Reform Amid The Fatwa Chaos.(Books)(The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday)(Book review)

Byline: Adam B. Kushner

Neil MacFarquhar's new book does what every reporter aspires to: it sneakily delivers social science (history, anthropology, political theory) to the reader in the guise of a hack's memoir. The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday is the author's account of four years as a Middle East reporter for The New York Times, and it is filled with first-rate analysis leavened by plenty of color. Strangely, though, MacFarquhar's implied conclusion--he is cautiously optimistic about reform--is largely at odds with the evidence he submits. He sallies forth into Arab capitals and listens attentively to the ambitious, clever and desperate intellectuals trying to liberalize their countries. But ominous obstacles--stagnation-prone governments, paranoid autocrats--lurk in the background.

MacFarquhar, who grew up in a Libyan oil enclave populated by Westerners, threads reform ideas into his country descriptions. A Syrian, Mohamed Shahrour, for example, believes the prophet is infallible as a religious messenger but not as a state builder. So while the Muslim religion is sensible and just, political Islam is full of intrigue and civil war. The answer is to separate the political and the theological--not to negate the Qur'an "but to negate it as law," says Shahrour. MacFarquhar reports, ruefully, that this notion is scoffed at as blasphemy by Muslims everywhere.

The activists MacFarquhar meets want the West to learn how to speak to Islam on its own terms--to laud justice rather than "democracy," which has little respect in the Muslim world because "it elevates man's laws over those of God." What frustrates MacFarquhar's sources more than the lack of suffrage is the absence of civil rights: "the stifling control of the secret police; the absence of any rule of law even if the constitution guarantees it; -- the inherent difficulty in working alone because organizing is ...