Posted on 05/19/2003 4:27:30 PM PDT by Utah Girl
The newest face thrust upon us by America's insatiable appetite for novelty belongs to one Noah Feldman. He's a 32-year-old assistant professor of law at New York University and author of a new book (his first) entitled After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. He's also been anointed chief U.S. adviser to Iraq for the writing of its new constitution. This announcement has been greeted by laudatory pieces, in places as varied as the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. The novelty? It's the combination. Feldman is Jewish (raised in an Orthodox home); summa cum laude at Harvard (Near Eastern studies); conversant in Arabic; a Rhodes scholar with an Oxford D.Phil. in Islamic studies; and a law graduate from Yale. "The East is a career," wrote Disraeli. What he really meant was that the East is a great place to launch a career. It's now done that for young Professor Feldman, who will never again know obscurity.
The understanding of the Middle East can always use a new face. After all, America's most credible interpreter of the Middle East and Islam is about to turn 87 (happy birthday to Bernard Lewis, May 31!), so you know there is a generation gap. But you expect new ideas from new faces. The problem with Noah Feldman is that his idea isn't new. In fact, it's the same idea first advanced about a decade ago by John L. Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University and America's foremost apologist for Islamism. If you purchase Feldman's After Jihad, you should shelve it between Esposito's 1992 book, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, and his co-authored 1996 book, Islam and Democracy. They're all essentially the same book. (You can get the gist of Feldman's book from a short piece in the Boston Review, a segment on the publisher's website, a draft of a chapter left on the web, and a long radio interview with the author, broadcast last month.)
The Esposito/Feldman idea goes like this: Islamists are really no worry at all. In fact, they are actually the best hope for democracy in the Middle East. Leading Islamist thinkers want democracy, and if Islamist parties were allowed to take powerwhich they certainly would do in free electionsit would be an improvement over the situation today. Even if Islamists declared "Islamic" states on assuming power, these regimes would probably be more or less democratic, provided you don't insist on a narrow, culture-bound definition of democracy. The United States is making a big mistake by allying itself with autocratic rulers in the region, and it's betraying its values too. It should encourage inevitable change in the Islamists' favor, which is really in the U.S. interest.
To make this argument stick, you need to claim that "jihad is over." Why? While it's still on, too many so-called "moderates" apologize for it or even cheer it on. This is what happened in the decade between the Gulf war and 9/11. Esposito and his crowd were telling us that Islamism was evolving in new, peaceful, and democratic directions. In his 1992 book, Esposito assured us that the Islamist violence of the 1980s would recede, and that "the nineties will prove to be a decade of new alliances and alignments in which the Islamic movements will challenge rather than threaten their societies and the West."
In fact, exactly the opposite happened. Islamist movements kept spinning off terrorism that grew ever more deadly, all of it justified as jihad, destroying the flagship American projectthe "peace process" between Israelis and Palestiniansand finally killing 3,000 innocents in New York. This wave of terrorism was made possible in part by the refusal of the so-called Islamist "moderates" to condemn violent jihad in all its forms. Some even justified it in roundabout ways. They were effectively accomplices to the violence, and American apologists of the Esposito school contributed to the general complacency that made 9/11 an easy job.
Now Noah Feldman comes along to reassure us that the jihad has really abated this time. 9/11 and subsequent attacks are "the last, desperate gasp of a tendency to violence that has lost most of its popular support." Al-Qa'ida is "politically irrelevant." The "alarmist argument is behind the curve." The mainstream Islamists don't want jihad, they want democracy: "The Islamists' call for democratic change in the Muslim world marks a fundamental shift in their strategy." Feldman: The Islamists never got a chance, really, to govern, and if there's one central argument that I'm trying to press in the book, it's that Islamists who say they are committed democrats, who tell you that they believe in democracy, who believe that Islam and democracy are deeply compatible, not incompatible, should be given a chance to govern. They've never been given that chance anywhere [sic!], and I think many, many people in the Muslim worldnot all, but manywould vote for them. As for U.S. interests, it would be a "mistake" to think that Islamists "are inevitably or unalterably opposed to the United States." The United States should push governments, including friendly ones, to allow political parties and free elections, and let the chips fall where they may. "The experiment of Islamic democracy deserves to be run," writes Feldman. In fact, "Islamic democrats are the best hope for the future of the Muslim worldand they deserve our admiration and our support." |
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Well, almost no tracks. Not only is Feldman an Esposito emulator. He is also an Esposito collaborator. In January of last year, he and Esposito co-organized a conference at New York University's Law School, in cooperation with Bill Clinton's presidential foundation. The topic: "Islam and America in a Global World." NYU reported their collaboration in these words: "The Law School's Professor Noah Feldman and Georgetown Professor John Esposito, both scholars of Islam and democracy, have worked closely with President Clinton's office in structuring the day." The "moderates" assembled for this exercise ganged up on the United States and its policies so relentlessly that Clinton felt driven to intervene after his formal speech. The New York Post covered the event under this headline: "Bill Fires Back at US-bash Powwow." It would not be an exaggeration to say that Feldman's sole previous attempt at organizing "moderate" Muslims on behalf of a U.S. president backfired. (Click here to watch the conferencealmost eight hours.) |
A week ago, I wrote that Feldman is the wrong guy for the job.
Thanks to you posting the Martin Kramer article, I am now even more firm in my conviction. Ideally, Feldman will have the same tenure in his job that Gen. Garner had.
On the other hand, it appears that the administration chose well in appointing Paul Bremer. It's still early days, and I don't wanna hear no doom and gloom yet.
By the way, it's Freepers like you and the articles they discover that make FreeRepublic great, in my opinion.
All the lefties are wringing their hands over Paul Bremer. "Baghdad is being looted, do something, do something" is all we heard in the days after Saddam fell. Bremer steps in, and is tough and now it is "We can't be mean and shoot the looters!"
The picture from Martin Kramer's article on his web site. Photoshopped or not, this is terrific sardonic humor.
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