What Europe’s Wars of Religion Tell Us About the Modern Middle East

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143326/john-m-owen-iv/from-calvin-to-the-caliphate?cid=nlc-foreign_affairs_this_week-042415-from_calvin_to_the_caliphate_5-042415&sp_mid=48518987&sp_rid=amluc29vLnllYXBAZ21haWwuY29tS0

Catholics and Protestants remained faithful to their religions, but they stopped thinking of them in zero-sum terms and gradually embraced the separation between church and state. A similar kind of outcome in the Middle East would require that Muslims, both elites and mass publics, cease to see the question of Islam’s influence on laws and the public order as a life-and-death matter. Given the deep polarization that prevails, however, the prospect of such a transcendence appears remote.



JOHN M. OWEN IV is Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his book Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons From the West’s Past (Princeton University Press, 2015).