving talks about the Muslim world.
He reported that Uthman Badar, from the radical Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, referred to the Afghan War as a Western invasion and said:
"If our members exist in a country where an occupation has occurred, in capacity as individuals they would have an obligation to resist."
…sharia law…
When he was asked if he condoned the killing of Australian troops in Afghanistan, Mr Badar replied:
"If you are occupying someone else's land those victimised people have the right to resist."Mr. Vollmer reported that Mr. Badar had refused to condemn tactics such as suicide bombing as long as "innocent non-combatants" were not targeted.
He called for the creation of an Islamic state ruled by sharia law, stretching from Spain to Australia.
According to Mr. Vollmer, Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in many countries overseas, including parts of the Middle East.
The proposal ignores the fact that constitutional monarchy has proved a most successful model in the arab and Muslim world.
Given that the republican movement is unable or unwilling to indicate what sort of republic they want, they could add this model to their endless debates about a model to put to the people.