Book Review by Rev. Bassam M.

Madany

After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy

New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. Pp. 260, $24.00
Islam & Democracy

One of the most urgent challenges facing Muslim nations today is their willingness to
espouse democratic principles and act upon them in our ever shrinking and globalized
world. Several books dealing with Islam and politics have appeared in the last few
decades. Noah Feldman’s book has the distinction of treating the subject in a very
hopeful manner, notwithstanding the events that have rocked parts of the Muslim world
since the First Gulf War. This book could not have appeared at a more auspicious time as
the United States is working hard to establish democratic regimes in Afghanistan, and
Iraq.

The book is organized around three major themes: The Idea of Islamic Democracy,
Varieties of Islamic Democracy, and the Necessity of Islamic Democracy. I am very
impressed by the author’s coverage of vast areas of the Muslim world. To peruse its pages
one gets an up-to-date description of politics and political activities from Indonesia all the
way to Morocco. This feature makes the book very helpful to students of contemporary
Islam.

Having thus far drawn attention to the positive aspects of “Islam and Democracy,” let
me say that I found the book rather abstract, with the author assuming all along that Islam
and democracy, can, and should co-exist.

At the outset, the book would have been very helpful to the average reader, if certain
clear definitions were made at the beginning of the work. The word ‘democracy’ cannot
be simply understood etymologically. Across the last few centuries, it has acquired a
specific political baggage. Thus, for North Americans, Europeans, the peoples of India,
South Korea, and Japan, democracy implies political freedoms, the rule of law, a
parliamentarian form of government, and the guarantee of the rights of minorities. Is
“Islamic” democracy to be a unique genre of democracy? Nowhere in the book, did I find
any serious discussion of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities within the future
and hoped-for democratic Islamic regimes.

While the notes at the end of the book refer to many sources that the author had
consulted, it is not clear whether Noah Feldman did research dealing with the topic in
Islamic languages such as Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, and Malay. I don’t mean that a
writer on Islam has to know all these languages; however an ability to consult Muslim
scholars writing in their own languages for domestic readers on this subject, would have
made the book more realistic in its forecast for the future of democracy in Islam.

It is my conviction that a prerequisite for the rise of democracy within Islamic countries
is the renewal and modernization of the Arab mind. Dr. Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, an
Egyptian scholar undertook such a project in several books as well as in the Kuwaiti
journal, “Al-‘Arabi.” He called for “the opening of the door of Ijtihad” as well as for
the jettisoning of the irrational elements in the Arab-Muslim intellectual heritage.”
Until such serious thinking spreads in the Muslim world, no kind of democracy can take
root and flourish.

One sign for the rise of a true democratic spirit within Muslim lands is to see whether
self-criticism is allowed and practiced. For example, there is a general tendency among
Muslim thinkers to brand every policy vis-à-vis their world, undertaken by Western
countries as bearing the marks of another “crusade.” The implication is that only Islam
had a right to conquer territories outside Arabia. Nowadays, the crusader wars
(1099-1291) are not glorified or celebrated by any descendants of the Crusaders. It is
high time that those wars be placed in their proper perspective. As Bernard Lewis put it in
"The Arab in History"

"At the present time, the Crusades are often depicted as an early experiment in
expansionist imperialism --- a prefigurement of the modern European empires. To the
people of the time, both Muslim and Christian, they were no such thing. When the
Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem, barely four hundred years had passed since that city,
along with the rest of the Levant and North Africa, had been wrested by the armies of
Islam from their Christian rulers, and their Christian populations forcibly
incorporated in a new Muslim empire. The Crusade was a delayed response to the
jihad, the holy war of Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost
by war --- to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without
impediment, to Christian pilgrimage” P. 139

Quite often, Turkey is mentioned as the only true democratic country in the Muslim
world. But this is true only up to a point. Elections are held, and governments change.
Beginning as a purely secular republic under Ataturk’s autocratic rule, the Turkish
Republic has evolved into a more tolerant country where Islamic parties may exist and
even participate in elections, and form governments. But if judged by the universal
understanding of what a true democracy is, Turkey falls short of the mark. It oppresses
ethnic minorities (like the Kurds) and the lot of religious minorities (Christians) is worse
than under the Ottoman rule.

When dealing with Pakistan, Noah Feldman asks the question, “Why has democracy
done so poorly in Pakistan? Is Islam somehow at fault, given that neighboring Hindu-
majority India has managed to preserve its democracy for half a century.” P. 125 The
answer he gives, partially blaming geography, is unconvincing. The same applies to his
dismissal of the remarks of V. S. Naipaul in his latest book, “Beyond Belief” (P. 208)

As the author nears the end of his book, he has an eloquent chapter dealing with
“Imagining an Islamic Democracy.” “What would an Islamic democracy look like in
practice?” This description, or rather this hopeful forecast, is very touching. One only
hopes that it would come to pass before too long. The very title of the last chapter (which
is also the title of the book) is “After Jihad.” Our author remains hopeful,

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notwithstanding the history of Islam during the last fourteen hundred years. He looks
forward to a period in world history when Muslims would no longer understand jihad as
a struggle against the “other,” but as an inner struggle to master one’s self and become a
better Muslim, truly submissive to the will of Allah. Judging by the events that took place
since 2000, the “old-fashioned” jihad is still going on. Still, let’s hope that there is going
to be an “After Jihad.”