Who wants a caliphate?

The first significant modern Islamist is Sayyid Abu al-Ala Maududi (1903-79), the primary early advocate for the re-establishment of a caliphate. Born in the princely state of Hyderabad, the largest of such and ruled by the Muslim Niza
Mawdudi joined the South Asian 'Khilafah' movement in 1920.2222. Maududi wrote one of his first published works on the caliphate, that being: Mas'ala-e Khilafah (The Question of Caliphate). The 'Khilafah' movement was an effort to force the British to preserve the Ottoman caliphate, which was ultimately abolished not by the British but, as stated earlier, constitutionally by the Turks. The movement ended in 1924.
Maududi, however, eventually took up the cause of the re-establishment of the caliphate as part of an effort to initiate a revival of an Islamic way of life. Initially as a member of the Khilafah movement and its Tehrik-e Hijrat (Migration Movement) while the Ottoman caliphate still existed, Maududi verbally articulated the need for a caliphate throughout the next several decades. It was only later that he recorded in writing what he believed the concept meant (excerpted earlier) in Islamic Way of Life.
As founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Party, also called 'JI') in 1941, his was for many years a solitary voice calling for the caliphate while the Muslim world went through its various trials with socialism, communism, capitalism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, etc.
It is arguable that Maududi possibly hoped that the new nation of Pakistan - composed of Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis and Pushtuns - could become a new caliphate. After all, the sole establishing criterion of the new nation was Islam, in order to differentiate it from the co-ethnic groups of a shrunken India, who were largely Hindu. There are to this day over a dozen Pakistan-based Islamist parties who actively espouse the caliphate concept. Examples of such are the Tanzim-e Islami, the Jamiat-ul Ansar and the Lashkar-e Taiyyiba (Bangladesh, once the eastern wing of a larger Pakistan before 1971, also has some caliphate groups, such as the Khelafat Majlish).
In 1952 an Islamic theologian and Qadi from Palestinian Haifa, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani (1909-79), established the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation, in the Jordanian portion of Jerusalem. The justification of this new party was the re-establishment of the Khalifah in order to both protect Muslims and to spread Islam. A quote from the current official website explains the purpose of this organization:
The rise of Hizb-ut-Tahrir was in response to Allah (swt)'s saying: T.M.Q. 'And let there arise from amongst you a band that calls to the good and commands what is right and forbids what is evil and those are the ones who will attain felicity', in order to revive the Islamic Ummah after the severe decline to which she has sunk, to liberate her from the thoughts, systems and rules of Kufr, its systems and from the hegemony and influence of the Kufr states and in order to work towards establishing the Islamic Khilafah State so that the rules by what Allah (swt) has revealed returns to the realm of life.2424. Hizb-ut-Tahrir Official Website of Hizb ut tahrir
The goals of al-Nabhani were, first, a peaceful restoration of the caliphate and only then to have the newly restored caliph authorize renewed jihad against the kafir. Al-Nabhani left Jerusalem in 1953 for Syria, eventually moving on to Lebanon in 1959 after being banned in 1955 by Jordan from ever returning to Jordanian territory. Hizb-ut Tahrir seems to be willing to accept any male, theoretically, to be a new caliph. Reportedly the group has, in the past, unsuccessfully approached Libya's Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and even Iran's Ayatollahh Khomenei to be leaders of a new caliphate.
Almost concurrent with al-Nabhani but of greater eventual influence was an Egyptian, greatly inspired by the works of Maududi and the militancy of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, as the next Islamist advocate for a caliphate. Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) was born in Musha, Egypt, eventually trained as a teacher by 1928. Hired by the Ministry of Education in 1933, Qutb gave early signs of being a prolific writer, publishing works of fiction, poetry and literary criticism. In 1948 he was sent to the United States by the Ministry (it was in this period when Qutb's first major theoretical work of religious social criticism, Al-'adala al-Ijtima'iyya fi-l-Islam (Social Justice in Islam), was published in 1949) and then in 1950 to Europe. Apparently disliking what he saw, Qutb turned down a promotion and began writing newspaper articles on social and political themes. In the early 1950s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, was appointed editor to the weekly paper Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun and soon became the director of the organization's Propaganda Section.
From 1953 until his execution by the Egyptian government in 1966, Qutb spent at least ten years in prison, frequently tortured but writing prolifically. Heavily influenced by the postwar world of Soviet atheistic confrontation with American materialism, Qutb believed that the values of the Qur'an were timeless (fair play, balance and humanity) and that the world must inevitably submit to Islam. He emphasized the dominance of Islam as a 'liberating ideology' from secularism and that Islam would take the world by 'jihad'. Qutb was unapologetic in his conviction that Islam would retake former Muslim lands, move on to topple foreign governments in an offensive jihad and then establish a universal caliphate.
Qutb is considered by many to be the founder of the modern Islamist extremist 'movement', the inspiration of such individuals as Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahiri. Qutb's writings, although suffused with recognizably European elements, stress that 1) Islam as in the time of the Prophet was in abeyance and currently in a state of jahiliyya and 2) the enemy - the 'Crusaders'- were at the gates seeking the destruction of Islam. Yo destroy the identity of Muslims and establish foreign rule and rulers in Dar al-Islam in defiance of what Allah has revealed. For Qutb, only the caliphate could institute, preserve, enforce and expand Islam as Allah had instructed.
In 1996 a nearly unknown Afghan, Mulla Muhammed Omar, leader of a relatively new militant organization called the Taliban (which advocated a restored caliphate), stood on a balcony in Kandahar and wrapped himself in a cloak reputed to have belonged to the Prophet himself. He was acclaimed by the crowd as the 'Amir ul-Momineen' or 'Commander of the Faithful'. By this act this unknown man was accorded a title normally given to the caliph himself.
Of itself this might be seen as an act of supreme hubris by just another guerrilla group in Afghanistan, but in 1998 a second Muslim, Osama bin Laden, recognized Mulla Omar as the Amir ul-Momineen, pledging his personal loyalty to him as the legitimate ruler of the state of Afghanistan.

A Growing Call: Sh. Yasir Qadhi, Dr. Zakir Naik, Sh. Asrar Rasheed, Maulana Eshaq and Hamza Tzortzis talking about the centrality of the Khilafah.