David Brooks had a great piece in the Atlantic Monthly back in March 2003 called Kicking the Secularist Habit, which I think is very relevant when thinking about the course Iraq and the rest of the Middle East will chart in the coming years. It’s key point is that the Ivory Tower establishment needs to rethink its mostly atheist assumptions and realize that its political theory should give way to a more religious-friendly worldview.
Reading Noah Feldman’s After Jihad, I think the idea that political science needs to be reconciled with religion is certainly true. As long as theorists keep religion and religious values outside of their equations, the world will keep their theories outside of its practice.
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