In The Weekly Standard, Joseph Loconte reviews Thomas Farr‘s newest book:
“Afghan democracy had officially declared that there was no contradiction between protecting human rights and the judicially required execution of a man for his peaceful religious practices,” writes Thomas Farr in World of Faith and Freedom. “The constitution had created a window through which extremism could lawfully enter, contend with the reformers and the moderates, and stand an excellent chance of defeating them.”
The odds that the extremists will triumph in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries look better now than they did a few years ago, and Farr’s invaluable book helps to explain why. His contention is that America’s foreign policy establishment has either ignored religion or treated it as a bastion of irrationality–something to be contained, managed, or marginalized. The ironic result is that the most religious democracy in the West has failed to engage the most important catalyst for democratic change, the ideals and institutions of religion.
The problem, Farr writes, cuts across political and ideological lines. It afflicts the “realist” school of Henry Kissinger, which sees religion mostly in terms of power politics, no less than “liberal internationalism” à la Madeleine Albright, which treats religious values as an obstacle to liberal social policy. Neoconservatives, despite their attention to cultural issues, often share secular assumptions about faith–namely, that it must be privatized before human rights and democratic institutions can take hold.
Such thinking, Farr argues, endangers U.S. national security by underwriting “a diplomacy of unreality.”
Read the full review here (subcription required).