FAIT Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, November 6, 2003

Á

1115

The Chair (Mr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard, Lib.))

Dr. Noah Feldman (Professor of Law, New York University School of Law)

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1120

Á

1125

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Canadian Alliance)

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1130

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

Á

1135

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ)

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

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1140

The Chair

Hon. Art Eggleton (York Centre, Lib.)

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

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1145

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP)

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1150

Dr. Noah Feldman

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1155

The Chair

Mr. John Harvard (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, Lib.)

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1200

The Chair

Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Canadian Alliance)

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1205

Mr. Keith Martin

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.)

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1210

The Chair

Hon. Diane Marleau (Sudbury, Lib.)

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1215

The Chair

Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.)

Â

1220

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.)

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1225

The Chair

Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.)

Â

1230

Dr. Noah Feldman

Mr. Irwin Cotler

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

Â

1235

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

Â

1240

The Chair

Dr. Noah Feldman

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

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NUMBER 058

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, November 6, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1115)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard, Lib.)): We are going to get going.

    Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are undertaking a consideration of relations with Muslim countries. We have as a witness this morning, from New York University School of Law, Dr. Noah Feldman, professor of law. Welcome, Professor Feldman, and thank you very much for travelling here this morning to be with us.

    You will probably be the last witness in our study of Canadian relations with the countries of the Muslim world, and your testimony will help us in the preparation of our report to the Canadian Parliament. I know a number of our members have read your recent book, even during our visit in the Muslim world, and we look forward to your testimony.

    Dr. Feldman, please.

    Dr. Noah Feldman (Professor of Law, New York University School of Law): Mr. Chairman, thank you so much, and thank you very much to the members of the committee for inviting me to testify before you.

    It's really a privilege for me to be asked to join you. Although I've distributed some written comments and will touch briefly on their main substance, primarily I would like to speak a little more freely, since we have an opportunity to actually have a substantive discussion here this morning.

    What I would like to emphasize from my written remarks is that I'm keenly aware that as an American, not as a Canadian, I'm here as someone who thinks of himself as a friend of Canada, but who understands fully that it is your responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the Canadian people and their interests, not for me to tell you what to do. I very much want to emphasize that it's in that spirit of humility and of offered friendship that I come before you.

    In my view—and I'm pleased that one or two of you have had a chance to glance at the book in which I argued for this more at length—what the west generally needs to do, what democratic nations need to do in engaging the Muslim world, is to encourage a development that is already present among ordinary Muslims. That is a development that emphasizes the necessity of freedom, democracy, and above all justice for peoples living in Muslim countries in which the governments often are autocratic, dictatorial, and sometimes, as we now know from seeing mass graves in Iraq, genocidal as well.

    In the past, I think it's fair to say that the policies of my country, the United States, have not been encouraging of democracy. To the contrary, we've often cynically supported dictators, initially for the Cold War reason that we wanted to support anybody who opposed communism, but later for less defensible reasons having to do with maintaining an ideal of stability and a steady flow of oil. That policy has backfired terribly on the United States, and honestly, it has not only backfired on the United States, but broadly speaking on other western democracies who are to some degree associated, whether they like it or not and whether it's fair or not, with policies promoted by the United States.

    What we need to do is change that policy. That change has both a substantive policy change direction and also a public relations dimension. The substantive policy dimension is by far the more important, because the peoples of the Muslim world are increasingly worldly, sophisticated, and have access to all sorts of forms of information and news. That means they cannot be passed off with just exciting messages.

    We need to change our policies—we in the United States especially, but again I believe I'm speaking for other western democracies as well—to encourage and support governments that show active signs of democratization and distance ourselves from governments that continue to violate human rights and that do not listen to the voices of their own people. We must not give in to the temptation—and it is a great temptation—to listen to governments in the region that tell us that if it were not for them the alternative would be worse; the alternative would be Islamic politics.

    I understand all of you have travelled to various Muslim countries in the last month. I imagine that from official government delegations you heard very similar things. I would be very surprised if you had not.

    I think it's crucially important to remember that where that is true—and it is true in some places—the reasons it's true have much to do with the policies pursued by the very government that's telling you it is the best thing going. By systemically eliminating the opportunities for democratic politics to emerge, they leave no alternative to themselves other than Islamic politics, which sometimes are of a radical variety but sometimes are not. There are parties like the would-be centre party in Egypt that have tried to register, that present themselves as democrats who are respectful of Islamic values but are still democratic, and they have typically, as in the case of the centre party, been denied permission to register precisely because the governments know that such a centrist view would be very popularly appealing and would therefore pose a major challenge to them.

    My first argument is we ought not to let such countries off the hook. I would add that we should not underestimate the degree to which hostility toward the United States especially but also toward other western countries is driven by the perception of ordinary Muslims that we in the west have supported the governments that oppress them and are therefore guilty of hypocrisy for that support.

Á  (1120)  

    One will often hear in Muslim countries a sincerely felt concern for the plight of the Palestinian people. I myself think nothing could be more desirable than the speedy and just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a safe and secure two-state solution that affords security and freedom for both peoples. However, and this is an important however, it is also true that in a systematic way politicians in the Muslim world use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to deflect attention from problems that are going on at home. Indeed, local Muslims who oppose their governments in the region can actually use the Israeli-Palestinian issue as an indirect way of talking about their discomfort with their own governments. When they criticize western governments for tolerating the conditions there, they are implicitly criticizing their own governments for, in their view, colluding with western governments who are responsible for this. Often that is the only politically acceptable way to express a criticism of their own governments.

    I do not say that the feelings of sympathy are not deeply real; they are. They are certainly real feelings. They are also part of a broader contextual concern with the forms of government that are at work in the region.

    A good example of this is the Arab Human Development Report of which we have just had the second installation. It is an extraordinary document, like the first, which I'm sure you've all looked at, in which the first several pages rather formulaically touch on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and then go on much more substantively to address the serious problems for human development in terms of politics, education, and science and technology in the region. That sort of report, I think, is a good indicator of what the balance is between these issues. There is a political reason to speak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there is deep feeling about it. But simultaneously there are real and substantive issues with which we can help.

    The public relations element—and I use that term not in a glib way, I hope, but in a serious way—is one in which I believe Canada has a unique contribution to make. By virtue of the presence in Canada of a large, peaceful, and democratically committed Muslim community of both citizens and recent immigrants who have not yet become citizens, Canada is in a position to promote the ideas of democracy and the values of democracy in the Muslim world more freely than just about any other democratic country that does not have a Muslim majority, and certainly much more freely, I would say, than the United States, which as you know, since you've been travelling the region, is often perceived—sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly—as being hostile not only to Muslim interests worldwide, but in fact to Muslim interests domestically.

    I think it's impossible to overstate the impact it has in Muslim states for fellow Muslims, often from the same country of origin—but even if they're not from the same country of origin, of the same religious commitments—to say publicly and often that the values of democracy and the values of Islam are not only compatible, but supplement one another.

    If there is one point I could leave the committee with today it would be this one: that all democratic countries are engaged in a struggle, in the first instance a non-violent struggle, but one that could spill over into violence, to convince 1.2 billion Muslims in the world that democracy and basic rights are the way for their nations' governments, not because they are some import from without, but because they are compatible with the values Muslims themselves hold.

    Many Muslims already believe this; others are sympathetic to it. But there are some radical Muslims who are out to deny this and who argue publicly that Islam and democracy are incompatible. Those are the true enemies of freedom in the region and they are people whose arguments need to be addressed.

    Non-Muslims can contribute to this debate, but in the end it is Muslims who are best positioned to make the debate happen. Canada is, for the reasons I mentioned, I think uniquely well positioned to promote the message of democracy in the region through the voices of its Muslim citizens, which I believe would incidentally help to highlight in the region Canada's tradition of commitment to democratic and liberal values and to cultural pluralism—points that are understood in a general way in the region, but as you know, since you've just been there, often only in a general way.

    Let me close with the following concern. The situation in Iraq has become, rightly or wrongly, and whether one supported the war in Iraq or opposed it, a bellwether for measuring the prospects of democracy in the Muslim and especially the Arab world. That might be very unfortunate, because if it turns out that the conditions of invasion and subsequently of occupation make it impossible for democracy to succeed in Iraq, which is possible, though I hope not certain to prove the case, then many people, those same opponents of democracy I was describing, will say, “You see? Democracy cannot work with Islam.”

Á  (1125)  

    Ironically, of course, there are folks both in the west and in the Muslim world who share this view, although for entirely opposite reasons. Some in the west think we must convince 1.2 billion Muslims to move away from Islamic ideals in order to embrace democracy. That's, I think, mistaken and certainly unrealistic. There are others in the Muslim world who, on the contrary, think that by convincing Muslims democracy and Islam are incompatible they will have an advantage in winning this battle for hearts and minds. If democracy does not succeed in Iraq it will be a great victory for those opponents of democracy.

    So I would urge you--and I speak now as a private citizen, but as one who has been involved in American efforts to promote democracy in the region in a more formal capacity in the past--though it may be the case that the war was misconceived or wrongly undertaken, though it may be the case that there is a great temptation for other democratic nations to distance themselves from that invasion, do not forget, please, that in Iraq the vast majority of Iraqis, as has been shown by poll after poll, strongly supported the removal of Saddam and badly want to achieve democratic self-government, and they need the help not just of the United States, which has a special moral obligation now, or of the other members of the coalition generally, such as the United Kingdom, most prominently, to do it, but they also need the help of all democratic nations.

    The success of the democracy there is not just a concern to the United States. It is a concern to the United States, but it is a concern to all friends of democracy. For that reason, I believe there are ways in which Canada can particularly contribute to the process of rebuilding and of democracy promotion.

    Canada's experience with federalism is starting to be, and I believe in the long run will be, the most important model of federalism for the Iraqis. That's something that is not fully understood by Iraqis, primarily because of the absence thus far of vocal Canadian voices taking an interest and offering expertise and advice on a form of government that's extraordinarily complex, that varies from place to place very greatly, and in which the Canadians can offer a great deal to the Iraqis.

    I also think that when it comes to training new Iraqi security forces, a task that in my view is necessary for the creation of security on the ground in Iraq, there is room for the help and assistance of countries from around the world that have a long tradition of military and national police who are responsive to civilian rule and to democratic rules. These are matters for you to decide, not for me, but I nonetheless would say that the United States, or the coalition in Iraq, is badly in need of your help and also in need of the help of other democratic countries in this process.

    I will—

    The Chair: Go ahead, please, and finish.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: I was only going to conclude by saying I would be more than happy to talk to you about any aspects, not only of what I've just said, but of what you've seen in your recent travels, what you're thinking about in terms of recommendations you're going to produce for the future, and also, if you're interested, on any matter connected to the situation in Iraq.

    I thank you very much for the opportunity.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Feldman.

    Now we're going to start with questions and answers, and in our Parliament we start with the opposition. We'll start with Mr. Obhrai, please.

    Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much for taking the time to come to share your thoughts with us.

    My portion of the travel with my colleagues across the table was to Southeast Asia and South Asia. The clear message coming from that part of the world, which comprises the majority of the Muslims, was that they were not Arabs, that they had their own brand of Islam, and that the world has to come and see that we should not lump them as part of what has taken place in the Arab world.

    Because of the regimes that have been there and all these examples of there being no human rights, the Arab world at this present time is looked upon critically. But these other countries pointed out to us that this was not their case and that we must look with a wider scope.

    In talking to many of them, I came away with a distinct impression from that part of the world. The Arab world may be using the United States and western civilization as an object of attack for the radicals to hold on to there, as you mentioned, saying the western world is the one propping up all the dictatorial regimes. However, such is not the case in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Over there, they've had a history of democratic situations, with Malaysia doing extremely well, and Indonesia, and everything.

    I came away with the distinct impression that the war that is now taking place in these societies is a war between those who believe, as you just mentioned, that Islam is compatible with democratic rights and human institutions and those who have brought or are trying now to bring the Arab model into their part of the world, and they find that alien. Basically the war that is taking place is within Islam, between liberal forces and these radical forces they fight against within their own society. Basically, we from outside are bystanders, and the liberal forces are the ones that need our assistance to ride this thing out.

    What I would venture to say, from the perspective of your giving this talk here, is that we take this scenario of what the committee saw as being one of the most important aspects regarding what is going on in the Islamic communities.

    As a second point, what are you going to say about this question? You dwelt on Iraq and the coalition forces. But all the attacks that are taking place are against the American forces. They are the targets. As for the British in the south—I just read this a couple of days ago—because of their reaching out to the population, we don't hear about the British having any kind of problem in Iraq, as distinct from what is coming every day from the northern side against the Americans. This would imply that something is wrong either with the American approach or—I don't know.

    What are your thoughts on it?

Á  (1130)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Dr. Feldman.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Sir, with respect to your first point, I think you're right to say that the conflict in Southeast Asia and South Asian Muslim societies is between those who are promoting greater democratic values and their compatibility with Islam and those who oppose this idea. It is true as well, I think, that there has been a steady stream of influence, some of it coming from parts of the Arab world, of a brand of Islam that argues for the incompatibility of these phenomena.

    I would be cautious myself of describing that just as purely Arab influence in Southeast and South Asia. That's actually a good thing for Muslims in that part of the world to say to their countrymen in order to encourage them to maintain the traditions of liberal Islam, which are well grounded in places like Indonesia. But there are many intellectual trends coming from the Arab world in the direction of South and Southeast Asian Muslims. Some of them indeed are radical; others of them have the potential to be more democratic.

    So I think the concern is right, and most of all I agree with your recommendation, which is that western democracies that want to help in this battle support the forces of liberalism and of democracy in the region, keeping in mind, as you say, that the overwhelming numerical majority of Muslims do in fact live in South and Southeast Asia. I'm very sympathetic to that approach.

    with respect to your second question, there are several things that make the southern part of Iraq different from the central part of Iraq. The first is of course the population. The Shia Muslims who live in the southern part of the country were terribly oppressed by Saddam. Most of those buried in the mass graves are Shia Muslims from the southern part of the country, and although they want very much to govern themselves, their hostility towards the presence of occupying forces is far smaller than that of Sunni Arabs living in the central regions who benefited from Saddam's regime and who regret its passing.

    That, I think, is the main reason things have been much calmer in the southern part of the country. It is also true that British forces have had a greater degree of continuity than have American forces, who have often cycled through the area around Baghdad and Faluja, and furthermore the British began with greater experience in peacekeeping operations. All of those things are factors.

    I do think, though, that the United States, in its own defence, can learn more from the way the British have been acting, and that there has been an active effort made to learn from their successes.

Á  (1135)  

    The Chair: Thank you. Now we'll pass to Madame Lalonde, please.

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Feldman, I was among those who went to Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. On a number of occasions, I asked people in those countries the same question in various forms. The population in those countries is growing by leaps and bounds, there are few jobs, poverty is a problem, education levels are generally low except in Iran, and they have corrupt governments supported by the West. So I asked in certain countries—I will not say which ones but you can guess—whether Islamists could be elected if there were completely free elections. We were told that they could indeed be elected because they look after people's needs. Is it not extremely important to pay attention to that aspect?

    We know that democracy could not flourish until the middle classes developed. For that to happen, there had to be union struggles, organizations, etc. In my opinion, it is impossible to promote democracy where there is only poverty and inadequate education.

    The Chair: Professor.

[English]

    Dr. Noah Feldman: I think it is absolutely right that Islamists in the countries you visited and elsewhere in the Muslim world are more skilled at identifying the needs of the population than are those politicians who are involved in governments, in part because since they are not generally participating in formal governments, they have to gain the support of the citizens. So like politicians in a democracy, ironically, they must go and identify the needs of the population.

    They have two other advantages as well. One is that because they have not participated in formal governments, they are not perceived as being corrupt. In Iran, where Islamists have participated in government, they are thought of as very corrupt. But in places where they have not had the opportunity to be corrupt, they are clean by virtue of lack of opportunity.

    So a further advantage they have is that they speak a rhetoric of justice. Often we in the west make the mistake of emphasizing the rhetoric of liberty too strongly, because it sounds like our deep belief. But in the Muslim world the ideal of justice is often thought of as coming before liberty. It includes liberty, but it precedes it, which I think is a defensible view. I don't think we need to disagree with that, as people who believe in liberty as well.

    The question, then, is how to engage the phenomenon you so accurately describe. Education is part of it.

    In Pakistan, for example, the reason there are so many madrassahs serving the needs of the population and educating children in extremely fundamentalist doctrines is simply that the state schools are inadequate. If I were a parent and wanted my children to get an education and did not have the option of a proper state education, I would send them wherever they could learn to read. This would be my decision, and I wouldn't look too carefully at the ideology.

    So one thing we can do is encourage state education without specifying the curriculum. We don't have to be imperialists and tell people what they must teach, because anything they teach in the state schools will be far better than the alternative in the madrassahs, from the perspective of promoting democratic values.

    However, I would add one important caveat. There are many Islamists who are well educated and who come from the middle classes and who see in Islamism a set of ideals that are trying to address the crisis in Muslim societies, in which secularism has essentially failed, nationalism has failed, socialism has been economically discredited, and there is an absence of knowing what to do next.

    That is why in Egypt, for example, one meets friends who are secular themselves who describe their daughter as coming home from university wearing the hijab. These are elite students in elite universities who are looking for something more substantive.

    We need to engage that as well, and when it comes to those folks, I do not think the answer will be to tell them, “You need to put aside your Islamism.” It is to tell them, “Your religious faith should be whatever you find to be meaningful, but we all share a common project of democratic government.”

    That is a difficult thing to do, but I think it is one that is worth trying.

Á  (1140)  

[Translation]

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Lalonde. We will come back to that.

    Mr. Eggleton.

[English]

    Hon. Art Eggleton (York Centre, Lib.): Professor Feldman, first of all, I appreciate your remarks on Iraq. I think we do need to be in there helping, even though we disagreed, and disagreed on principle, with George Bush's decision to go into Iraq. But now we're in a different scenario; now is the time to build a democracy.

    I'd like to know, given the demographics and the political situation in Iraq—the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shiites—and given the lack of democratic history, as of course is the case in just about every Muslim country, how do we do that without violating something else you've said and others have said, that we can't impose our liberal democracy on people? We have to support the people who want to bring it about, but if they don't have any experience in it and are caught up in these ethnic conflicts and divisions between Shiites and Sunnis, how is this going to happen in Iraq?

    Secondly, let's look at Iran. Iran is a case where they threw off the old yoke of the repressive government of the Shah but then went to the other extreme. They went to a theocracy; they went to another kind of autocratic government. What is the hope? Give us some sense of hope about the future of Iran. They seem to be a well-educated people. Hopefully, things are going to change there, although the democracy they're trying there so far seems to be a bit of a farce.

    Thirdly, what can Canada do to help advance democracy, human rights, women's equality in these Muslim countries? We don't have all the money or the economic or military power the United States has; we have little amounts of clout. But we'd like to advance those things in all of the Muslim countries: democracy, human rights, women's equality. How can we do that?

    Can we help with education? You mentioned education. You mentioned the madrassahs. I don't know that we have enough money to get people into a state education system. There are many people going to the madrassahs because their parents can't afford anything else. They provide food, shelter—all of the things they want. Is there a possibility we can help to reform madrassahs? Some of them seem to be getting a little away from just the religious teaching, getting into more of the kinds of things we would expect in society for people. Should we write off the madrassahs and just support state education, or should we try to work through the structure that exists? We probably don't have enough money to switch anyway, even if we wanted to.

    The Chair: Mr. Feldman.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Your first question is in many ways the most difficult, and one could speak about it for a long time, but I'll speak about it only briefly.

    In order to achieve success in Iraq, one needs to realize that, as you say, it's not logically possible to force people to govern themselves, but it is possible to create conditions on the ground, with respect to safety and economic stability, in which Iraqis will emerge as political leaders. And the tensions that exist between different factions of an Iraqi society are in many ways not as deep as is often imagined elsewhere in the world.

    In fact, in Iraq, although there's a history of the government engaging in violent and even genocidal behaviour, there's no history of inter-ethnic violence—just about none, which is relatively unusual for the world in which all of you are required to be expert. And Iraqis have a strong sense of national identity. Even Kurds, who very much want autonomy and many of whom would like independence, recognize the necessity of participating in a broader federal system of government in order to maintain successfully their own aspirations to live better lives.

    I think the key is essentially to create security on the ground and then hand the process to Iraqis, as we've already begun to do. The constitutional process is central to this, and it must go forward now, driven by Iraqis, after appropriate method for selection of national participation.

    With respect to Iran, somebody said the people are the right reason for hope there, and roughly speaking, I agree with that. On two different occasions 70% of the people voted for the only reformer on the ballot available to them to vote for, and they voted overwhelmingly for a legislature that expressed reform. You're entirely right that those elections seem not to have paid off in practice, and Iranians are very frustrated by that reality. Free speech has not been there; the opportunity for the elected leaders to govern has not been there.

    The situation for Iranians now is that many of them want change, but they have seen a violent revolution in the recent past. They know the costs to a society of a violent revolution: they know they will lose a generation, they know many people will die unnecessarily, and they're nervous about unleashing that.

    What we can do is communicate as clearly as possible to the Iranians, whether it's by engaging their government, which is sometimes the right way to do this, or by disengaging from them, which is also sometimes the right way to do it, that we support the aspiration of those 70% of the Iranian people who clearly want change. I think that's the best way we can help there, and I believe those people will eventually prevail. But it's going to take time, and there isn't an obvious route one can point to immediately right now.

    Finally, I think it's a mistaken impression—which is shared, by the way, broadly in the United States as well—that the solution to the problems of promoting democracy, women's rights, and human rights in the region is more money. Money is helpful, but in countries that are relatively poor—that's certainly true of the countries of South and Southeast Asia—a little money can go a long way if it's properly spent. When it comes, for example, to promoting education, sometimes all that's necessary is not to pay for the full curriculum or the school building; just to pay for school lunch in one set of schools will encourage parents to send their children to those schools, for no other reason than to get the free lunch. One can increase attendance by such small moves pretty effectively.

    Similarly, help in designing a curriculum or help in teaching—for example, in Iraq—what it means to have federalism can be done at relatively low cost. It could be done by buying some advertising time on Al Jazeera, or even without it, it can be done for free by sending Arabic-speaking Canadian diplomats to Al Jazeera and Al Arabia to explain Canadian federalism. I guarantee you there would be interest from those stations, and they'll even probably pay the travel to and from the studio.

    So there are ways Canada can make its presence known and felt without expending large amounts of money, but in the end, if the issue is important enough, it does deserve some serious thought about what kinds of funds ought to be committed to it.

Á  (1145)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. McDonough.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I'd like to welcome our witness this morning, and I accept very much the spirit of friendship and humility with which you've launched your remarks.

    I'm sure it's no secret to you that you're speaking to a group of people who are quite literally in a state of shock over some of the revelations this week in agonizing detail about the treatment of one of our Canadian citizens by the U.S. government. Believe me, in no way am I raising this issue to say “How do you account for this? We think you should.” Believe me, I wouldn't do that. It would be completely unacceptable.

    But I'm referring to a description of your book, After Jihad, in which you make the compelling argument, and one with which I think we would all agree, that American self-interest can be understood to include a foreign policy consistent with the deeply held democratic values that make America what it is.

    I think one of the things that is very shocking to us--because we are the closest neighbour, the nearest ally of the U.S.--is that what we seem to have here...and we're committed to a public inquiry to try to get to the truth, to make sure justice prevails, not rumours, not false accusations, unsubstantiated evidence, and all the rest of it. But what this really seems to exemplify is an absolute suspension of everything that our democratic values represent in terms of due process, transparency, accountability--just simply the notion of justice, which, as you point out, is very often more deeply felt in the Muslim world, within the Islamic value system, than even liberty or the notion of freedom itself.

    I'm asking if you can help us struggle with this a bit. When we look at Iraq--and of course we're divided in this group on the decision of the Canadian government, every step of the way--it seems as though it's a very tough sell for us to leap from the notion of the U.S. as the aggressor and occupier to now the champion of democracy, to somehow find a way to have people embrace that.

    You haven't mentioned anything about the role of the United Nations. I'm wondering if I could ask you to do so. I find it chilling for you to suggest that in fact the democratic experiment in Iraq might be the litmus test in the Muslim world for successful democracy. If that's the case, I'm extremely worried for the future of the world, particularly the Middle East.

    So I'm wondering if you could react to a couple of those issues I've raised.

Á  (1150)  

    Dr. Noah Feldman: As you say, the reports I've seen just in the newspapers in the last several days about the case of which you spoke are very troubling, very disturbing. We clearly need a full investigation and the participation of both governments, of both the United States and Canada, to find out what happened. We need the facts before we can start drawing conclusions.

    I think what we can say very definitively is that the interests worldwide of the security of the United States and Canada will be served only by a policy that shows us in our best light, that is to say that shows us actually respecting the values we say we stand up for.

    That's not just for self-serving ends, though it will be self-serving in a good way if we stand up to our values. I think it's also because it's important in our own thinking about how we ought to proceed in difficult situations, for example in trying to identify and get information from potential terrorists, that we be able to look ourselves in the mirror and be satisfied with what we see, that we not see ourselves behaving in a wrong way.

    I think in the long run that will strengthen our resolve to act in the right way. That's a point on which I think everyone should be able to agree.

    With respect to Iraq, the transition from being an occupier to being a provider of the opportunity for democracy is, as you say, a very tricky one. The key to it, the only way it can actually work, I think, is if in its presence in Iraq the coalition there communicates at every stage to the Iraqi people that it is in the transitional process of transferring power and authority to them; that the constitutional process should be a major factor in this, and would be already if it were not for the security problems we have; and that we must redouble our efforts on the constitutional front precisely to fight off the perception of some Iraqis that we're not handing things over to them.

    But let's not forget that the vast majority of the attacks are coming from people who don't want a democracy in Iraq and who have a rational self-interest in opposing democratization there because they will be the losers in any democracy. And most Iraqis understand very clearly that the United States has no interest in staying for the long haul in Iraq, that the coalition has no interest in staying, and that the goal is not recolonization, but rather a transition to give power to the Iraqis. That's the only way it can succeed.

    The role of the United Nations is crucial in this and crucial in making it clear that whatever happens in Iraq, democracy needs to continue to be promoted elsewhere in the region. I think as the constitutional process progresses we will see much more participation of the United Nations in advising Iraqis on the constitutional process, in taking part in the negotiations that will inevitably surround the constitutional process, and I hope in providing more support for democratization efforts there.

    The United Nations can play a major role, but until the time of the recent resolution, for political reasons that you understand as well or better than I, it was not prepared to in a way that was compatible with the efforts that at least some in the American administration thought were the right way to proceed. That's behind us now, I think, and there's a real possibility for the United Nations to participate.

    I want Iraq to succeed, but I think we must be honest in saying that failure to create democracy in Iraq will be held against the democratic ideal in the region. There's just no question about it. I wish it were not so, and I share your concern, but I think it's hard to deny that it will have a major symbolic place.

Á  (1155)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Harvard.

    Mr. John Harvard (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, Mr. Feldman, for coming today. I really appreciate your remarks, and you can be sure I'll read your book. I haven't gotten around to it, although Mr. Eggleton has been suggesting it to me for the last couple of weeks, but I will get to it, particularly after hearing you.

    I want to make one observation that you may or may not quarrel with, and I have one question.

    My observation really is this. I'm not sure that the pretext used to make war against Iraq can be excused or justified provided democracy-building in Iraq ensues; in other words, that we can just forget how we got there. To me, that's a bit like saying that violating your own Miranda law is okay, provided it produces the right results. Then again, a judge can throw out a tainted case, but it's a little difficult to throw 140,000 American troops out of Iraq.

    My question really stems from my own biased liberal values. I guess it would basically be this: How can you have freedom and democracy, with the focus on the individual, where religion is so pervasive and where it insists on being front and centre in government?

    In my opinion, a lot of the Islamic people--and I hate to generalize, but particularly the fundamentalists--take what I would call a “collectivist” approach. They put their religion first, the family first, the community first, not the individual.

    Go to Kuala Lumpur, we're told, and you can't hold hands in a park with your loved one. To me, that's a violation of the dignity of the individual.

    You can't leave the religion or you're going to be found guilty of apostasy. That is not compatible with freedom; that is not compatible with democracy, because you can't have democracy without freedom.

    That's my question. How do you have freedom, how do you have a democracy, when that kind of religion prevails?

    The Chair: Mr. Feldman.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: If one believes the war in Iraq was unjustifiable, then nothing that happens subsequently will make the initial decision all right, and I wouldn't stand here and tell you that it would. But even if one believes the war initially was unjustifiable, I believe that people who are committed to liberal values and democracy nonetheless ought to have a major stake in the success of democracy-building there.

    On the question of the pervasiveness of religion and the question of individual rights, I would say two things.

    First of all, unless the religion adopted or promoted by a government that is choosing to promote religion is itself compatible with values of freedom and individual rights, then there's no way the two can work together. But there is a version of Islam, as indeed there are versions of other religions, that is compatible with individual rights. In this context, with respect, I would distinguish your two examples. I think the capacity to speak freely about one's religious faith is a basic human right guaranteed in international human rights obligations and also acknowledged by the Koran itself, which says there shall be no compulsion in religion.

    Holding hands in a public park, though a value that certainly I myself would want permitted under any conditions in a society that I would live in, is one that suggests to me something within the reasonable range of decision-making that governments can make with respect to regulating public behaviour.

    Where cultural norms think it's okay to dress in a certain way or to behave in a certain way with members of the opposite sex in public, then I think there is room for governments that still respect individual liberties to be sensitive to cultural particularities.

    The crucial thing that I think we in western democracies need to do is to remind ourselves that the word “Islam” does not inherently mean what the extremists would like you to believe it means. It can mean a system of values and beliefs that respects God's sovereignty and simultaneously gives room for the exercise of individual rights.

    Even though it's uncomfortable for us to take sides in a debate about what someone else's religion might mean, whether we like it or not we are taking sides in that debate just by having a foreign policy that engages other countries in the world, just by having our own views and values. I think we should get over the feeling that we can't say what we think the right beliefs are, and we should just espouse our liberal values openly and say, “We're all for your religion, because you tell us it has all these great liberal things in it.” I think that's a pretty effective rhetorical technique, and I think it can be practically useful too.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Martin.

    Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Feldman, for being here today.

    Your book is entitled, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. I would like to focus on our friends south of the border and your fellow countrymen for a moment.

    We have a challenge, as you well know, in trying to be heard south of the border. We may have differences of opinion on how things ought to be done, but we probably share an awful lot more at the end of the day in what needs to be done. So my questions are as follows.

    What do you think the United States ought to be doing to be seen as a fairer player in issues pertaining to the Middle East? Does Canada have a role in influencing the U.S. in accomplishing those objectives, and if so, what are they?

    Secondly, the Council of Foreign Relations paper of September of this year called the Arab world a democracy-free zone, and yet in the Arab Human Development Report, polls show, as you well articulated, that the area has the highest expressed level of support for democracy and the highest expressed rejection of authoritarian rule. Could you share with us this seeming paradox between both? Those of us who have been there find it difficult to understand.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: I think what the United States needs to do to improve its admittedly bad image in the Muslim world is to start living up to the values that the United States says it believes in. The way we can do that is by giving people the opportunity to govern themselves and living with the consequences.

    Iraq can be an element in successfully doing that, even though in the short-term it is widely believed throughout the Muslim world that the United States is just invading to take the country over, or steal the oil, or some such plan. Frankly, if that were the plan, it would be a very bad plan, because oil is being produced at barely pre-war levels and will continue to be. It would not have been a wise cynical plan, if it had been a cynical plan, which I assure you it was not.

    So what we need to do is to succeed in actually showing people in the Muslim world that Iraqis are going to govern themselves. When that happens, one of the biggest arguments--not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination, but one of the biggest ones--will be removed.

    Similarly, we need to encourage governments elsewhere in the region to behave democratically in order to overcome the perception that we're on the side of the dictators, and one way that I think Canada can be heard on this issue is by engaging actively where it feels it can with American efforts to promote democracy. Where Canada feels it can't, I understand that, but where Canada feels it can take a role in those efforts, it will have a much more loudly heard voice within government circles in the United States.

    One can see this in terms of the influence the United Kingdom has had, for example, in encouraging the progress with the “road map”, which admittedly seems to be stalled now but not because of a lack of trying, and I think the United Kingdom played a major role and influenced the United States in pushing in that direction.

    With respect to the apparent contradiction between the democracy-free zone and the many people who say they want democracy, I would say just this. The Arab world is democracy free in the sense that the governments are not behaving democratically. So it's fair to say it's a democracy-free zone if by “democracy” you mean a set of governmental institutions that guarantee the rule of law, regular elections, and basic freedoms and liberties. But at the same time, those are the things that Arabs--we're speaking of the Arab world now--want.

    On an intellectual level, it's not democracy free at all. I would say it's a democracy-full zone in the sense that people want democratic government and are struggling to get out from underneath the governments they have.

    In fact, the human development reports, both the first and the second, can be read as a plea by Arab intellectuals and scholars who wrote these reports to the rest of the world, saying “Help us out here. We're going to do our part by being honest about our problems”--which, let's be fair, is not something the Arab world has always been so terrific about--“and we want you to help us.” Because the Arab Human Development Report is not written by governments and is not controlled by governments, it's infinitely more honest than anything you will hear from the governments you have just been visiting.

    So I think that's the--

  (1205)  

    Mr. Keith Martin: [Inaudible—Editor]...the United States ought to employ.

    You mentioned the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as being a flash point and perhaps an excuse and a distraction for many countries not to deal with their own domestic issues. What specifically should the U.S. do in trying to resolve the two-state, independent, secure solution to this situation?

    Dr. Noah Feldman: The United States has to have an active, present role in any negotiations that take place, and when negotiations break down, it must encourage the negotiations to restart so that negotiations between those Israelis and those Palestinians who are committed to peace aren't short-circuited by extremist violence, which can only serve to break up the negotiation process.

    I'll tell you bluntly that any negotiation that's hostage to extremist violence is not going to be a successful negotiation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you're going to walk away from negotiations when there's violence, the negotiations are going to stop, because you're giving the opportunity to extremists to veto the process. I think allowing such a veto is a mistake, and I think we in the United States need to remain extremely engaged in a day-to-day way in the negotiations, and when there are no negotiations, we need to try to make sure they happen.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mrs. Redman.

    Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Dr. Feldman, I really did appreciate your comments when you began your intervention. When I read your c.v., I have to tell you I have never met anybody who has less claim to be humble than you do. It's very impressive.

    I have people in my constituency who actually come from Iraq. One of the comments that was made even before the war started was that it is naive and false to think we can take a western form of democracy and impose it on Iraq or on any of the countries in the Muslim world.

    I have three questions I'll pose to you in a row.

    How do we educate ourselves so that we are sensitive and attuned to the kind of democracy that will work in these countries without trying to impose our values? I'm hearing you agree that they won't work.

    When we did the first half of our tour, we went to Morocco, and other than that, we visited scholars around the world. I found it very enlightening. One of the interventions made in the U.K. talked about the role of Al Jazeera and the role of the media in allowing people to have freedom of expression in a less fettered way. I wonder if you could comment on how you see that unfolding in the face of the thirst for democracy within these countries.

    I also wonder if you would talk about--and you've referenced it a little bit--Canada's strength in what's often falsely depicted as soft democracy when really it is perhaps more a subtle democracy. It's democracy that's carried out perhaps in the corridors of the halls of power rather than through pounding our fists on the table, and perhaps through private overtures rather than public press conferences.

    If you could just comment from your perspective, having already declared your friendship to Canada--and again, it's very much appreciated--how you see that and how we can continue to enlarge on the diplomatic instruments we currently use....

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Well, first of all, thank you. You're making me blush, and that's not good.

    Educating ourselves is crucial, because the kind of democracy that will emerge, if it is to emerge in the Muslim world, will not look just like our democracy. That's the bottom line. Not everyone wants every detail of our systems of governance or shares every detail of our values. It may be that democracy can be arrayed along a continuum from more emphasis on the individual to more emphasis on the community.

    One sees this already in a country like South Korea, for example, which is a democracy by anyone's measure today, but its political values do tend to be more communitarian in many ways than say, the United States', which is on the other end of the continuum, arguably.

    Education involves, first of all, learning languages--a point that is much more significant to Americans than it is to Canadians, who are at least accustomed to the idea that there is in fact more than one language that one ought to know. It is crucial to understanding the perspectives of the people who will be developing these views.

    Second, it involves overcoming a fear of religion. I think this is an important point to recognize. It's not that religion is always good. It isn't. One glance at history will reveal that there are many instances in which religion has perpetuated terrible wrongs, but so has secularism and so has patriotism.

    Patriotism is a wonderful sentiment we share and is rightly deployed in certain ways, but it can also do terrible harm, and has done, in the previous century, at least, and probably in our century already as well. So we need to understand that religion, like any other social force, can be used for good or for ill, and that democracies can be Islamic, provided the version of Islam adopted is one that's open to liberal values.

    That's a very hard thing for people who live in secular democracies to take on board, but I think it's the single most important thing we need to take on board.

    With respect to Al Jazeera, when I started studying Arabic, the reading was about the most boring thing you could imagine. We read the press--you started by reading newspapers--and it was all the minister of thus-and-such visited the capital of thus-and-so--interminable stories like that. Then the exams taken from real newspapers would be just the same, because that was all there was in the Arab press. And this wasn't so very long ago.

    Today when you're taking Arabic at school or at university, you can turn on the television set and watch a wide range of debates--between a fundamentalist and a secularist, between two advocates of different forms of government, between constitutional monarchs. The whole range is out there. In the net, that's a good thing.

    Some of the views expressed on the satellite television stations, which are enormously influential, are disastrous views, harmful views. The way the terrorist threats last Saturday were spread in Baghdad was through Al Jazeera and Al Arabia. That's where the terrorists went. They didn't even bother to put up handbills or speak to local radio stations. They just put their threats on the international satellite channels, and nobody showed up for work that day or for school or for their doctor's appointments.

    So these are very powerful vectors for any message that's put on them. We need to be aware of that and cautious about it. But on the whole, the fact that they exist is an enormously important factor for spreading democratic ideas.

    Last, on the question of how does one diplomatically influence such matters, I think part of it has to do with telling governments in the region that they need to reform themselves, because the kind of diplomacy I'm talking about has a public component telling the people that we haven't forgotten about them. It also has an important back-channel component that is telling governments in the region that there will be a positive payoff to doing democratic things and that they're going to lose something if they don't.

    If you're a government that has oil, there is no way you're going to democratize purely on the basis of internal pressures, because you'll always be able to buy off your opponents. You need to be democratizing in part because of external pressure to do so. The reason Saudi Arabia announced recently that they would have--in a very tiny, limited, constrained way, but still significantly--some elections for some municipal councils is not primarily to placate Saudis, although it may be partly that. It has more to do with responding to pressure from the outside. And that kind of pressure is best delivered behind closed doors, frankly, not by bombastic hand banging.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mrs. Marleau.

    Hon. Diane Marleau (Sudbury, Lib.): I was on the South Asian part of the tour. I want to tell you that we were told by someone, I think in India, to not judge Islam based on the actions of Muslims, but rather to judge the actions of Muslims based on Islam.

    I'm putting this out because I want to ask you a question about shariah law and the impact of this law on the lives of women. Is it compatible?

    We met with a group called Sisters in Islam, which is doing considerable amounts of work, but this is an area that is very much in dispute, I think, by most Islamists.

    You're an expert. Please enlighten us.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: The first thing I would say about shariah is that it's a common law, not a statute law. That's something that is frequently misunderstood, even by Muslims themselves. You can't look in a set of codes and find the shariah there. If you look for a wall that has shariah books, you have book after book of opinion, argument, discussion, analysis, and historical evidence of what people have done in the past. It means that interpretation plays a crucial, central, and necessary role in determining what the shariah is.

    The way Muslims acknowledge this is the following. They say the shariah comes from God, but its implementation and interpretation have to be done by human beings. There's even a separate word for that act of implementation and interpretation. The Arabic word is “fiqh”. That practice is acknowledged by all Muslims, no matter how serious, orthodox, and observant, to be necessary to the process of applying Islam.

    Now because there is this human element of interpretation and application of shariah, it means that some of the harsh provisions that are on the books are, in practice, mitigated by wise judges who are applying the shariah in an educated fashion. But where judges are not educated or wise, for example, in Afghanistan under the Taliban, people will sometimes apply the harsh punishments in ignorance of the fact that their tradition actually tells them not to apply the punishment in these harsh ways.

    For example, one hears that in the shariah, adulterers may be stoned. Well, technically that's true, but first there have to be five adult male witnesses of good character to the act of adultery. That's not a very likely circumstance to have happen, one hopes.

    Similarly, in some of the cases, for example, in Nigeria, not very well educated, local Islamic courts applied this penalty to a pregnant woman on the theory that because she was not with her husband, she must therefore be carrying a child of someone else. It turned out that a proper application of Islamic law, which unfortunately waited until it reached the shariah court of appeals, actually made it very clear that the woman could not be convicted on the basis of that evidence alone because of a doctrine, a clever, creative doctrine within the shariah, that actually gave a presumption of validity to the child, a presumption of legitimacy to the child.

    It's something that lawyers do. It's a lawyer's game, but a lawyer's game based on the idea that the harshness of the law ought to be mitigated. That's the first important thing to keep in mind.

    The second is that there are many interpretations of shariah being promoted by women scholars, like the women you've mentioned, which argue for taking some of the more inegalitarian, unequal provisions of the law and interpreting them in the light of contemporary law.

    Some of this is very valuable; some of it is not even necessary. The law of inheritance may give more to boys than to girls if the person dies without a will, but if a person makes a will, he or she could leave it all to the favourite daughter and leave the less favoured son out in the cold.

    There are places for interpretation. There are places for creative use. I don't think we should react in fear to the idea of the word “shariah” just because some of its less sophisticated practitioners have used it in a way that's obviously deeply offensive to liberal sensibilities.

  (1215)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. Carroll.

    Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Thank you, Dr. Feldman. It's fascinating to listen.

    You briefly made reference, a few moments ago, to Saudi Arabia. Like Madam Lalonde, I was one of the three persons who had the opportunity to visit there. We did, during the course of that visit, have an hour-long meeting with Prince Saud Al-Faisal. Of course, as you know, he has been foreign affairs minister for 25 years, so I don't think there's anything about the art of diplomacy that the prince isn't well versed in.

    That said, his remark that I remembered and noted is very consistent with yours, I think. I only want to make sure. He said that the west should be preoccupied with promoting good governance rather than trying to prescribe some ideal form of democracy. I think pieces of that have been mentioned here.

    I think as well, in your comments on Iraq... there is no template, in my view, as a result of this study, the reading, the listening, and the travelling. There is no template that can be plunked down on top. Yet there are certain bars that must be reached if good governance, if not this western style of democracy, is going to be achieved.

    Of course, you don't need me to say that I agree with you, but I think you're right. External pressures are what's at play in Saudi Arabia, particularly post-Iraq, and in the American activities since. They are positive, however minimal.

    I would like your views on that country particularly, as it fits in to what you've been telling us.

    Thank you.

  (1220)  

    Dr. Noah Feldman: I agree with you that there is no template that can be dropped down on a country, but I'm not sure I agree exactly with the formulation Prince Saud had, in the way you tell it, because saying we should focus on good governance rather than on a particular form of democracy could be a code for saying, “Don't press us to democratize; just press us to be better at governance.”

    The Saudis want to be better at governance because they have very high unemployment, and they have an enormous expenditure on the 7,000 princes, each of whom wants to live like a prince, which is a serious problem. It's very expensive to maintain 7,000 men and their households in the style to which they've become accustomed. So the Saudis themselves know they need good governance, but they will only respond with more democratization if we're rather specific in saying “Do it however you want, but begin to devolve power to the people.”

    The Saudi royal family have to be told that they need to do this for their own interests. Here's what I mean by that. The legitimacy of the Saudi government rests in fact, they will tell you, on the approval of the clerics of their government. That's one reason they're afraid to criticize the clerics too much or to compromise on small—or what seem to us to be small, but significant—matters such as allowing women to drive, for example. There's a fear on the part of the royal family that if they introduce reforms like this, they'll be criticized by the clerics, and if the clerics criticize them, they will lose legitimacy.

    The Saudi royal family's only hope for maintaining itself as a constitutional monarchy in the long run, rather than as a relic that eventually goes the way of other uncompromising monarchies of the region, like that of the Shah of Iran, for example, is to realize that they need to create a direct link between themselves and their citizens that is not mediated through the opinions of the clerics. As long as it goes from the royal family to the clerics down to the people, the royal family will be hamstrung; they won't be able to improve things. But they actually could make significant reforms by cutting out the middle man, as it were, and deriving legitimacy from the people themselves.

    Elections on a regional basis would be one good way to start doing that. I think we won't see a real process of reform going on in Saudi Arabia until the Saudis themselves—I mean the royal family—see that they stand to gain more from an engagement with their own citizens than they stand to lose by it.

    That is really what I'm telling Saudis when I speak to them both publicly and privately: that it's in their interest to proceed in that way.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Calder, then Mr. Cotler.

    Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.): Professor Feldman, I found this very interesting this morning. When the coalition force went into Iraq, it went in to liberate a country, to find weapons of mass destruction, and also to put forward a shining example of democracy in the Arab states.

    Well, time is marching on. You've already said the liberator is now beginning to become the occupier, for one thing. We've watched 357 body bags come back to the United States, and Congress last week had to pass $87.4 billion as an interim payment for the coalition force's being in Iraq. The American people were in support of it when it went in. How long do you think they are going to remain in support of it as it stays in Iraq? Of course, the Iraqi people too have seen the coalition force come in as a liberator, but how long are they willing to wait until they are able to govern their country by themselves, without the force being there as an occupier?

    The other thing you stated is that Iraq has the capability of being an example of how not to do it. I'm wondering if you can give us an example that exists of Islamic democracy as an example of how to do it.

    The Chair: Professor Feldman.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Nobody has infinite patience, and there's no doubt that if signs of progress don't emerge from the situation in Iraq, the American people will become frustrated and the Iraqi people, many of whom are already frustrated, will become more frustrated. But there's a clear route to making that progress happen, and it lies on two fronts. One is the security front; that is to say, ensuring that an Iraqi security force can bring into control the terrorists attacks and other attacks—by the way, not only against U.S. forces, and I should have mentioned this earlier, but against Iraqis who have been killed by other Iraqis who want to avoid the emergence of a democratic government there.

    I think as long as progress appears in the form of constitutional deliberations, in the form of the announcement of a process whereby the constitution will be drafted and written by Iraqis, the American people will have the patience to finish what we started. I say that partly as a prediction, but also partly as a hope, because I think it would be disastrous, both practically and ethically, for the American voters to decide that they wanted an immediate withdrawal from Iraq with no care for what that would mean for the Iraqi people.

    Once you've removed somebody's government, you stand in a trusteeship relationship to them when you are present as the occupier. You have to put their interests ahead of your own interests, in fact, which is a tall order to engage in, but you have to engage in it.

    With respect to successfully promoting democracy in a Muslim country, I don't think there is one exemplar of how to do it. Turkey is a place where you have a developing democracy doing rather well, with an Islamic-oriented government behaving very democratically, respecting rights—not perfectly at all, but doing a very good job, a better job, frankly, than their secular predecessors—but you can't replicate the process because it came about through a 75-year period of fairly autocratic government that repressed religion in a way that was not compatible with the basic freedom of religious exercise. It's hard to have an example of some place that just automatically works.

    I think Iraq, though, could become a successful instance of this if law and order is restored, because then the process of deciding on the form of government will be an Iraqi process. I think that's the key to it. The key to it will be if the people themselves make a decision, then you will have a model. As long as it's done by someone else from the outside, it will not be a model that should be replicated elsewhere.

  (1225)  

    The Chair: Next is Professor Cotler. Then I have a question from Madam Lalonde and Madam McDonough.

    Professor Cotler.

    Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.): I should say you have almost pre-empted many of the questions I could ask—and others—by the clarity and indeed eloquence of your presentation.

    I want just to look at one point. You've written and spoken eloquently today about what I would call the resilience and resonance of political Islam, saying it's anchored in its effectiveness by depicting itself as aspiring to justice. I've even noticed, when I've been in Muslim and Arab countries, NGOs calling themselves Adalah and thus even using that generic term.

    At the same time, critiques of western approaches to promoting democracy, about which you yourself are not only aware but have written, have sometimes argued that therefore we should not engage; that because we are unsuccessful in the manner in which we do engage, therefore we should not engage. Here too, you've put it that foreign policy is a kind of per se form of engagement: if you don't engage, you're also engaged.

    This leads me to ask you a particular question. I know you've answered this—I'm hesitant to put it. My question is, what are the most effective and strategic ways to counter the appeal of political Islam while promoting democracy and human rights? You've spoken eloquently today about the notion that Islam and democracy are not incompatible; that we need to appreciate the integrity of religion and cultural particularities in the various countries; that we should support a democratic, full sensibility that is in opposition to democratic-free zones, to engage in efforts where we can be successful: education, school lunches, federalism in Iraq, etc.

    Let me just give you one case study showing why I ask this question. During the course of our visits to the particular zone we went to—Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, along with Israel—we heard a constant refrain that used the rhetoric of “justice” to in effect justify suicide bombing as a legitimate form of resistance. Regrettably, this came in particular from Islamic scholars as well, from Al Azhar in Egypt, and when I mentioned to them that Sheik Tantawy had condemned suicide bombings, they corrected me, and I noticed a day after we left that he in fact supported suicide bombing as a legitimate form of resistance. How does one counter that rhetoric, which legitimates something like suicide bombing under the rubric of justice and legitimate resistance?

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    Dr. Noah Feldman: I think it's a deep and difficult question. The first thing that I think can be done is to remove the barriers that are preventing alternative forms of discourse about politics in the region from emerging. It's a negative step in the sense that it's removing a block.

    Instead of our appearing and offering our conception of the best way to live a good life, which I think inevitably will be treated with skepticism, we should pressure the governments--to take Egypt, the example you were just speaking of--to not do things like putting democracy advocates like Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim into prison for the better part of two years, on and off, thereby playing into the hands of Islamists who become as a result the only game in town for advocating a system of politics.

    The first thing we can do is put pressure on the governments to open the market, as it were, so that into that market of ideas--to use the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas--other ideas than political Islam can emerge. And there will be Arabs and Muslims prepared to advocate very different conceptions, conceptions of human rights. There is a small but growing human rights movement in the Arab world that is very secularist but is repressed by governments because they see it as a potential threat.

    That's the first thing we can do.

    The second thing I think we can do is actively engage with those scholars in the Muslim world who disagree with the interpretation of political Islam that justifies tactics like suicide bombings by focusing on the form of the conversation that is significant to them. Here's what I would say, to give you an example in a case of suicide bombings. We're very focused in the west on the suicide part of the words “suicide bombing”. Actually, this is not the part that upsets me. I'm upset by the homicidal part of the bombings. I'm upset by the fact that the suicide bombings are directed at non-combatants who may be women and children and other Muslims. It so happens that there is a very strong argument to be made within Islamic law that even in the prosecution of a legitimate war justifiable under Islamic law terms one may not kill non-combatants, women, children, or other Muslims who happen to be bystanders.

    There are Muslim scholars often frightened of voicing their opposition, but nonetheless out there, who are willing to say, “As a matter of fact, that is what our tradition teaches.” We need to support them in their efforts to make those kinds of arguments and weigh in on one side of what is, after all, an internal debate, as it sounds like you were trying to do by raising Sheikh Tantawy's position with them.

    Mr. Irwin Cotler: I also raised Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim's position.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Glad to hear that too.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Now we'll get one question from Madame Lalonde and one question from Ms. McDonough, and both right away, without any preamble, just the question, please, because Professor Feldman has a flight to catch.

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde: Thank you.

    Mr. Feldman, on page 2 of your text, you write:

I argued that the United States in particular and the West more generally ought to abandon our strategy of supporting Muslim dictators [...] and should instead encourage democratic reform in the Muslim world by rewarding countries who increase basic rights and devolve power to their citizens through elections...

    You do not say “free elections,” but that is what is to be understood, I imagine.

    I have two questions. Is that possible, given the hegemonic interests? Second, since our reputation is based on our actions, is it not possible that, even if westerners do this for a long time, the people in those countries will not believe in what westerners are doing?

[English]

    The Chair: Ms. McDonough, do you want to ask your question?

    Ms. Alexa McDonough: I have a question arising out of your raising the question of where is Canada, as you said, in Baghdad. I think you weren't just raising the question for yourself, but reflecting what others were saying in it.

    I want to go back to your references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because my experience, in being in both Israel and in Palestine less than a year ago, was that similar questions were being asked about Canada's silence and absence from raising questions about the incredible bankrolling by the U.S. of more and more settlements that were infringing on Palestinian land, more and more military aggression in Palestine, and so on.

    I also want to ask you to elaborate further on your view that we shouldn't be drawn into what sometimes is an argument, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something of a litmus test for the intentions and goodwill of western nations in relation to the future peace, security, and democratization of Muslim countries. Those weren't your exact words, but I think you understand the question arose out of your setting aside the notion that the intractability of Israeli-Palestine conflict should be used as an argument.

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    Dr. Noah Feldman: First of all, I should have said free elections, because as we know from the example of Iran, you can have an election that people vote in and they vote for the person they want, but if the elected official lacks the capacity to act, it is like not having an election at all.

    The crucial issue is that democracy needs to emerge in two directions simultaneously. It has to come from the top in the sense that the government officials who are there now have to remove the barriers to people arguing for political positions, and it has to come from the people as well in order for it to be meaningful.

    Promoting democracy from the people is a tricky business. You can use educational methods to tell people how great it is, but in the end they will only come to appreciate democracy by doing it. One sees this in Iraq again and again on the ground. Let people hold an election that means something. At first they're not sure what it means, but once they're participating in it and expressing their views, it has a great capacity to catch on in people's self-conceptions.

    In the case of Israel and the Palestinians and their conflict, what I think is that on the one hand it is useful for any friend of the peace process to be engaged and involved in saying what's right, in saying that we need a two-state solution and in saying that if there are barriers to that solution, whether they come in the form of suicide bombings or in the form of political settlements, those are wrong and ought to be opposed. The more people say that and the more engaged they are in saying so, the better the situation we are in.

    But what I would strongly caution against is in thinking that the only way to address the issue of democratization in the Muslim world is via the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because this is the most convenient solution in the world for dictators who want to say they don't want to worry about democratization in their own countries. They want deferral strategies, and what could be better than saying you can't address this problem until we have peace between Israel and the Palestinians when they know perfectly well they're not going to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians in the near future. Then they don't have to worry about their problems.

    Again, it is not that people don't care about this issue sincerely. They do, but it would be a mistake to think that is the only way to address what, after all, are problems that affect 1.2 billion Muslims and not just 6 million or 7 million Palestinians.

    The Chair: Thank you, Professor Feldman.

    I have one question, or maybe two very short questions.

    Two days ago Afghanistan unveiled a post-Taliban draft constitution, and this draft's first article declares that Afghanistan is an Islamic republic, an indication of the government's desire to bring the country together under the banner of Islam. This is my first question. Could I have your comments about this?

    A previous witness here in Canada, Professor Tareq Ismael, has proposed to us that Canada should support the creation of an international virtual university network for Iraq. Would this be a good way for Canada to contribute to building a more democratic society in Iraq?

    Dr. Noah Feldman: The Afghan constitution that was unveiled is really a fascinating document, because on the one hand it does, as you say, specify that this is an Islamic republic, and on the other hand, in the very next sentence, it says it should be a democratic government--it uses the word “republican” in the English translation that I saw--that rights of freedom of religion are preserved for non-Muslims, that free expression is an inviolable right, that equality exists for men and for women, and that Afghanistan is committed to observing the international conventions to which it is a signatory, which includes conventions guaranteeing equality for all persons.

    By the way, I would be very surprised if in the United States we were open to incorporating such a provision into our constitution on international convention obligations.

    It is in many ways a progressive constitution, and it is also simultaneously one that is deeply Islamic. The devil will be in the details, because the question is whether the constitutional court that is created under that constitution, which has the authority to say whether any law passed accords with the values of Islam and the constitution, is one that uses that power in a wise and cautious fashion or uses that power in a supervisory fashion in order to eliminate laws that it doesn't like. We will find out later whether it works.

    Although that provision of constitutional review is troubling, nonetheless the project of creating a constitution that is Islamic and democratic is one that is very valuable.

    With respect to the virtual university, I would have to know more about the details. But I will say that I am all for anything that brings universities and governments together to offer assistance to the people of Iraq, but not every Iraqi has easy access to the Internet right now. I hope that will change soon, but I would encourage any university that is virtual to have hard paper copies of whatever it produces so the Iraqis can actually read them and get to them even if they don't have a high-speed Internet connection.

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    The Chair: Merci beaucoup, Professor Feldman. Thank you very much for your appearance this morning. It was very much appreciated by our committee.

    Dr. Noah Feldman: Thank you so much for allowing me.

    The Chair: Have a safe trip back.

    The meeting is adjourned.