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

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 Catholi...