THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 53, March 15, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
PROSPECTS FOR STABLE DEMOCRACY IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD:
THE FLAWED ANALYSIS OF NOAH FELDMAN
A BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEWED: Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003. 272 pages. $24.
REVIEWER: Jonathan Schanzer
Feldman was briefly retained by the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Baghdad to assist in the drafting of a
new Iraqi constitution. The 32-year-old assistant professor at New York University Law School may well have landed this extraordinary
job because of his optimistic views about Iraq. "A post-Saddam Iraq will inevitably become," he writes in After Jihad, "a laboratory for
trying out the mobile idea of democracy in front of the whole world." He calls the United States a "midwife" for democratization.
A review of his scholarship, however, reveals a simplistic and overly optimistic "why not?" approach to Islam and democracy. Using
Western assumptions and pandering to a Western audience, he claims that Islam and democracy are two flexible ideas that are
compatible if Muslims just put their minds to it. Feldman, however, fails to draw this conclusion from the great storehouse of Islamic
jurisprudence that often argues to the contrary. Rather, it comes from his own skewed interpretation of modern history — one in
which countries like Pakistan and Iran are on the cusp of democracy.
There are other problems with his analysis. As noted by Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan scholar of Islam, many Muslims have "fought
against the advances of Enlightenment philosophy and banned Western humanism as foreign and ‘imported,' calling the intellectuals
who study it enemy agents and traitors to the nationalist cause." Feldman makes no mention of this powerful challenge.
He also misses the mark in stating that "everyone is equal before God" in Muslim theology. In reality, Muslims have historically
viewed fellow monotheists as second-class citizens, while non-monotheists and slaves rank lower yet. Feldman seems to think that
ignoring this reality makes it disappear.
In the end, however, militant Islam is Feldman's most major failing. While he recognizes the ideas of Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb,
and other radical ideologues as problematic, he drastically underestimates the enduring nature of the movement they created. As his
title suggests, Feldman lives in the happy delusion that we have reached an After Jihad era; he cheers himself with the implausible
thesis that militant Islam has waned. The attacks of 9/11, he echoes Giles Kepel[1] in explaining, were a "last, desperate gasp of a
tendency to violence that has lost most of its popular support," a description that willfully ignores reports from across the Muslim
world of delight at Osama bin Laden's achievement. And whence comes Feldman's conceit that the idea of an Islamic state created
through holy war is "an idea whose time has passed"? One wonders how he would explain al-Qa'ida's recent bombings in
Casablanca, Riyadh, and Istanbul. As further attacks by militant Islamists prove Feldman wrong, one can only wonder and worry
about his handiwork and be grateful that he left his position in Iraq.
End Note:
[1] Reviewed in Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003, p. 88-9.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
March 12, 2004
The original version of the book review appeared in "Book Reviews," Middle East Quarterly Winter, 2004, and can be
found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Jonathan Schanzer is a Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, specializing in the study of radical Islamic
movements.
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