The Failure of Political Islam

This is an easy to read book that contains interesting ideas about the role of political islamic movements. However it puts advances different notions than most books on the subject that ahve been published in the aftermath (and before, if we think of Huntington). This book suggests that Islam is not necessarily heading for a major confrontation or clash with the West. Some have suggested and criticized that the WTC attack proves otherwise; however, the the full story on that event and its aftermath have yet to be written and despite its horror, the evnt has worked far more in favoring an attack from the West to Islam than the other way around. Olivier Roy, in the tendency of another French scholar Gilles Kepel, challenges the clash of civilizations concept and suggests that Political islam has failed because it has proven itself incapable of bringing about desirable changes in the poltical and socio-economic spheres in the Islamic world. Indeed, the very fact it has to resort to violent means (after the many years that muslim politics have existed in one form or another) is a sign of its failure to make attract sufficient followers. More significantly, Roy points out the various divisions theological and sectarian (eg. Shi'a vs. Sunni)national that have impeded the succesful formation of a universal and monolythic Islam capable of challenging the supposed antagonistic civilization of the West. he provides examples from all over the Islamic World including Algeria, Afghanistan and Iran. Some of the comments made by the more critical reviewers here are also worth noting, notwithstanding the fact this booo remians an importnat book, perhaps more so today than at the time it was written.

Contrary to several previous "reviewers" Oliver Roy's conclusions strike home quite convincingly....While also a Muslim, more importantly for this review, I am also a social scientist. Too much about "political Islam" has been written in English by Anglo-American scholars and journalists, who represent that particular cultural perspective, irrespective of differing approaches. French scholarship differs greatly as the Franco-Muslim world relationship runs much deeper and has more complexity than that of the Americans, who generally present a rather stereotyped view...more out of a naive and ideological narrowness than any "hidden agenda". Here, I would add a note from Amin Malouf's brilliant study of the Crusades from an Arab historical view...one can see the failure of Turko-Arab political rule from the 10th century on in its inability to change and adapt to a process of less totalitarian and oppressive form of domination over their own --remembering that Turks ruled most of the Arab world for the past 1000 years. Thus, as Roy finds, the "reds" of the 1970's have become the "greens (Islamists) of the 1990's, which corroborates Abdullah Laroui's premise in the "Crisis of the Arab Intellectual" -- that there is a totalizing cultural predeliction to blindly follow A or B shifting this way and that without critical, analytic, and compartive thought.. So too, most critical thinking Muslim social scientists, like Mohammed Arkoun, are emigres & refugees in Europe, France in particular, as they have had to face oppression & death in their own countries.Thus one must read Roy in the light of a tradition of Franco-Arab scholarship that differs epistemologically from that of the Anglo-American world, thereby referring to and a host of French Islamists, including Jaque Berque, Braudel, Rodinson, and Francophone Muslim scholars, who continue to be at the cutting edge of analytical interpretation.

I read this book a few years ago and was moved to add my review here after reading the other critiques. What I liked most about the book was its realism. The author does not buy into the anti-Muslim paranoia but is also very clear-headed about what political groups claiming to operate in the name of religion can achieve. Read this book if you are worried about rising religious zealotry all over the world, but are also unhappy with the popular but unfounded analyses of "civilizations in conflict" and "the next enemy".