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

by Jonathan Laurence

 
The surprising similarities in the rise and fall of the Sunni Islamic and Roman Catholic empires in the face of the modern state

Coping with Defeat presents a historical panorama of the Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires and exposes striking parallels in their relationship with the modern state. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research in Turkey, North Africa, and Western Europe, Jonathan Laurence demonstrates how, over hundreds of years, both Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements―religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration. As a result, Catholic institutions eventually accepted the state's political jurisdiction and embraced transnational spiritual leadership as their central mission. Laurence reveals an analogous process unfolding across the Sunni Muslim world in the twenty-first century.

Identifying institutional patterns before and after political collapse, Laurence shows how centralized religious communities relinquish power at different rates and times. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature. They respond to the simple but overlooked imperative to adapt to political defeat while fighting off ideological challenges to their spiritual authority. Among Laurence's findings is that the disestablishment of Islam―the doing away with Islamic affairs ministries in the Muslim world―would harm, not help with, reconciliation to the rule of law.

Examining upheavals in geography, politics, and demography, Coping with Defeat considers how centralized religions make peace with the loss of prestige.

Genres: Islam, Religion, Politics, History

606 pages, Paperback

Published June 22, 2021

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not reader friendly, at least not for a mass audience. This work consists of an amalgamation of historical facts and statistics with very minimal accompanying interpretation. A single statistic is never enough for this pedant author. It is as if the writer were hellbent upon deploying every single research note compiled, as opposed to developing a readable flow for effectively communicating his points. This relentless piling-on of factual details eventually blurs into a kind of technical reading that becomes quite difficult. I had to put this book down and restart it many times just to regain the fortitude to continue wrestling with it.

In comparison to other books of this nature, this one seems incomplete because the author never finished the task of fully meshing out his message from the data. Either that, or the author is afraid to prominently voice his opinions openly (perhaps because of retribution from fundamentalists) and is trying to just simply lay out facts so a reader may independently synthesize the message. The closest this author gets to setting forth direct opinions is at the very end of this book, when he is referring to a YouTube video displayed to him by a French consul, which he describes as follows:

“Pope Francis sat smiling alongside King Mohammed VI while they listened to an interfaith concert overlaying the Islamic call to prayer with the Catholic Ave Maria and finally, with the Jewish Shema. The ancient Hebrew incantation wafted over the heads of the two sovereign religious rulers and above the twenty-first century rafters of the auditorium in Rabat and through the Samsung, the ambiguous legacy of the oldest monotheism echoing in the walls of the heavily guarded consulate: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One, Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

The assertion that the message is “wafting over the heads of the religious rulers” should not go unnoticed; for it is a message that has long been adulterated by esoteric ritual, doctrine, dogma, and every sort of fabrication that might complicate its inherent simplicity. Reading the final paragraph of this lengthy book made the whole ordeal of this book worthwhile for me because the author’s message finally became crystal clear: ecumenical relationships are one of the first steps for truly recognizing God.

When I read this last paragraph, I immediately remembered a song I love by Van Morrison called Warm Love in which he sings: “And its ever present everywhere, ever present everywhere, warm love.” Truly Love is the God we are all seeking and It must be pursued on our own personal terms. The most prominent sign that we haven’t found God is when we castigate others for pursuing God in a different way. There are many diversified ethnicities and cultures on the earth and the God of Love hasn’t neglected the task of assuming a form sufficient to communicate with them all.

Let Awareness Be

Religious history reveals to us how the human search for truth is so easily subverted by false narratives which corrupt it into machinations for conflict, hatred, subjugation, and even outright abuse. Combative religious positions are only sustained out of untruth or out of circumstances of ignorance, which people are inclined to accept because of the innate human need to know its origins.

Humans have gained awareness without sufficient explanation of that former place from which they emerged; that place of robotic-like instinct, where all decisions are automated like a heartbeat, and the organism persists in bliss, a peaceful Eden, without concern about what it truly is, why it is, or from whence it emerged, totally unaware. But we are no longer animals and human awareness brings with it the quest for answers. We conduct this quest through religions, particularly when science cannot provide explanations. However, in religion, we fail to distinguish hypothesis from fact, and we become so entranced with our projections that we begin imposing them upon others unproven, which leads to discord, war, oppression, and conflict with those holding alternative hypotheses.

The great revolution in religion will come when we evolve a more open stance that embraces the core truths recognized collectively by the many faiths and when we acquiesce that the vast collection of rituals and dogma are indeed only postulations, not fact. In this way, the benefits of tolerance, acceptance, and goodwill can ascend to work as arbitrators and synthesizers for people with dissenting viewpoints.

Denominationalism

The reality is that people embrace religion not only for explanations regarding the unknown, but also for the social opportunities it brings. Religious evolution that expands this social interaction beyond the narrow cliques of denominationalism will be revelational for humankind. Instead of cultic, esoteric cliques, we must open ourselves to positive interactions among broad people groups. Instead of brain-washed adherents of poorly understood cultic explanations, we need broader involvement, compassion, friendship, love, peace, and inherent goodness. Instead of seeing competitive denominations as our opponents, we must see hatred, war, greed, divisiveness, and narcissism as our true opponents. Let Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and other religions peacefully join hands against these real opponents.

Islam seems to be in a state of highly fractured denominationalism with players like Iran, the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and others competitively seeking to reorganize it under a single authority and even as a single geography. This fragmentation, as also occurred in Christianity via Protestantism, has led to radically diverse positions, particularly among the European, Muslim diaspora. Religious factions that castigate one another can only be consolidated by force. Religious consolidation will occur naturally when it involves tolerance, common sense, compassion, an emphasis on peace, and a focus on inherent goodness.

The man that is infused with God will not recoil at the sight of something different than himself. The man of God will not be so arrogant as to think everything must assimilate into a representation of himself. The man of God will not be so self-absorbed as to think that God must take on human form or the form of his particular culture. The man of God will observe with ineffable amazement the infinite diversity in the world and find his place within this mosaic. Enlightenment comes when we can see the mosaic of diversified denominations from afar.


spiral galaxy shape formed in mosaic

Indoctrination Must Cease

The human mind is like a programmable hard drive. The software is installed and progressively upgraded all through early childhood and into adult life. This software is the education and indoctrination one receives, which forms one’s belief system, political tendencies, and psychological strengths. The tendency of governments to allow religious institutions to provide such education inevitably leads to fundamentalistic, cultic, or intolerant factions in the population. Proponents for abortion rail about a woman’s right to choose but fewer rail about a child’s right to diversified educational opportunities that are free of absurd notions of indoctrination that lack a sound basis in fact. As Dr. Laurence endeavors to do in this book, we must teach our children the facts and allow them to formulate their own opinions; but nevertheless, emphasize to them the difference between opinion and fact.

Until we can purify our educational systems of propaganda, indoctrination, and obviously biased opinions, we will persist in corrupting our children with elements of an obsolete past. We must teach what we accept to be fact and allow the future citizens to formulate new and inspiring opinions of their own, for this is progress. We must stop trying to stamp out adverse opinions, but rather synthesize from them any overlapping elements of goodness.

Authentic belief systems must arise independent of indoctrination and corruption. The world is at war over religious precepts that have no firm basis in fact; but yet are presented as fact to children within religious institutions, and these presentations are highly diverse, creating divisiveness in society. Instead of considering preconceived notions as fact, religion should be exploratory, allowing hypotheses, counterhypotheses, and open discussions. Instead of declaring people to be heretics, excommunicating people, and polarizing against other sects, we should be emphasizing acceptance, tolerance, and the infinite beauty of diversity. The religious life of humans remains deeply entrenched with corrupt mythologies and has yet to progress into a phase of authentic enlightenment.

Falsehood Is The Problem

It seems governments are often critiqued for using religion to control the populace, as they truly often do, but history shows us that when governments relax this grip, there springs up a wide variety of cults, radicalized groups, and other absurd notions that sprout into the human mind when it is left without predetermined, structured religion. While freedom of worship is widely proclaimed to be a virtue, it can also be a catalyst for fermenting political unrest, unhealthy belief systems, and radical cultic expressions, as occurred in the Arab Spring.

Churches in the U.S. are largely social institutions where people gather for interaction under the guise of professed religious intention, but very few attendees can independently voice competent explanation for their professed beliefs at any length, when challenged. Such beliefs, generally referred to as “Christianity”, are in fact highly diversified and this becomes apparent when one probes beneath the surface of personal devotions. A continued devolvement of religion into effective social facilities that promote peaceful interaction among the diverse elements in society can only do us good.

The detrimental effects of religion lie within religion itself, most particularly in the tendency to actively encourage disrespect for alternative religions. This is why governments find religion to be such an effective tool for consolidating control of populations. Religions have yet to mature sufficiently to respect freedom as sacred; that is, freedom to explore one’s own thought processes in developing a realization of God, as opposed to indoctrination and brainwashing by hierarchies’ intent upon sustaining their power. Perhaps no better example exists than governments oppressive responses to the Arab Spring.

A new religion must arise that embraces freedom of thought, freedom of speech, that threatens no one, and that does not fear the invariable diversity of opinion that arises when people are free to pursue their personal ideology, so long as they do it peacefully and without the sort of militant extremism that attempts to force itself upon others - freedom, respect, and tolerance must become components of every religious faction.

The Virtues of Liberal Democracy

Catholicism and Islam oppose liberal democracy because of (1) an in-rooted embrace of authoritarianism and concrete hierarchy, (2) a willingness to sacrifice personal freedoms for the enhanced efficiency associated with dictatorial organization, and (3) essentially a willingness to become automatons controlled by an appointed leader (Pope, Caliph, etc.) who is endowed with reverence and perceived as sacred. Certainly, in this sense, both are cults.

The idea of religious dominance and hierarchy is counter to liberal democratic government. Just as a majority vote has little place in ether Catholic or Islamic cultism, so it is antithetical to both religion’s ways of thinking about how societies should be governed. These cults integrate democratically run societies, seeking to infuse them with their autocratic sensibilities. A state supporting free religious expression can become a victim of theocracy styled religions that ferment under its protection. Just as the newscasters on Fox News brandish their foreheads on T.V., smeared with the mark of Ash Wednesday, constantly denigrating liberal sentiments, so the battle for democracy continues to be waged. Why else must the observers of Fox News be persistently confronted with fade-outs to commercials containing the image of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York?

Conclusion

This book looks at how a metamorphosis can occur in religion when it is practiced by immigrants comprising a diaspora. A prime example are the Islamic terrorists that pursue global political agendas even if in conflict with the religious authorities in their places of origin. Catalysts for the devolution of an original religion can include poverty, targeting by police, high rate of incarceration, etc. Such afflictions promote revolutionary tendencies, militancy, and acts of violence designed to advance certain causes. Such radical terrorism may only be eliminated when its causes are addressed: impoverishment, ignorance, isolation, paranoia, etc.

Certainly, the initial Catholic immigrants to the United States were not religiously welcomed with open arms; however, they quickly assimilated and developed into a dominating and affluent social force. However, American Catholicism bears distinct differences from the medieval Romanism from which it originated. This author questions whether this could be a similar path for European Muslims and juxtaposes the Catholic and Muslim situations; however, the Islamic comparison is much more complicated.

Even though the U.S. was Protestant, Catholics became accepted because they were still perceived to be Christian, albeit denominationally varied. Islam is more diverse from Christianity than Catholicism, but the interesting thing is that Muslims and Christians do claim to worship the same God: the God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. Still, the papacy and the perception of caliphate are very different. The caliphate isn’t consolidated like the papacy. Currently, no one caliphate can creditably assert authority over the lives of all the world’s Muslims in the way the pope lords over the Catholics. Indeed, a consolidation of world Islam seems to largely be the goal of Islamic terrorists like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. And, because such terrorists continue to battle governments, the age-old conflict between religion and secular rule continues to wage.

As Dr. Laurence writes in the final paragraph of this book, the ancient monotheism “wafts over our heads” and we fail to discern God because we complicate God with ostentatious displays of oppressive laws, polarizations, artifacts, relics, doctrines, idolatry, dogma, rituals, superstitions, indoctrinations, and other barriers against freethinking. Coping With Defeat entails the ongoing process of discerning truth and defeating mere postulations.

-End-

[Molvi]

I enjoyed the detail in this book. The research in support of the ideas were from a wide variety of sources and made for very interesting reading. It is not surprising therefore that the book received the awards that it has.