The Failure of Political Islam by Olivier Roy, Carol Volk (Translator)

From the Publisher

For many Westerners, ours seems to be the era of the "Islamic threat," with radical Muslims everywhere on the rise and on the march, remaking societies and altering the landscape of contemporary politics. In a powerful corrective to this view, the French political philosopher Olivier Roy presents an entirely different verdict: political Islam is a failure. Even if Islamic fundamentalists take power in countries like Algeria, they will be unable to reshape economics and politics and, in the name of "Islamic universalism," will express no more than nationalism or an even narrower agenda. Despite all the rhetoric about an "Islamic way," an "Islamic economy," and an "Islamic state," the realities of the Muslim world remain essentially unchanged. Roy demonstrates that the Islamism of today is still the Third Worldism of the 1960s: populist politics and mixed economies of laissez-faire for the rich and subsidies for the poor. In Roy's striking formulation, those marching today beneath Islam's green banners are the same as the "reds" of yesterday, with similarly dim prospects of success. Roy has much to say about the sociology of radical Islam, about the set of ideas and assumptions at its core. He explains lucidly why Iran, for all the sound and fury of its revolution, has been unable to launch "sister republics" beyond its borders, and why the dream of establishing Islam as a "third force" in international relations remains a futile one. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this is a book that no one trying to understand Islamic fundamentalism can afford to overlook.

Library Journal

In this work, Roy (Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1986) analyzes the types of people who are attracted to Islamist (the author's word) movements and the ideologies and goals of these groups. The Islamist cadres are young intellectuals from an urban background who have Western-style educations. The Islamist masses are the new urban arrivals, the peasants who have tripled the population of Muslim cities over the last 20 years. Because the Islamists, on the whole, have not studied the traditional Islamic curriculum, they have only a superficial understanding of Islamic institutions and idealize an Islamic past. Roy perceptively argues that the attempt to create one universal Islamist state is doomed to failure because of the conflicts between Sunni and Shia forms and other ethnic differences in the Islamic world. His is a keen, timely study; highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Robert Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn.

Booknews

French political philosopher Roy demonstrates that the Islamism of today is a mix of populist politics and mixed economies of laissez- faire for the rich and subsidies for the poor, and argues that Islamic fundamentalists will never be able to reshape economics and politics in the name of Islamic universalism. He discusses the sociology of Islam, and the situation in countries such as Algeria and Iran. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

• ISBN: 0674291417
  
• ISBN-13: 9780674291416
• Format: Paperback, 238pp
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Pub. Date: September 1996
• Edition Description: REPRINT
• Sales Rank: 350,784

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents