Feldman was a featured speaker, alongside noted Islamic authority Hamza Yusuf, in the lecture "Islam & Democracy: Is a Clash of Civilizations Inevitable?", which was subsequently released on DVD. An excerpt from Feldman's 2008 book, "The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State", appeared in the "New York Times Sunday Magazine" and was attacked by Leon Wieseltier for "promoting" Islamic law as a "swell basis" for a political order. This, according to Wieseltier, amounts to "shilling for soft theocracy", and is hypocritical, since Wieseltier presumes that neither he nor Feldman would choose to rear their own children in such a system.