¹ John Rawls to Dennis F. Thompson, 20 Feb. 1998, Folder 30, Box 39. All archival references are to the John Rawls Papers (HUM 48), Harvard University Archives (henceforth Rawls Papers).

² Charles Beitz to John Rawls, 25 Feb. 1998, Folder 2, Box 14.

³ John Rawls to Jon Mandle, 24 April 1998, Folder 10, Box 40. And earlier he wrote to Percy B. Lehning, “I worry that [the] last thing I write may strike people as loony. Your words are wonderful reassurance to me and I shall try to stop carrying on about LPs.” John Rawls to Percy B. Lehning, 5 March 1998, Folder 11, Box 15.

⁴ John Rawls to Dennis F. Thompson, 24 April 1998, Folder 30, Box 39, original emphasis.

⁵ Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples: With “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 75–8Google Scholar.

⁶ See Murad Idris, “The Kazanistan Papers: Reading the Muslim Question in the John Rawls Archive,” Perspectives on Politics (2020), at https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272000239X, 1–21. There I discuss the significance of Kazanistan's origins, its lateness in the revision process, changes to its description across drafts, and its disconnections from contemporaneous geopolitics and history. That analysis highlights the discursive importance of making Kazanistan Muslim and how it reentrenches the Muslim question. For a summary of extant drafts of The Law of Peoples, refer to the appendix of that paper.

⁷ “I had never attempted to deal with that subject before, except for a brief period in the spring of 1975 when, on leave at Michigan, a graduate student there got interested in it and we worked on it some but hit snags we couldn't answer. So I gave up. My thought was that I would try again for the Oxford lecture and assumed I would have a year at least to work on it. Alas, my book Political Liberalism took me over a year longer than I thought it would, so I rushed to put something together in the two months or so before the lecture. They wanted it all done before the lecture was given on Feb 12, 1992.” John Rawls to [Fernando R.] Tesón, undated, Folder 12, Box 51. The letter is filed as 1993 but is almost definitely from 1994, as I discuss below. This letter to Tesón is reproduced in both Folder 8, Box 14 and Folder 14, Box 15.

⁸ Rawls, John, “The Law of Peoples,” in Shute, Stephen and Hurley, Susan L., eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York, 1993), 41–82Google Scholar.

⁹ Rawls, John, “The Law of Peoples,” Critical Inquiry 20/1 (1993), 36–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ For example, Rawls to Tesón, undated, Folder 12, Box 51; John Rawls to Terry Nardin, 8 June 1992, Folder 1, Box 14; John Rawls to Brian [Barry?], [day unknown] May 1993, Folder 8, Box 14; John Rawls to Martha Nussbaum, 15 Jan. 1996, Folder 21, Box 40; and John Rawls to Martha Nussbaum, 25 Aug. 1997, Folder 21, Box 40.

¹¹ “Regularly I do some work on the Law of Peoples, as I call it, and have gone through it several times this summer. So far I can't say that I am satisfied with the whole yet, but it is getting better, and some parts, particularly the first, now I think are all right. Were the whole up to them, I'd be pleased, finally.” Rawls to Nussbaum, 25 Aug. 1997.

¹² Mills, Charles, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism (New York, 2017), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ In the vast literatures on Rawls, Beitz would come to be considered one of the main authorities on the global challenge to Rawls's earlier work, A Theory of Justice. See Forrester, Katrina, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton, 2019), 147–52Google Scholar. Meanwhile, although primarily an intellectual and social historian of precolonial Islam, Mottahedeh also wrote about contemporary topics, including the Iranian revolution, the importance of pluralism, and foreign policy.

¹⁴ John Rawls, memorandum “To the NYU Seminar for Nov 18, 1993,” 3 Nov. 1993, preface to “The Law of Peoples [22 March 1993],” Folder 7, Box 16, emphasis mine.

¹⁵ Rawls, “The Law of Peoples [22 March 1993],” 37.

¹⁶ Ackerman, Bruce, “Political Liberalisms,” Journal of Philosophy 91/ 7 (1994), 364–86, at 382–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, original emphasis; quoted in Moellendorf, Darrel, “Constructing the Law of Peoples,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77/2 (1996), copy in Folder 9, Box 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis mine. On this discourse see Norton, Anne, On the Muslim Question (Princeton, 2013), 45–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abu-Lughod, Lila, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massad, Joseph A., Islam in Liberalism (Chicago, 2015)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ John Rawls, “Law of Peoples 1995, P.U.Sem,” Folder 10, Box 15, 54 n. 53, 77 n. 41.

¹⁸ John Rawls, “Law of Peoples: P.U.Sem.III.4.24.95 Non-Ideal Theory, Its Two Steps, (April 30, 1995),” Folder 10, Box 15, §15, 77 n. 41.

¹⁹ Larry Temkin, memo, “Rough Notes on Rawls,” 13 June 1995, Folder 10, Box 16.

²⁰ See Vitalis, Robert, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca, 2015)Google Scholar; Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs; Pitts, Jennifer, Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moyn, Samuel, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forrester, Shadow of Justice; Idris, Murad, War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (New York, 2019)Google Scholar.

²¹ John Mikhail to John Rawls, 27 June 1995, Folder 10, Box 16, 5, original emphasis. Mikhail suggested decoupling the terms “decent” and “hierarchical” to avoid begging the question. Ibid., 2–3. He also recommended replacing “hierarchical” with “non-liberal.” Doing so, he suggested, would ward against “unnecessary confusion,” including the “irrelevant rejoinder that liberal societies are often also hierarchical,” or that the United States is both things by “ordinary uses of these terms.” He acknowledged that, for Rawls, “hierarchical” is a technical term referring to formal/legal qualities rather than social/economic ones, and that for Rawls the United States is neither a just liberal society nor a well-ordered one. Ibid., 1–2. Interestingly, Rawls's description of Kazanistan and Islam three years later blurred the boundary between formal/legal and social/economic. The decision to make his non-liberal (or hierarchical) people Muslim reproduced the structure of the Muslim question and racialized global hierarchies. See Idris, “The Kazanistan Papers.”

²² John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” fall 1997, Folder 13, Box 15, 82 n. 45.

²³ Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 110 n. 39.

²⁴ John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” March 1998, Folder 3, Box 16.

²⁵ John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” May 1998, Folder 12, Box 14, and Folder 11, Box 15, 54.

²⁶ Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 78.

²⁷ Martha Nussbaum to John Rawls, 17 May 1997, Folder 21, Box 40.

²⁸ Rawls to Nussbaum, 25 Aug. 1997.

²⁹ The letter is archived as “1993,” but it is probably from 1994 if the “German friend” it goes on to mention is Wilfried Hinsch, discussed below; it is also possible that Hinsch mentioned shūrā verbally or in an unpreserved letter in 1993, and that this letter is a follow-up. Nonetheless, the letter responds to criticisms by Tesón that Erin Kelly summarized for Rawls on 3 August 1994. Kelly's letter included Tesón's draft manuscript. She summarizes, “On p. 12, lines 2–3 he [Tesón] makes a statement which seems too strong: ‘Liberal societies are founded on Kantian intuitions about human nature …’”; Rawls agreed with her, writing “NO” along the margins. Tesón had noted that whereas liberal societies were Kantian, “Hierarchical societies are founded on Hegelian intuitions about human nature and the political morality derived from them.” Kelly also summarized that Tesón claims, “4. It is a seriously problem for LP that it seems to allow for the oppression of women. (p. 30)”; here, too, Rawls wrote “NO.” These disagreements with Tesón might have indirectly informed his turn to women and consultation in Islam. Erin Kelly to John Rawls, 3 Aug. 1994, Folder 7, Box 15, with enclosure, Fernando R. Tesón, “The Rawlsian Theory of International Law,” draft copy in Folder 7, Box 15.

³⁰ Rawls to Tesón, undated, Folder 12, Box 51.

³¹ Ibid.

³² John Rawls, untitled notes and “How to Deal with Trad Socs,” June, July, Aug. 1992, Folder 8, Box 15.

³³ Doyle expresses discomfort with the adjective “civilized” because civilized societies like Nazi Germany turned out to be “barbaric” and the United States was founded on genocide. Nonetheless, he advises Rawls to “bite the bullet” and call them “civilized autocracies”: “If this is any comfort, I plan to do the same in the book I am now finishing on Theories of World Politics.” Doyle finds that the term as used by J. S. Mill is most apt; one need only “warn our readers about Mill's Victorian chauvinism.” Michael W. Doyle to John Rawls, 21 Oct. 1992, Folder 8, Box 15. Strangely, the civilizational and cultural hierarchy that the term installs, and the work it does in justifying European empires and settler colonies, does not seem to be the cause of discomfort. See Mehta, Uday, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lightly annotated copies of Mill's essay “A Few Words on Non-intervention” (1859) and Emmerich de Vattel's chapter “Civil War” (1758) are preserved in Folder 7, Box 15.

³⁴ Doyle to Rawls, 21 Oct. 1992.

³⁵ Rawls to Doyle, 26 Oct. 1992, Folder 8, Box 15. This is an unsent draft.

³⁶ Ajami, Fouad, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (Cambridge, 1992), 3Google Scholar. For Ajami, the Six Day War was about Arab failure and an inability to take responsibility. His arguments earned him a place of renown in American foreign-policy establishments; he was given a MacArthur Prize in 1982, joined the Council on Foreign Relations, and directed Middle East Studies at SAIS Johns Hopkins. Rawls does not mention or cite Ajami anywhere; it is unclear whether he pursued this lead. Nonetheless, there are two interesting connections. In an echo of Daniel Lerner and other modernization theorists on non-European peoples’ transition toward recognizing their destiny as their own and seeing themselves as one part of the world rather than its center, Ajami invites “Arabs to accept that theirs is no longer a self-completed world.” Curiously, whereas Rawls ends his discussion of Kazanistan by describing it as a realistic utopia against fatalistic cynicism, Ajami ends his The Arab Predicament by sketching out how utopias can serve as correctives, antidotes to cynicism, and sources of inspiration, but that they can also be the source of misery when they diminish the present. See Ajami, Arab Predicament, 252; Rawls, Law of Peoples, 78. Two decades later, Ajami and Bernard Lewis provided cover for, and vociferously supported, the American invasion of Iraq as “experts” on the region.

³⁷ John Rawls to Michael W. Doyle, 4 Jan. 1993, Folder 8, Box 15.

³⁸ Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” 69–70; G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. S. W. Dyde (Kitchener, ON, 2001), §308, 247–8; Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin, 1821), §308, 251–2. Here, Hegel aligns the idea that “all should share individually in the counsels and decisions regarding the general affairs of state” with the state's “democratic element,” mediating between groups and the whole. The relative absence of Islam and the Ottoman Empire from Hegel's writings is noteworthy, particularly given his editorial activities and secondhand knowledge. See Almond, Ian, History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York, 2009), 108–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nonetheless, he defines the Orient by the absence of this share in counsel and decision: rules in India and China are “not as the moral disposition of the Subject, but as the despotism of the Sovereign.” In India and China laws are external to the consciousness of individuals; meanwhile, subjectivity in Mahometanism is “living and unlimited—an energy which … busies itself and enters into the world only in such a way as shall promote the pure adoration of the One.” In Islam, “the individual is one passion and that alone,” whereas “Europeans are involved in a multitude of relations, and form, so to speak, a ‘bundle’ of them”—a bundle that makes consultation and participation necessary. Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York, 1901), 176–7, 452–4Google Scholar. The irony—that Hegel's idea of historical development and consultation was elaborated in opposition to the Muslim and non-Muslim Orient—is important not simply because shūrā—what Hegel had elided and externalized—would reappear, but because Islam, previously the foil for Eurocentric elaborations of civic society, would now supply the raw material for a variant, if lesser, form of a law-abiding peoples. I am indebted to Max Tomba for conversations about Hegel and these points.

³⁹ Rawls to Tesón, undated, Folder 12, Box 51.

⁴⁰ John Rawls to Arthur [Applbaum?], 16 Nov. 1994[?], Folder 14, Box 15. The date is handwritten; the letter is reproduced without a date in Folder 12, Box 51. Rawls added a footnote thanking Erin Kelly and Arthur Applbaum for “discussion and correspondence about” the meaning of hierarchical society in his 1995 draft. The footnote does not appear in the next drafts. John Rawls, “Law of Peoples 1995, P.U.Sem.1,” Folder 10, Box 15, 21 n. 46

⁴¹ See Mitchell, Timothy, “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in Szanton, David, ed., The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines (Berkeley, 2004)Google Scholar; McAlister, Melani, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (Berkeley, 2005)Google Scholar; Lockman, Zachary, Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (Stanford, 2016)Google Scholar.

⁴² Wilfried Hinsch to John Rawls, 9 Sept. 1994, Folder 37, Box 39.

⁴³ This is corroborated by the way Hinsch writes the number 1 with a hook, as it appears on some of the copies, whereas Rawls writes it without a hook.

⁴⁴ Bassam Tibi, “Wer ist der Souverän? Die Gottesherrschaft als islamische Spielart des Totalitarismus” (Who Is the Sovereign? God's Rule as an Islamic Variant of Totalitarianism), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 April 1994, copy in Folder 6, Box 15. Rawls may have encountered Tibi's name through the Ethikon Institute, where he offered “the Islamic perspective” at a 1993 conference on the “ethics of war and peace” in Jerusalem (a draft of the program is in Rawls's papers). Ethics of War and Peace, conference program, the Ethikon Institute, 12 March 1992, Folder 1, Box 14.

⁴⁵ Wendelin Wenzel-Teuber, “Streit in der islamischen Welt über die Demokratie” (Disputes in the Islamic World about Democracy), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 April 1994, copy in Folder 6, Box 15.

⁴⁶ Scott, Joan Wallach, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massad, Islam in Liberalism; Norton, On the Muslim Question; Mahmood, Saba, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public Culture 18/2 (2006), 323–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, “Al-Shūrā and Democracy Are Not One and the Same,” in al-Jabri, Democracy, Human Rights and Law in Islamic Thought (London, 2012), 122–5, at 122–3. Also see Iqtidar, Humeira, “Searching for ‘Tolerance’ in Islamic Thought,” in Jenco, Leigh K., Idris, Murad, and Thomas, Megan C., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford, 2020)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Massad, Islam in Liberalism, 57–73.

⁴⁹ The folder also contains a copy of the German Islamicist and politician Gernot Rotter's “Der Islam hat die Demokratie erfunden” (Islam Invented Democracy), but which Rawls did not mark up. Rotter, Gernot, “Der Islam hat die Demokratie erfunden,” in Rotter, Die Welten des Islam (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 173–7Google Scholar, copy in Folder 6, Box 15.

⁵⁰ Esposito, John L. and Piscatori, James P., “Democratization and Islam,” Middle East Journal 45/3 (1991), 427–40, at 438, 440Google Scholar, copy in Folder 6, Box 15.

⁵¹ For an important discussion see Hallaq, Wael B., “Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 16/1 (1984), 3–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² Bilgrami, Akeel, “What Is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity,” Critical Inquiry 18/4 (1992), 821–42, at 835, copy in Folder 6, Box 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ John Rawls to Onora O'Neill, 17 Feb. 1997, Folder 23, Box 40: “I have just read a fascinating book in which the author, Abdullah an-Na'im, argues that given the situation of the modern world, Islam's doctrine of Shari'a must be reformed to allow for constitutional democracy, the equality of men and women, human rights (denying the rights of slavery), and much else. The essential point is that the religion itself must also uphold political institutions of democracy. In this case these grounding reasons for the religious allow them with other citizens to affirm public reason.”

⁵⁴ Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 151 n. 64.

⁵⁵ El Fadl, Khaled Abou, “Muslim Minorities and Self-Restraint in Liberal Democracies,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 29/4 (1996), 1525–42, at 1527, 1538–9, 1542, copy in Folder 6, Box 15Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Roy Mottahedeh, “Consultation and the Political Process in the Islamic Middle East of the 9th, 10th, and 11th Centuries,” in Chibli Mallat, ed., Islam and Public Law: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives (London, 1993), 19–27, at 21, copy in Folder 6, Box 15.

⁵⁷ Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 72 n. 12.

⁵⁸ John Rawls, “Law of Peoples: P.U.Sem.II.4.95 Ideal Theory: The Two Steps at the First Stage,” Folder 10, Box 15, §11, 54 n. 53.

⁵⁹ There are two copies of this chapter (an offprint and a xerox), each of which has Rawls's markups. The xerox carries an inscription in the top right, “to [illegible] Scanlon, in friendship, Roy Mottahedeh.” It may have been given to Rawls by T. M. Scanlon.

⁶⁰ See Mamdani, Mahmood, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Mottahedeh, Roy, “Toward an Islamic Theology of Toleration,” in Lindholm, Tore and Vogt, Kari, eds., Islamic Law Reform and Human Rights: Challenges and Rejoinders (Copenhagen and Oslo, 1993), 25–36, at 25, 35, copy in Folder 6, Box 15Google Scholar.

⁶² Roy Mottahedeh, “Pluralism and Toleration: Reimagining The Classical Tradition,” copy in Folder 6, Box 15, 9–10.

⁶³ Rawls, “Law of Peoples,” fall 1997, §18, 95.

⁶⁴ Rawls, “Law of Peoples,” fall 1997, §18, 95–6, 96 n. 65. This is the same discussion as in “Mard's corrected copy [undated],” §18, 100–101 and 100 n. 64, which has some additions and changes; based on the changes, I would date this copy as between Percy Lehning's Oct./Nov. 1997 copy (Folder 13, Box 15) and Mottahedeh's March 1998 copy (Folder 3, Box 16). This is corroborated by Rawls labeling it “Fall.97–Winter.98,” and signing the introduction “February 1998.” See John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples: Mard's Corrected Copy, Fall.97–Winter.98,” Folder 2, Box 16.

⁶⁵ Rawls, “Law of Peoples,” fall 1997, §18, 96 n. 65 and Rawls, “Law of Peoples,” March 1998, §18, 100 n. 63.

⁶⁶ John Rawls, “§9: Reasonable Toleration” (verso of “How Is Decency Related to PR?” handwritten notes on Ryan, Alan, “The Politics of Dignity,” New York Review of Books 43/12 (1996)), 17–19, Folder 2, Box 47Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Charles Beitz, memorandum to John Rawls, “Rawls, ‘The Law of Peoples’, secs. 17–18,” 3 March 1998, Folder 2, Box 14.

⁶⁸ John Rawls to Charles Beitz, 8 March 1998, Folder 2, Box 14. Rawls does not say why he called this place Kazanistan; I offer some critical reflections about the name in Idris, “The Kazanistan Papers.”

⁶⁹ Probably El-Awa, Mohammad S., On the Political System of the Islamic State (Indianapolis, 1980)Google Scholar. Rawls does not cite the work in any drafts. Neither xerox is in the Rawls Papers.

⁷⁰ John Rawls to Roy Mottahedeh, 9 March 1998, Folder 3, Box 16.

⁷¹ John Rawls to Charles Beitz, 9 July 1998, Folder 2, Box 14.

⁷² Charles Beitz to John Rawls, 6 Aug. 1998, Folder 2, Box 14.

⁷³ John Rawls to Charles Beitz, 14 Aug. 1998, Folder 2, Box 14.

⁷⁴ Rawls, “Law of Peoples,” May 1998, 53 n. 20. See also Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 76 n. 18.

⁷⁵ I am grateful to Harvard Archives Reading Room staff for cross-checking the acquisitions list of the Rawls library and the private correspondence about it.

⁷⁶ Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York, 1995), 233Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” May 1998, 52 n. 19. This footnote became a parenthetical in the prior footnote on Kazani toleration in Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 76 n. 17.

⁷⁸ Roy Mottahedeh was among those who wrote rebuttals of Huntington's thesis, though this rebuttal does not appear in the Rawls Papers. Mottahedeh, Roy, “The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist's Critique.” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 2/2 (1995), 1–26Google Scholar. Mottahedeh highlighted (i) differences among Muslims; (ii) the blending of “Western” and “non-Western” cultures, or the indigenizing of alien ideas, through colonialism; (iii) the untenability of the assumption that Muslims’ religious beliefs determine their behavior (but not Christianity for Christians); and (iv) the narrow-mindedness and nativism of defining the West as exclusively individualist, liberal, and democratic. Each of these points would have complicated Kazanistan at best, if not challenged the endeavor. See Lockman, Zachary, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2009), 236–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A slightly edited version of Mottahedeh's essay was republished in Qureshi, Emran and Sells, Michael A., eds., The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy (Columbia, 2003), 131–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Hourani, Albert, “Review of ‘The Venture of Islam’ by Marshall G. S. Hodgson,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 37/1 (1978), 53–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ Lockman, Contending Visions, 151.

⁸¹ Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 23Google Scholar.

⁸² Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs, 38–9.

⁸³ Ibid., 37, 81, 120.

⁸⁴ Murad Idris, “Political Theory and the Politics of Comparison,” Political Theory (2016), 1–20.