After Jihad

Selected reviews of After Jihad are featured below:

The Washington Post

Sunday, July 6, 2003
Is Islam incompatible with democracy? Are Muslims condemned to live under tyrannies and autocratic regimes because of their faith? Noah Feldman, a professor of law at NYU with a doctorate in Islamic thought, recently named an adviser on efforts to draft a new Iraqi constitution, wades into this ideological battlefield and argues the contrary.

Feldman believes that Islam is not incompatible with Western ideals, and that many Muslims yearn for the freedoms associated with democracy. Today, he points out, it is not secular Muslims but their Islamist opponents who are agitating for democracy. He draws a clear and valuable distinction between militant, violent Islamists and the more numerous moderates whose rise has not been as widely noted. The growth of this moderate camp and its embrace of democracy are an important new development, according to Feldman. He argues that the potential costs of the United States' sticking with the autocrats who rule so many Islamic states are high -- and that such alliances run against the groundswell of support among Muslims for democratization and self-government.

It is difficult to gauge the perils ahead as Islamic democrats and Islamists of all stripes jostle for power, with moments of success and failure. But in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has already staked a great deal on the premise that democratic change, once it begins, will be irreversible. Still, there remains the queasy prospect that Islamist political parties now obsessed with implementing Shar'ia (Islamic law) will gain power. It is not entirely clear what should be done about this dilemma -- and autocratic rulers exploit this precise fear as they present themselves to Western supporters as the lesser of two evils.

Feldman defines both Islam and democracy as "mobile ideas" that attract a broad range of adherents around the globe. As he characterizes them, mobile ideas can be flexible and come together in unanticipated new ways -- and this interplay between Islam and democracy is taking place largely unbeknownst to many in the West. He takes pains to explain why Islamists struggling to show the compatibility of Islam and democracy should not be dismissed as apologists for militant Islamist movements, as many Western observers commonly take them to be. Instead, Feldman sees these reformers performing the crucial task of anchoring democracy in the idiom of the land. He plumbs the depths of Islamic history to excavate possible Islamic antecedents to democracy.

Feldman surveys in broad compass the varieties of democracy in the Muslim world. He examines the Iranian pro-democracy movement and argues that it offers considerable hope of success. In Iran, he writes, the process of democratic change -- though taking place at a glacial pace -- is creating new realities that will be increasingly difficult to dislodge. Perhaps the most impressive gain is the entrenchment of democratic vocabulary and ideals in a society that has had a long tradition of authoritarianism.

Iran's neighbor Turkey, home of the most staunchly secular Muslim state, is now ruled by an Islamist party that has risen repeatedly, like the phoenix. Feldman describes Turkish Islamists as the most moderate in the Muslim world. Here he wishes to impart a more encouraging lesson: that the moderate politics of Islamic democracy can be replicated elsewhere.

Yet throughout the Muslim world there are also many obstacles to democracy that have little to do with religion. Among these are traditions of strongman authoritarian rule, the rise of a brutal warrior class in many Arab nations, and the expanding prerogatives of the postcolonial state, which has worked to constrict the reach of civil society.

Feldman is deeply pessimistic about the prospects of democracy in the Arab world, and especially in "rentier states" such as Saudi Arabia, whose treasuries are financed by oil wealth. He describes Egypt as a "de facto presidential dictatorship." He errs egregiously at one point, by characterizing Saudi Wahhabism as "deeply conservative." There is nothing conservative about it. It represents a radical rupture with received tradition. Wahhabism posits a return to an imaginary, pristine Islamic past. The Saudi anti-modernist model of state and society promotes the use of religion to provide legitimacy for an illegitimate regime. Along with petroleum, radical Wahhabi ideology is the chief Saudi export to Sunni Muslim societies.

What is the prognosis for a more democratic Islamic future? Today, democracy is on the decline in many Arab and Islamic states, and is being eroded in places as disparate as Jordan and Pakistan. In addition, many are expecting a resurgence of militant Islamists in Muslim societies in the aftermath of the Iraq war. President George W. Bush has proposed a vision of democratic reform encompassing the Arab-Islamic world; this is in marked contrast with the many middle managers on the Bush foreign policy team who support the status-quo arrangement of surrogate strongmen. If democracy can manage to take root while being opposed and manipulated by rapacious ruling elites, militant Islamists, hereditary and military dictatorships, it will be nothing short of miraculous.

Nonetheless, Noah Feldman has written a substantial and important defense of why America should support democratic reform and not the authoritarian status quo in much of the Muslim world. In the followup to the conflict in Iraq, no subject could be more timely.

Legal Affairs

Monday, May 5, 2003
Noah Feldman's book, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, offers some timely insights on the apparent conflict between democracy and Islam. Now a constitutional law professor at New York University, Feldman earned a doctorate in Islamic thought at Oxford.

Drawing upon his sophisticated understanding of political systems and Islamic history, Feldman tries to cut through misperceptions about the nature of Islam and democracy. He argues that the two ideas are indeed compatible, and what's more, he says, the long-term benefits of democracy far exceed the potential short-term costs of giving Islamists a voice in government.

Feldman begins by characterizing Islam and democracy as "mobile ideas" -- concepts that appeal to a wide range of people in a variety of cultures because they are simple, flexible, and apply equally to all people. Both assume all people are created equal and are equally deserving of justice. Looked at in this way, Feldman says, the two ideas are very similar. He concludes that given such important shared assumptions, the two concepts can be synthesized into an Islamic democracy. All that is needed is the appropriate diplomatic nudges from the international community.

Most Westerners have a less optimistic view of Islam, based primarily on the radical statements and actions of people Feldman identifies as "Islamists." The Islamists represent a relatively recent development, who, in contrast to ordinary Muslims, "see Islam as a comprehensive political, spiritual, and personal worldview defined in opposition to all that is non-Islamic." Their calls for restrictions on everything from popular music to women's freedom sound anything but democratic to Western ears.

Yet Feldman believes that most Muslims do not share the reactionary views of Islamists. Although they want politicians who uphold Islamic moral values, they do not necessarily want a government that will enforce those values on everyone. Feldman sees an important distinction between a government that draws upon the beliefs and traditions of Islam, an "Islamic" government, and a government run by religious zealots.

The popularity of Islamist groups remains a troubling issue for the West, and Feldman tackles it by describing the political climate of most Islamic countries. For decades, Western governments have supported autocrats and monarchs in the Middle East, partly out of fear of the violently anti-Western rhetoric of Islamist parties. But Feldman contends that this support has been counterproductive, only strengthening their appeal among ordinary Muslims.

In countries where secular political opposition is prohibited or brutally repressed, Islamists project the only voices of dissent. These groups also have an air of moral authority, as most Muslims view the religion itself as an advocate of justice. Feldman's knowledge of Islamic thought comes into play here, as he offers a brief history of the relationship between Islamic scholars and their governments. There is, he says, an Islamic tradition of clerics acting as government watchdogs. Islamists exploit this role, although, unlike scholars, they usually lack an extensive religious education that might moderate their views.

Feldman's most intriguing insights come in the latter part of the book, as he discusses what ordinary Muslims really want and believe. He uses the phrase "after jihad" to refer to the current state of the Muslim world. It underscores his view that after suffering decades of violence, most Muslim feel that "the option of holy war now seems spent, peripheral, unrealistic, and indeed distasteful in the light of the violence of September 11." Failing to see any conflict between their religion and democracy, they believe it is the only system that will ensure justice in their societies.

Feldman offers his vision of what democracy in the Islamic world might look like, emphasizing that Islam will play a vital role, whether Donald Rumsfeld likes it or not.

"Separation of religion and state is not likely anywhere in the Muslim world in the immediately foreseeable future," he writes. After years of living under corrupt regimes, only Islam has retained any kind of moral authority for most Muslims. Moreover, Feldman is quick to point out, many of our Western allies, most notably Britain, lack formal separation of church and state. He offers an exhaustive description of the different ways the two might be balanced, using the few democratic or semi-democratic Islamic nations as case studies.

In the last two years, many popular books have promoted the reactionary idea that Islam and the West are on a collision course, locked into a battle for cultural dominance. Feldman's measured interpretation is a breath of fresh air. Although his book tends more toward academic diplomacy than spirited advocacy of his own ideas, he offers realistic advice for troubled times.

For instance, he supports tying foreign aid and trade packages to democratic reform in Islamic nations. Democracy, he says, will increase security, as these societies become more transparent and their actions more predictable. Most importantly, unlike the apocalyptic pronouncements of many other works, Feldman insists that his ideas are not a foregone conclusion; if the West wants a functional democracy in the Islamic world, it's going to have to work for it.

Feldman opens his book with a story about the prophet Muhammad. As his troops return from battle, Muhammad congratulates them: "You have made the finest of returns; you have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad." The story seems an apt parable for America's situation. As our troops return home from the war, we face the larger task of creating a stable government in Iraq. Hopefully, Feldman's analysis will prove correct, and Muslims will be our eager partners in the greater jihad. -- By Meredith Johnston