After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Paperback)

After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy By Noah Feldman Cover Image
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A lucid and compelling case for a new American stance toward the Islamic world.

What comes after jihad? Outside the headlines, believing Muslims are increasingly calling for democratic politics in their undemocratic countries. But can Islam and democracy successfully be combined? Surveying the intellectual and geopolitical terrain of the contemporary Muslim world, Noah Feldman proposes that Islamic democracy is indeed viable and desirable, and that the West, particularly the United States, should work to bring it about, not suppress it.

Encouraging democracy among Muslims threatens America's autocratic Muslim allies, and raises the specter of a new security threat to the West if fundamentalists are elected. But in the long term, the greater threat lies in continuing to support repressive regimes that have lost the confidence of their citizens. By siding with Islamic democrats rather than the regimes that repress them, the United States can bind them to the democratic principles they say they support, reducing anti-Americanism and promoting a durable peace in the Middle East.

After Jihad gives the context for understanding how the many Muslims who reject religious violence see the world after the globalization of democracy. It is also an argument about how American self-interest can be understood to include a foreign policy consistent with the deeply held democratic values that make America what it is. At a time when the encounter with Islam has become the dominant issue of U.S. foreign policy, After Jihad provides a road map for making democracy work in a region where the need for it is especially urgent.

About the Author


Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University as well as a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a contributing writer for Bloomberg View.

Before joining the Harvard faculty, Feldman was Cecelia Goetz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. In 2004, he was a visiting professor at Yale Law School and a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center. In 2003, he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution. He served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1998–1999). Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D. Phil. in Islamic Thought from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, serving as Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992, finishing first in his class.

He is the author of several books, including Cool War: The Future of Global Competition; the award winning and acclaimed Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Justices; The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State; Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It; and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. With Kathleen Sullivan, he coauthored textbooks on constitutional and first amendment law. He has worked as a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.

Praise For…


“Noah Feldman's After Jihad is a brilliant, insightful, and timely discourse on one of the most important topics of our time: the idea and practice of democracy in the Muslim world. Feldman sets the discussion within the context of America's growing interaction with Islam. You may agree or disagree with Feldman's arguments, but you cannot ignore their relevance.” —Prof. Akbar S. Ahmed, Professor of International Relations American University, and author of Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society

“Is Islamic democracy possible? If so, can and should America help bring it about? In this impressive debut, Noah Feldman shows with crystal clarity that the answer to both questions is yes. Rich in political history, cultural analysis, religious understanding, and comparative law, After Jihad is the first book I have read since September 11 that gives me hope that there may be light at the end of the war against terrorism.” —Harold Hongju Koh, Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 1998-2001

Product Details
ISBN: 9780374529338
ISBN-10: 0374529337
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: May 3rd, 2004
Pages: 280
Language: English