In Disciples of the State? Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World, Kristin Fabbe gives a meticulously researched account of how religious elites, structures, and attachments were incorporated into the modernized educational and legal institutions of three formerly Ottoman states: Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Through a comparative historical analysis based on qualitative and quantitative research, Fabbe presents a framework to explain the different power arrangements involved in the process of centralization, modernization, and secularization in each state.
Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to a detailed explication of methodology and argument. Fabbe's framework for analyzing the distribution of power between religion and the state, in particular the state's engagement with religious elites, religious institutions, and religious attachments (6) consists of four major categories and is driven by the question of where law-giving authority resides (7, figure 1). At the far left of the spectrum is total secular subordination of religion and on the far right is total religious dominance of state power. Fabbe's analysis focuses on the middle two categories: “sacred synthesis” and “dualism.” Fabbe defines sacred synthesis as state nationalization of religious elites and attachments and the subordination of religious institutions to state control (6). Dualism involves state attempts to leverage or nationalize religious elites and attachments, while religious institutions retain autonomy and authority through mechanisms of governance that protect their autonomous status (7). Fabbe argues that Greece and Turkey's process of state secularization involved a sacred synthesis, while Egypt's was characterized by dualism. She also notes five strategies used by the state in this process of negotiating a new balance of power: redeployment, institutional layering, piecemeal co-optation, the creation of parallel systems, and usurpation (15). Fabbe's detailed framework and specification of the aspects of religion being examined is well-taken, but this stands in contrast to a rather monolithic approach to “the state” that is deployed throughout the text.
In Chapter 3, Fabbe provides a detailed account of nineteenth century Ottoman history to set the stage for the analysis in later chapters. Fabbe's engagement with Ottoman history is commendable and the idea of selecting case studies from among formerly Ottoman territories is compelling. Yet the selection of Greece, Turkey, and Egypt in particular raises questions about periodization and the relative impact of Ottoman rule in these three states. Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, while Egypt pursued an independent path of reform under Mehmed Ali beginning in 1805 (which is detailed in Chapter 4). Fabbe describes 1826 as the beginning of major reforms in the Ottoman Empire, although scholars such as Betül Başaran have demonstrated that the reign of Selim III (1789–1807) formed the foundation for reforms taken up in the early nineteenth century. So while the individual case studies and framework are compelling and convincing, the case for the impact of shared Ottoman rule on this process is unclear due to the absence of a clear periodization to establish the linkages between the cases.
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the empirical chapters on Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, respectively. Fabbe argues for Greece as a case of sacred synthesis, in which strategies of piecemeal co-optation, institutional layering, and usurpation were used to establish secular state dominance over religious authority over time. Fabbe notes that the establishment of a Ministry of Religion and the disintegration of the relationship between Greek Orthodox leadership in Istanbul and Athens contributed to the state's ability to bring religious elites, institutions, and attachments into the purview of the Greek state (69). In Turkey, Fabbe asserts that an important corrective to notions of Kemalist secularism is achieved through a focus on how religion was incorporated into Late Ottoman and Republican Turkish statecraft (83). Using an impressive array of historical primary sources and data gleaned from a biographical analysis of religious elites' trajectories in the secular state system, Fabbe demonstrates how institutional layering and piecemeal co-optation brought Ottoman religious elites, institutions, and attachments into the secular state system. Fabbe argues for dualism in Egypt, with the rise of state centralization, modernization and secularization accompanied by a semi-autonomous religious institution centered around al-Azhar. Despite being the original site of reforms under Mehmed Ali, Fabbe notes that Egypt's dualist trajectory ultimately led to less durable advances in sovereignty and hegemony than those seen in the Greek and Turkish cases (146).
Chapter 8 offers reflections on the ability of the sacred synthesis approach to accommodate religious diversity in the context of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Turkish and Greek policies of ethnic cleansing and population exchange, and the impact of this process of citizenship and social order over time (150). She concludes that Greece and Turkey stand out among former Ottoman lands as relatively stable and democratic amidst a region experiencing a deficiency of liberal democracy and a high level of conflict (183–184). This chapter offers interesting insights, but the focus on the absence of liberal democracy here seems geared toward policy circles rather than emerging organically from the focus of the book. In Chapter 9, Fabbe discusses the problem of the “Turkish model” in application to the post-Arab Spring Middle East, and lays out the contributions of her work to cross-disciplinary inquiries. This is an important intervention in ongoing policy discussions about the post-Arab Spring Middle East, particularly in the context of the increasingly overt tensions between religion and politics in the Turkish context.
Disciples of the State is an important work that will be of interest to scholars and students of religion and politics, Ottoman studies, and modern and contemporary issues in formerly Ottoman lands. In particular, Fabbe's work should be recognized as an important theoretical contribution based on a detailed analysis of the development of local particularities over the history of state centralization, modernization, and secularization, which has often been approached through Eurocentric frameworks. Further, Fabbe effectively complicates the distinction between politics and religion, showing how the state became a religious actor and religious elites became political actors during this time of transition, a crucial contribution that complicates the meaning of secularization in the nineteenth and early twentieth century regional context.
