..if one draws, for political legitimacy, merely on respect for the U.N. Declaration and the ideals associated with it — that is, on Locke and Kant, the Founders, and the Federalist Papers — one in effect presumes that support for democracy must be secular. If one also draws on soft interpretations of Islam, one finds that Islam can be made compatible with democracy so that promoting religion as an essential element of civil society will not hinder the development of a liberal democracy. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of the Middle East, has put it, “militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution.”

It follows that by promoting soft Islam we get two for the price of one: We promote a religion that is compatible with liberal democracy as well as one that can serve as an effective antidote to the fundamentalists. I take it for granted that Iraq should have a democratic form of government. But it should be one that does not treat religion per se as a threat but, potentially, as a mainstay of civil society, and hence as something that should be promoted — that is, to be sure, in its soft, moderate forms.