In The Age of Coexistence, Ussama Makdisi continues his career-long refutation of an age-old, sectarian Middle East. While his previous work was most concerned with the construction of sectarianism, The Age of Coexistence argues for “the existence of a modern antisectarian tradition that goes all the way back to 1860 [in the Ottoman domain]” (p. 218). Makdisi details the creation and perpetuation of this tradition by exploring contingent historical processes—such as the Ottoman-European imperial encounter of the Tanzimat period that he examined in The Culture of Sectarianism (2000)—as well as an array of intellectual production, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Arab philosophers, educators, and state agents of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were instrumental in producing what Makdisi refers to as the “ecumenical frame,” “a body of thought,” “a system of governance,” and “a new political and legal order” that “consistently upheld both the constitutional secularity of citizens and the necessity of religiously segregated laws” (pp. 7–8). With this new and novel concept, Makdisi successfully repositions the political and intellectual history of the Arab world. While comprehensive and provocative, The Age of Coexistence could benefit from more theoretical interventions and a consideration of antisectarianism beyond the intellectual realm.
Makdisi's understanding of statecraft and intellectual life as outlined in The Age of Coexistence stands opposed to the analytical frame of sectarianism. Common in the literature, this approach often uses fixed sect signifiers (Sunni, Shiʿi, Jew, Maronite) as stand-ins for thorough analysis. In contrast, the ecumenical frame, both a lens and a lived historical phenomenon, contextualizes sectarianism as part of a late 19th century “cultural and constitutional commitment to the equality of citizens of different faiths” which “supported several overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, Muslim, Arab, Ottoman, Christian and Jewish subjectivities” (p. 8). At the same time, the ecumenical frame is not merely a confirmation of sectarianism's antithesis, coexistence. Makdisi is dubious of the simplistic usage of the latter concept as well, which “hints at an equality between different people of different faiths that is not warranted by historical scrutiny” (p. 2). With this more complex understanding of both sectarianism and coexistence, Makdisi sets out to historicize the ecumenical frame in the Arab world.
The Age of Coexistence unfolds chronologically in two parts: the first focuses primarily on the Ottoman empire of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the second moves briskly through the post-Ottoman, colonial, post-independence, and contemporary periods. Makdisi begins by establishing the ecumenical frame, as it was developed in the late 19th century, as a departure from “the older imperial model of Ottoman Muslim privilege” (p. 10). This is not to say the creators of the frame, ranging from Butros al-Bustani to Labiba Ahmed, did not believe in the importance of religion in civil society or, in some cases, Muslim supremacy. In this way, Makdisi is not pitting “good,” secular coexistence over “bad,” religious sectarianism. The Age of Coexistence, then, strikes a difficult balance, never pathologizing sectarianism nor lionizing coexistence.
This is perhaps most evident in chapter 5, which focuses on two early 20th century intellectuals: Michel Chiha and Satiʿ al-Husri. Makdisi demonstrates that while Chiha's communalism produced a power-sharing system in Lebanon that was “an undemocratic expression of pluralism” (p. 139), Husri's universalism was no less fraught, “sublimat[ing] diversity within a general, often one-dimensional, identification of Arabness” (p.151). Even though these intellectuals and their writings are well-represented in the scholarship, the depth in which Makdisi approaches their visions is fresh, considering the ecumenical frame as essential to the questions these reformers faced: how to balance the temporal and religious?
While specific chapters and source foci are commendable, Makdisi's contributions are more holistic. The ecumenical frame offers a viable alternative to other long-held scholarly approaches, some more suspect (sectarianism), others less useful (liberalism and modernity). Moreover, Makdisi sustains the through line of the ecumenical frame, with its “beginnings” in the antisectarian texts of the Nafir Suriyya (Clarion of Syria) in the wake of the 1860 violence of Mount Lebanon (p. 64), and its “caesura” (p. 163), or break, with Zionist settlement in Palestine. Conceiving of the Arab–Israeli conflict as a sectarian one, tied to questions of coexistence, effectively incorporates a major period and themes that have, unnecessarily, been dealt with separately in the scholarship on post-Ottoman history and politics. Globally, Makdisi signals to similar upheaval around the world surrounding “the nature of religious difference, political equality, citizenship and subjecthood,” as well as a “massive crisis over the question of slavery in the United States” (p. 46). It has always been surprising to this reviewer that there is no study on the “global 1860s,” connecting war in Lebanon and the United States (not to mention China). By deterritorializing sectarianism, The Age of Coexistence serves as a foundation for new research agendas.
Nevertheless, scholars of identity politics in the modern Middle East will likely be left wanting more from The Age of Coexistence. First, in the realm of theory building, while Makdisi is more expansive here than in The Culture of Sectarianism, the scope is still limited to the Mashriq. In his defense, Makdisi argues that the Arab Eastern Mediterranean is “different from Turkey itself, where the non-Muslim presence was largely expunged,” and “also different from North Africa or the Gulf where the indigenous non-Muslim presence was less influential in the region's cultural development” (p. 3). Scholars of Berbers, Jews, and Shiʿi Muslims in North Africa and the Gulf may beg to differ (Aomar Boum and Toby Matthiesen's work comes to mind). In Turkey, the concept of the ecumenical frame could prove more potent than the common frame of secularism in charting the ebbs and flows of modern political history. Moreover, Benjamin Fortna and others have established the continuity between Ottoman and early Republican institutions, so it is unlikely that the ecumenical frame as a counter to ethnic nationalism fully disappeared in the 20th century. Indeed, incorporating the Maghrib, Gulf, or Turkey would have been a difficult feat, whether in terms of research, writing or conceptualization. Nonetheless, without at least considering the possibility of an ecumenical frame across the Middle East, Makdisi misses an opportunity to make more widespread contributions.
Regarding source work, The Age of Coexistence is richest in Chapters 3 and 5, while less so in others. Yet, Makdisi privileges intellectual production and statecraft over that of non-elites and their everyday lives. Of course, this focus would be a different venture, but Makdisi's reliance on top-down understandings beg the question, how was the ecumenical frame lived, in terms of practice and ritual, on a daily basis by ordinary people in the Arab world? To address this question would necessitate at the very least a closer examination of the secondary work of those who explore identity politics “from below,” both in and beyond the Arab world (including Max Weiss, Justin Jones, and Sean Farrell, among others), and, at its most expansive, different types of primary sources that are common in social and cultural history (i.e., personal journals, reading group agendas, memoirs, event descriptions, popular songs, etc.).
Notwithstanding these two caveats, what Makdisi has accomplished here is truly impressive. The Age of Coexistence, and the ecumenical frame in particular, effectively rethinks the political and intellectual history of the Arab world since the late Ottoman era, no small achievement. Hence, it should be the teaching tool in courses on the history of the modern Middle East, whether at the survey, topics, or graduate level, and to general, non-Middle Eastern Studies readers. It is my hope that as it spreads in classrooms and in public discourse, The Age of Coexistence will serve the final blow to Western-based stereotypes of a Middle East rife with senseless violence, authoritarianism, and strict religious rule.
