Sacred power & civic power

The notion of the church being subject to the state as an incorporated body of the state is evaporating. 

In the Middle East the mosque sees itself as superior to the state; in Europe the church is evaporating and only a secular state is being left over. Europe and the Arab/Muslim world are opposite sides of the same two coins: Europe has a weak church but a strong state structure (in the event, regional rather than national), while the Muslims have a strong mosque and weak states. 

Before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the person of the sultan or the caliph incorporated secular power and coupled it with sacred power to manage the matter of authority and honor; after the empire’s collapse, temporal power transferred to the European repository of civic power – the state – which has caused much confusion in the Arab/Muslim world.