Where the book was met with wide criticism from the various Islamic and secular currents supporting the modern state, and was discussed in many articles and seminars in discussion and criticism, and most of the criticism focused on the title of the book and the historical context in which it was mentioned.
In his criticism of the book, the book limited the modern state to the nation-state that arose in Europe with the rise of capitalism, which was a subject of controversy in the Islamic world.
Because it did not reach it naturally, but rather through colonial campaigns at the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Wael Hallaq built through his book two theoretical systems: the first represents modernity, and the other the Islamic state, and based on theoretical and practical experiences in each model, and reached a conclusion that the impossibility of mixing them, and the impossibility of establishing a modern Islamic state due to the difference in the political and moral system in the two models.
The professor of jurisprudence and Sharia policy, Attia Adlan, believes that the title of the book was vague and ambiguous, because the title did not specify what the impossible state was, describing the timing of the book’s emergence as difficult, as it came after the Islamists’s rise to power after the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011, considering that the book was a shock to the advocates of the Islamic civil state .
In turn, Professor of Political Ethics at "Hamad Bin Khalifa" University Muhammad Al-Mukhtar Al-Shanqeeti said that Wael Hallaq is an intelligent man in intellectual wars, and he has scored points in the intellectual struggle between the forces of political Islam and secular political forces, which has earned the book wide popularity.
He added that he disagrees with the author's diagnosis of Western modernity, and his view that the modern state is an absolute evil, because the writer views the state as an oppressor who controls society, which does not apply to all countries and regimes, and the Islamic state that a hairdresser sees the impossibility of its rise is the Islamic State or a state. Salafi jihadism, which Muslims do not believe in, according to al-Shanqeeti.
As for the researcher in politics and contemporary issues, Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj, he emphasized that the book tries to understand the problematic of the modern state, and to understand the problematic of the Islamic state within the modern state, as the writer considers that the state’s predicament is a global predicament and has nothing to do with Western societies. What moved Wael in the book is the ethical human dimension. .
On the other hand, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, Canada, Muhammad Fadel confirmed that the title of the book was successful, but there are those who misunderstood it, Arabs and Muslims, who considered it prejudice against the Islamic state, but in reality he prejudices the modern state in general, and he describes modernity as a development other than The moral, which is contrary to the Islamic civilization, which is built on ethics.