Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age.

• Author: Belhaj, Abdessamad
• Position: Book review

Tocqueville in Arabia

Dilemmas in a Democratic Age

By Joshua Mitchell

Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, xii+195 pages, $20, ISBN 9780226087313.

Western political philosophy still shies away from including the Muslim world in its scope. Some political philosophers simply disregard Islam because it is not Western (a fate it shares with other traditions in Asia and elsewhere). Other scholars, more sophisticated, maintain that the vocabulary and the problems of Muslim political thought are specific, and thus, Western political philosophy cannot make sense of them. In a globalized world, this essentialist paradigm fails to withstand criticism. In his book, Joshua Mitchell proves Arabia, and other Muslim areas, to be understandable from the perspective of modern Western political philosophy. In particular, the author, perceptively, describes the transformations generated by modernity in the United States and the Arab countries. After the doubts cast by the failure of the Arab spring to promote democracy in Arabia, this book revives the discussion and hope about the prospects of democratization in the Middle East.

One can approach the structure of the book from two vantage points: autobiography and political philosophy. Autobiographical elements dominate the prologue, the first chapter, and the epilogue. In the prologue, the author recalls the bitterest encounter he had with the Middle East when he attended the death of his father in Cairo (his father is Georges Mitchell an American diplomat and well-known scholar of Islamism). Joshua Mitchell has roots in the Middle East: his grandfather is a Christian Orthodox immigrant from Lebanon. Additionally, Joshua Mitchell was born in Egypt and spent a part of his childhood in Yemen and Kuwait. This explains the passion and the empathy the author exhibits with regard to the traditions and the crises of the Middle East. In chapter one, Mitchell depicts his return to the Middle East to teach political philosophy at Georgetown University's campus in Qatar. In the epilogue, he offers bits of his journey to Kurdistan as a Chancellor at the American University of Iraq and other visits in the area. These personal snapshots are always accompanied with insights on comparative politics and political philosophy. The author's views of society, economy, and religion, in the American and Arab contexts, extends from chapter 2 to chapter 4. Indeed, the three chapters form the bulk of the work...