ABSTRACT
In the early 1920s, Gandhi embraced Islamic motives, symbols, worldview and arguments to justify the Khilafat struggle and periodically used the expression Jazirat-ul-Arab, a term used by leaders of the Khilafat movement and the Muslim League, to denote the territories that were threatened, captured and eventually broken away from the Ottoman Empire. There is an etymological issue with the expression, Jazirat-ul-Arab, which in Arabic means “Arabian Peninsula” and corresponds to the present-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its neighboring Arab countries on the western shores of the Persian Gulf, including Yemen. Strictly speaking, this does not include Iraq, let alone the Persian state of Iran. However, during the Khilafat phase, this expression was used by the Indian Muslims as well by Gandhi to denote a much wider area.
