Disciples of the State?
Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World

Using historical process tracing, this book examines state interaction with religious elites, institutions, and attachments in Egypt, Greece, and Turkey.

Kristin Fabbe (Author)

9781108409452, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 March 2019

310 pages, 10 b/w illus. 4 tables
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'Kristin Fabbe has written a highly engaging study of the historical relationship between religion and state-building in the Middle East and Balkans … Fabbe's study should appeal to historians and political and other social scientists interested in state-building, secularization, and nationalism.' Mark Biondich, Journal of Church and State

As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, the Middle East and Balkans became the site of contestation and cooperation between the traditional forces of religion and the emergent machine of the sovereign state. Yet such strategic interaction rarely yielded a decisive victory for either the secular state or for religion. By tracing how state-builders engaged religious institutions, elites, and attachments, this book problematizes the divergent religion-state power configurations that have developed. There are two central arguments. First, states carved out more sovereign space in places like Greece and Turkey, where religious elites were integral to early centralizing reform processes. Second, region-wide structural constraints on the types of linkages that states were able to build with religion have generated long-term repercussions. Fatefully, both state policies that seek to facilitate equality through the recognition of religious difference and state policies that seek to eradicate such difference have contributed to failures of liberal democratic consolidation.

1. Introduction: religion and the quest for state soverignty
2. Creating disciples of the state
3. The Ottoman imperial footprint and international context
4. The first reformer: Egypt under Mu?ammad ?Al?
5. Synthesizing the religious and the national in a revolutionary and irredentist Greece
6. The religious roots of the 'secular' state: understanding Turkey's sacred-synthesis of the religious and the national
7. How the religious and the national diverge: evidence from Egypt
8. Sacred-synthesis, the politics of exclusion, and the prospects of liberal democracy
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: EU & European institutions [JPSN2], Comparative politics [JPB], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], European history [HBJD]