Globalized Islam - Olivier Roy. There are plenty of ideas in this book. And I think it is worth reading, even though I rarely agreed with Roy's arguments or his conclusions. The author begins by saying that "culturalists" say that "Islam is the issue. " And he disagrees with them. Yes, the culturalists include just about everyone: Islamists, moderate Muslims, Islamophobes, anti-Islamophobes, and orientalists. But not him. He's not so sure it even makes sense to discuss a Muslim culture. I sort of blinked when I read that. Roy continues by discussing the fact that Muslims still come up with polemics against competing religions. Next, the author discusses the Westernization of Islam.
Near the end of the book, Roy says that this is a time of great intellectual confusion. Yes, it is true that some Christian moderates are in an alliance with some Muslim fundamentalists. I found the book interesting, and I think it contains some intriguing facts. Olivier Roy and post-islamism. Les matins - Olivier Roy by franceculture The above video, from the morning talk show on France Culture (a radio channel where the intellectual level is so high it is tantamount to being completely alien to typical US talk radio), features the "Islamologue" Olivier Roy, one of the best of the French school of academic specialists on Islamism. Roy is known for having coined, some 20 years ago, the failure of political Islam. In this show he discusses the post-uprising Arab world, making the following points: Islamist movements like Ennahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt can no longer even be called Islamists, they are conservatives analogous to the religious right in the US.
This is what he calls "post-Islamism" — much like socialist parties in Europe abandoned Marxism at some point in the 1970-80s, Islamist movements have abandoned a pure Islamist framework by combining "a religious reference" with democracy in a plural political space. Olivier Roy. Olivier Roy is a political scientist and scholar of Persian language and civilisation. He has been professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris since 2003) and senior researcher in political science at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) since 1985. He was consultant to UNOCA (United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan) in 1988; in the same year he organised and accompanied a special UN team to Afghanistan. In 1993 he was special envoy for the OSCE in Tajikistan and in the following year became head of OSCE’s Mission for Tajikistan. He has acted as a part-time consultant to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1984 .
A specialist on Afghanistan, Iran, former Soviet Central Asia, the Middle East, political Islam and Muslims in Europe, he has written extensively. Review: Globalised Islam by Olivier Roy. Globalised Islam by Olivier Roy Fear is often based on simplifying or even inventing the dangers that surround the frightened. Working from this premise, Olivier Roy's career as one of the west's most knowledgeable scholars of "Islam in practice" has been devoted to combating its demonisation. By laying out the multiplicity of different forms of Muslim behaviour he has always aimed to show there is no single Islam just as there is no single Christianity.
In The Failure of Political Islam he argued provocatively in the early 1990s that Islamist movements were running out of revolutionary steam. They would either become normal political parties, as has subsequently happened in Jordan and Turkey, or they would lead to a kind of individual neo-fundamentalism. His new book provides one of the best and most detailed snapshots of "real existing Islam" currently available. This change equally affects Muslims in Muslim countries.
The issue is not whether democracy is on the move, Roy argues.