Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a former New America Foundation fellow. While at New America, he focused on questions related to law and religion -- in particular, the divide in America concerning the proper interaction among organized religion, the individual believer, and government.

A decade ago, almost everyone across the political spectrum--from neoconservatives to Islamic fundamentalists--agreed that democracy and Islam were inherently incompatible. This consensus followed from definitions: democracy means the rule of the people, whereas Islam teaches the sovereignty of God. In October, though, Iraqis went to the polls and ratified a Constitution that committed itself with equal strength to both democracy and Islam. The document announced that Iraq would be a democracy with equality for all and declared that no law… more

A little less than a year ago, in the aftermath of the first Iraqi elections, the most irresponsible thing being said in Washington was that everything was going to be fine. Now, with the next set of elections scheduled for December 15, the new irresponsibility is the increasingly respectable assertion that the war has already been lost. Irrational optimism has been replaced by unjustified pessimism. This is not some triumph of experience over idealism. One a priori ideological standpoint is… more

Michael Newdow, a California atheist, has gained plenty of notoriety over the past few years. He got a case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court contending that children in general--his daughter in particular--must not recite the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Why not? Because he believes the words, which were added in 1954, violate the separation of church and state.

You may have thought Newdow had gone away. After all, the high court… more

Casting a yes vote in next Saturday's constitutional referendum in Iraq would be easy to understand. Although the proposed document is too decentralizing for some tastes and too Islamic for others, those who choose to ratify it are clearly embracing democratic politics instead of violence. But what would it mean to vote no, as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis seem poised to do?

If enough no votes are cast in the right places, they will sink the constitution. Should two-thirds… more

The completion of Iraq's draft constitution, which will be submitted to the people for ratification in October, should have been an occasion for celebration. As most Americans are aware, it has not been. But while much of the criticism has focused on such areas as women's rights, federalism and the role of Islam, such concerns are largely misplaced. In fact, the text strives to balance democratic equality with the Islamic values that are popular with many Iraqi voters, and it… more

Religion and politics used to be the two great taboos of polite conversation. Today politics is everywhere, right down to the Fox and CNN ubiquitous at the gym. But religion remains a special case. The mainstream news media--television in particular, which is where many Americans get the bulk of their information--treads lightly when it touches it at all, afraid of giving offense or oversimplifying and reaping the consequences. Talking heads pontificating about Islam as a source of terror is not… more

When a constitution succeeds, its framers come to be regarded as visionaries. They are seen in retrospect to have predicted future difficulties and dealt with them ingeniously, by building a machine that would run of itself. From the inside, though, constitution drafting is not so philosophical and frictionless; it does not take place under the aspect of the eternal. The immediate politics of the moment dominate, along with the lurking fear that if the constitution is not ratified, national collapse… more

For roughly 1,400 years, from the time the Roman Empire became Christian to the American Revolution, the question of church and state in the West always began with a simple assumption: the official religion of the state was the religion of its ruler. Sometimes the king fought the church for control of religious institutions; other times, the church claimed power over the state by asserting religious authority over the sovereign himself. But the central… more

Selected reviews of Divided by God are featured below:

Friday, July 15, 2005 "Can't we all—fundamentalist and atheist and nonideologist—just get along? It wouldn't seem so, writes NYU law professor Feldman (After Jihad), who argues that the ever-hotter war between the proponents of 'values evangelism' on one hand and 'legal secularism' on the other 'now threatens to destroy a common national vision.' That vision includes belief in the constitutional separation of church and… more