Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State

Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State

Cover
Author	Jonathan Laurence
Language	English
Subject	Religion and politics
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Publication date	June 22, 2021 (US), July 13, 2021 (UK)
Pages	606
Awards	Winner of the Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award, American Political Science Association
ISBN	9780691172125

Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State is a nonfiction book by Jonathan Laurence that examines how central religious communities in Sunni Islam and Roman Catholicism responded to shifts in political authority and geography. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research, Laurence proposes that these institutions adapted in stages to religious reform, the rise of nation-states, and mass migration. The book suggests that disestablishing Islam would undermine efforts to align with modern legal systems. The book won the 2022 Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award.

Background

In a 2021 interview to Aljazeera, Laurence explained how the Ottoman Caliphate and the Roman Catholic Church faced "defeats" triggered by the rise of nation-states, which stripped religious institutions of their political power. Laurence talked about the unique ways in which the Papacy survived—by retaining a symbolic state and ultimately embracing democratic principles—contrasting this with the abolition of the Caliphate, which left a vacuum that has since fueled religiously driven political movements and extremist groups. Laurence underlined that, unlike the Vatican, the Islamic Caliphate was not reformed or preserved, and this abrupt elimination contributed to modern debates over religious legitimacy, underscoring the lingering tension between state authority and religious authority across the Muslim world.

Summary

Laurence examines how religious authorities in Sunni Islam and Roman Catholicism adapted to shifts in political authority and global structures over several centuries brought about by the rise of the modern state. He begins by outlining the historical framework in an introduction that sets out his central premise: both Catholic and Sunni institutions experienced three decisive ruptures with older forms of power, affecting how they negotiated their roles under modern states. Framed as a comparative study, Laurence identifies three major phases of institutional "defeat": the collapse of empires, the rise of nation-states, and the expansion of religious diasporas.

In the first phase, Laurence investigates how the loss of territorial sovereignty—the Papal States for Catholics and the Ottoman Caliphate for Sunnis—disrupted traditional religious authority. Yet, this rupture prompted new forms of institution-building as both religious systems pivoted toward spiritual and moral leadership, retreating from direct governance while intensifying internal organizational coherence.

The second phase focuses on the consolidation of the nation-state. Laurence traces how states, particularly in Europe and North Africa, either curtailed or co-opted religious hierarchies. The book draws parallels between the marginalization of Catholic authority in post-Revolutionary France and the abolition of Islamic legal courts in Republican Turkey. Through interviews and archival work across ten countries, Laurence highlights how religious institutions responded by developing new legal, educational, and bureaucratic frameworks to maintain relevance under state control.

The third and most contemporary phase centers on migration and the emergence of believers living “beyond borders.” Laurence illustrates how both Catholic and Sunni institutions responded to these demographic and geopolitical shifts: Catholicism through the Vatican's transnational pastoral initiatives, and Sunni Islam through the development of state-run religious ministries aimed at maintaining loyalty among diaspora populations. These responses included the professionalization of clergy, the centralization of authority, and the use of soft power mechanisms such as education, advocacy, and ritual standardization.

Laurence brings these threads together to argue that centralized religious institutions learned to accommodate modern legal systems while still pursuing global missions. He questions whether disestablishing official Islam would help reconcile religious communities with rule-of-law states, suggesting instead that these ministries may be necessary intermediaries as Sunni authorities, much like their Catholic counterparts, continue to define their role in a changed political landscape.

Reviews

Jared Rubin explored how the book navigated three major historical setbacks: the loss of empire, the rise of nation-state and religious diasporas to maintain spiritual influence. Rubin admired how the book offers a well-researched and detailed historical analysis comparing how the Catholic church adapted through the Vatican and centralized leadership meanwhile the Sunni Islam fragmented due to collapse of the caliphate and colonial powers and answers the question of how the two religious authorities asserted their significance despite losing their political power. He pointed out that Lawrence makes an interesting telling: that violent extremism is the result of these defeats. But he pointed out two setbacks: that the framing of a "reversal" between the Catholic Church and the "Sunni Caliphate" between the mid-19th century and today is less compelling in that the 19th century is not a good starting point as it is a point of deviation from major historical norms. He also found the historical vastness and the depth the book to be both its forte and weakness as it can be distracting and readers might forget the point being made.

Alan Mikhail the chair of the department of history at Yale started his review of coping with defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the modern state by asking readers to contemplate the idea of a Muslim head of state in Belgium or France? Is the bridge too far? He admired the author of the book, Jonathan Laurence, on his ability to shake us from the lazy somnolence of thinking about the difference between Christianity and Islam and puts us to understand the similarities of how both religions adjusted to the birth of a new idea- the state. He found how both religions coped with the three parts of the defeat namely: the fall of empires, the rise of nations and the spread of diasporas to have been researched and analyzed well. With 100 interviews in 10 countries and 7 languages conducted, Mikhail couldn't help but admire Lawrence's scholarly range. Although he found the Muslim majority of Lawrence's selection to be too ‘European’ having been limited to North Africa and Turkey. But one thing remained undisputed. For Mikhail, Lawrence showed how the rise of the state unexpectedly amplified the influence of religion.

‘Laurence invited us to imagine a plausible future in which the Ottoman caliphate survived in an uneasy relationship with its host republic, Turkey. Might the caliphate have served as a mediating and moderating influence between the competing Islamic infrastructures of the post Colonial nation-states, on the one hand, and the many emerging transnational extremist movements on the other?’ With the discussion of such and other ideas, Charles Häberl grappled with Laurence in the subsequent trajectory of Islam; if the trajectory did not stop at the globalization of these two institutions, the professionalization of their clergies, and their turn towards education and other soft power instruments but continued into the caliphate surviving with the state like the Catholic church does in the Vatican. He ended with admiring the book for its pro-activeness that is accompanied by illustrations and detailed research.

As opposed to many scholars who argue that the absence of a true reform version of Islam has contributed to the difficulties Muslims have experienced in coming to terms with the modern nation state, Dov S. Zakheim stated that he found Laurence's thesis rather different; the reemergence of Islamic radicalism is due to the disappearance of central religious authority. Zakheim, in his detailed review of the book, concluded that the thesis put forth by the author is simply not proven. Although he found Laurence's work on how the catholic church evolved with the newly found Europe's secularism commendable, he found it to be lacking in explaining the radicalization of the Muslim world. Zakheim wrote in detail how Laurence created a major analytical void by avoiding to address states with majority of Sunnis, restricting his analytical work to four Muslim states, (Turkey, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), failure to study the real motives behind youngsters joining radicalist groups, lack of interest in understanding the nature of Shia radicalism, failure to recognize the lack of ambitions of radical Muslim groups to establish international caliphate and not evaluating the economic and social as opposed to cultural and religious variables influencing radicalization. As the church continues to lose followers and being racked by scandals even the premise that the catholic church has been able to retain its spiritual authority even as its temporal authority has been reduced remains arguable, Zakheim wrote.

A large book with 600 pages of which 438 are dedicated for a main text, multiple case studies but still remaining to be jargon free with numerous charts and illustrations, Heather J. Sharkey nominated the book for a classroom. Sharkey praised it for its infectious enthusiasm of the subject and as a book not merely of religious history but a diplomatic one. With different case studies, she found the writer to have illustrated how both the Sunni Islam and the Roman catholic churches coped with the fall of empire, the nation state era and the era of believers without borders by moving away from unrealistic goal of political office holding to advocacy, missionary work and ritual uniformity. She admired how the book raised important questions like who really lost amid battles between religious institutions and secular states? But rebuked Lawrence for assuming that readers know the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam in addition to anti-clericalism in Catholic societies.

Iza Hussin said that Lawrence did the field a service by comparing Sunni Islam and the Roman Catholic Church through a systematic paired comparison, transcending any presumed essential characteristics of either tradition and their relationships with politics, secularity, and the modern state.

Joseph Prud'homme admired the work by calling it scholarship of the first water. After he wrote out the logic of Laurence; that Sunni Islam can emerge as messengers of moderation by embracing their defeat and allow an autonomous spiritual voice as the Ulama, the same way the Catholic church did with the papacy, as elegant, he went on to raise his questions around it. Joseph argued that the polymonarchy of the Sunni Islam and the lack of concepts that are similar to ressourcement and Christian democracy in it. Joseph wrote, the purely spiritual role of the Church proved successful in part because tradition and scripture were persuasively marshaled in its defense.

Richard Penaskovic found the book with its 113 illustrations, 27 tables and with a regime that follows a timeline since 1500 to be a brilliant work. With a closer look to ‘the three shocks’ that severed the ties of the Catholic church and the Ottoman empire with their respective states, Penaskovic admired how Laurence compared and contrasted how both religions dealt with each one of them. He noted how Laurence showed the three shocks, namely the end of the empire, the nation- state era and the era of believers without borders, resulted in transforming religious power in a new way. He praised the author and called the work profound and erudite.

In his review, Steven Simon put in discussion the ongoing debates on Muslim rage. Simon admired how the author made an ambitious and but brilliant work in underlining how western governments facilitated the peaceful transformation of the Catholic church by permitting the pope and Vatican to survive despite the secularization of Europe in contrast to the Turkish state which decided to depose the caliphate and depose the Caliph resulting in violent sectarianism, among many consequences. With a closer look to the Catholic church and the Ottoman empire in the 19th century, Laurence advanced his argument by showing how the Ottoman state and the mosque were operating in different spheres of life, observed Simon. He also demonstrated how both religious states professionalized their respective clerical establishments albeit for different purposes. Simon found Laurence's work brilliant supported by archival data.

Muzaffar Iqbal saw the work as an imprecise comparison between Roman Catholicism and what he called "Sunni Islam," and he believed it overlooked fundamental theological and historical differences by treating the Ottoman sultans as guardians of faith akin to the papacy. He criticized its premise of a "spiritual-temporal fusion," pointing out that no post-Prophetic figure in Islam ever combined religious and political authority in the same way as the Prophet himself. He also viewed its discussion of nation-states and religious institutions as rooted in a modern Western triumphalist narrative that ignored the historical adaptability of Muslim societies and the primacy of Islam's original sources. Although he acknowledged the extensive research data, he argued that the work's conclusions rested on flawed assumptions, particularly regarding Islam's capacity to be defined or controlled by political rulers in a manner comparable to Roman Catholic structures.

The Economist described the book as a "closely argued, contrarian piece of scholarship," highlighting its claim that Islam and Christianity experienced similar historical developments regarding their relationships with nation-states.

Award

• The Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award, American Political Science Association (2022)