The recently published The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State by Noah Feldman, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, argues that the union of state and religion in Muslim societies, as demanded by the vast majority of Muslims today, should not be feared or impeded by the West.2 This is because, when properly understood and soberly applied, the has not historically entailed the theocracy or religious tyranny that the union of church and state has produced in the West. To the contrary, Feldman argues, provided a “rule of law” in medieval Muslim societies that guarded the populace from the tyranny of a military s

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