There is hardly a more contentious topic in today's academy and public culture than the compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy. While this has been a topic of polemic for some time, the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent declaration by the Bush administration of a “war on terror” has placed this debate at the center of numerous academic and policy debates. Professor Nader Hashemi's contribution to this debate is a sober one, and if nothing else, serves as a useful corrective to the often ahistorical, self-serving, and at times out right triumphalist tone that characterizes much academic and public discussion of this question.

The book, however, is more than a defense of the compatibility of Islam with at least certain versions of liberal democracy, although it certainly does that; it is also a challenge to what the author asserts is the widespread belief among political scientists that religious politics and liberal political development are incompatible. Hashemi's primary focus, then, is a problem that is broader than that of Islam and liberal democracy, and extends to the more general problem of how an illiberal society, particularly one dominated by religious discourse, can transition into a liberal one. His theoretical answer — at least in the case of religious societies — is that one path to liberalization is theological reform that is friendly, sometimes directly, but more often, indirectly, to the practices of liberal democracy. That this is practically possible is illustrated, in his opinion, by seventeenth-century England. Reformation England was a society in the grip of bitter religious warfare. Yet, it became gradually more democratic not by turning its back on religion, but rather by the successful adoption of John Locke's new political theology which counseled (limited) religious toleration, in particular, for dissenting Protestant sects.

Yet, England is not unique in the role that religious reform played in playing midwife to the birth of a new, liberal order. Hashemi points out that despite the fact that many Reformation-era religious movements, such as the notorious German Anabaptists who took over the German town of Münster in 1534 and imposed a “radical theological dictatorship” (34), were not in any substantive sense liberals, the Protestant Reformation in general, and the Puritans in particular, served as a “gateway” to a liberal modernity by destroying many elements of the traditional political culture that would have precluded a transition to a liberal democratic order. Accordingly, in the European context, these profoundly illiberal religious movements were nonetheless catalysts to Europe's democratic transition. Applying Michael Walzer's analysis of early modern English religious radicals to the work of contemporary scholars of political Islam, Hashemi argues that many contemporary Islamist political movements are fulfilling precisely the same modernizing functions played by European religious radicals during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In Hashemi's argument, then, theological reform rather than secularization (at least in the sense of declining adherence to religious norms) is the key for a religious society to transform itself sufficiently to support the institutions of a liberal democracy. As a theoretical matter, Hashemi relies on the contested nature of secularism itself, noting not only that no one model exists among democratic states for the relationship of religion and state, but also that Anglo-American conceptions of secularism contrast substantially with the radical separation, and consequent constriction of religious life, found in the French commitment to laïcité, and that Anglo-American conceptions of secularism are in principle much more congenial to Islamic religious observance than the French version. Accordingly, Hashemi argues that Locke's political theology should be of particular relevance to Muslim advocates of democratic reform, particularly in Iran where Hashemi sees in the arguments of reformist theologians echoes of Locke's political theology.

Hashemi concludes his theoretical argument regarding the potential for religious reform to serve as a catalyst for democratic transition by citing what he calls the process of “indigenizing” secularism in Muslim-majority states. Part of the problem of democratization and secularization in the Islamic world is rhetorical: because secularism is in disrepute because of its historical association with colonialism and authoritarian regimes, open appeals to secularism are politically suicidal. Accordingly, religious reform is the most viable means of introducing social reforms that have the practical effect of creating the conditions necessary for a liberal democratic order to flourish. Here, the examples Hashemi provides are of Turkey and Indonesia, where in both countries there are active grassroots religious organizations that are engaged in religious reform efforts that while not secular, serve to reinforce, and in many cases, introduce social practices and habits necessary for democracy to be established and survive.

This book's chief strength is its skillful use of a comparative methodology to illuminate a broader theoretical question. Herein, however, lies its greatest drawback: in his desire to illustrate the relevance of European religious reform movements to democratization in the Muslim world, Hashemi neglects other obstacles to democratization that are perhaps more intractable than theology. The first that comes to mind is a post-colonial context in which the authoritarianism of Muslim states is substantially supported by the desire of certain democratic states to protect what they perceive as vital national interests by maintaining compliant client states. The second is the development/modernization imperative, a goal that is shared by both Islamist movements and secularists. Pursuant to this basically nationalist commitment, both secularists and Islamists agree that religious sentiment is to be harnessed by the state to promote development goals. Both of these factors combine to provide Muslim-majority states strong reason to prefer a religious policy inspired by Hobbes rather than the religious pluralism advocated by Locke. Both of these features of contemporary politics in the Muslim world, therefore, must be taken into account in explaining the failure of democratic institutions to take hold in much of the Muslim world, and while religious reform would no doubt be helpful, it is hardly clear that it is either sufficient or necessary in the face of these other problems.