Religious Freedom without the Rule of Law

Book excerpt: The volume compares the efforts to instil the values and practices of the rule of law in the Middle East in the early twenty-first century with their disappointing performances in terms of safety, human rights, and, especially, religious freedom. It zooms in on Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq to argue that international interventions and local initiatives underestimated the ethno-religious mosaic of these countries and their political and constitutional culture. The standard notion of the rule of law values individualism, equality, rights, and courts, which hardly fit the makeup of the Middle East. Securing stability and protecting religious freedom in the region requires compromising on the rule of law; the consociational model of constitutionalism would have better chances of achieving them.