Olivier Roy

The Transformation of the Arab World

In order to grasp what is happening in the Middle East, we must set aside a number of deep-rooted prejudices. First among them is the assumption that democracy presupposes secularization: The democratization movement in the Arab world came precisely after thirty years of what has been called the “return of the sacred,” an obvious process of re-Islamization of everyday life, coupled with the rise of Islamist parties. The second is the idea that a democrat must also, by definition, be a liberal. What is at stake is the reformulation of religion’s place in the public sphere.

Development and political legitimacy: the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan

Developments policies are based on a set of premises: state‐building, state of law, democratisation, accountability and privatisation. The idea is that the Western concept of democracy could be implemented through the development of a ‘civil society’ of the building from scratch of new institutions. Such a model works when there is political will from the local political authorities and the society to adopt such a model (as was the case in Poland and Hungary after the collapse of the Soviet Union). But in any case a policy of development should be based on political legitimacy. In Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, political legitimacy means abiding with nationalism, Islam and local political culture (often based on clan‐ism and networks). In Iraq, the US policy has deliberately ignored the issue of legitimacy. In Afghanistan, because the US intervention was not part of a great design, it relied more on local constraints and thus has been more effective, or at least, less disruptive. The issue is not opposing a Western model of democracy to a national authoritarian political culture, but to root democracy into the local political culture. If not the policy of strengthening civil society, through political and military pressure as well as NGOs, has a disruptive effect and may lead to a conservative, nationalist and religious backlash.

Islam in the Post-Communist Balkans: Alternative Pathways to God

The Islamic ‘revival’ in the Balkans has raised many questions among mainstream politicians and academics, who tend to look at religion as a repository of ethno-national identities, and hence a risky ‘depot’, furthering divisions between and among national entities. How believers themselves discover, articulate and experience their faith is often lost in the grand narratives of nations’ assumed uniformity and the related criteria of inclusion and exclusion. This article shifts the analytical and empirical focus from nation-centric debates on the revival of Islam to believers’ self-discovery and pursuit of faith after the fall of Communism. Specifically, it explores the emerging actors and mechanisms that trigger the bifurcation between Islam as a marker of national identity, on the one hand, and a source of religious beliefs, on the other. It all depends on who speaks for Islam – state authorities, religious hierarchies and/or informal faith communities. All the while, the Islamic phenomenon is no longer merely the bearer of ethno-national alternatives, but also the symptom of alternative spaces containing a variety of new actors as well as overlapping national, regional and global processes.

There Will Be No Islamist Revolution

Abstract: Hillel Fradkin has quite correctly summarized my analysis before criticizing it. Therefore, apart from the rather crucial detail of what the “failure of political Islam” means, there is no misunderstanding between us, but rather a decisive difference in approach and perspective. Fradkin is concerned about what constitutes the essence of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as an ideological movement, whereas I concentrate on how the Muslim Brothers, as political and social actors, are shaped by the political, social, and religious context in which they now find themselves.

The revival of Islam in the Balkans

The revival of Islam in the Balkans : , The revival of Islam in the Balkans : , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

Secularism and Islam: The Theological Predicament

Does the integration of Islam in Europe presuppose a prior ‘religious reformation’ that would make Islam compatible with so-called ‘European values’? The wave of religious revival that has touched the new generations of Muslims in Europe is not a return to traditional religious practices but, on the contrary, a recasting of religious norms and values in a European context. Fundamentalism means deculturation. What we are witnessing is a complex, and often tense, process of formatting Islam into a Western model of relationship between state, religion and society. But this process is taking place precisely at a time when Europe is not sure about its own identity: what does a ‘European Christian identity’ mean when churches are increasingly empty? Faith and culture have never been so disconnected.

Qibla and the Government House: The Islamist Networks

�� he Islamic revival in Central Asia seems to have been as surprising as the collapse of the Soviet Union for Western scholars. The two are closely associated, for the dormant seeds of atavist identities could only grow in the rubble of the Soviet construction. The swift establishment of networks between local and international Islamic and Islamist organizations has provided the fertilizer for this revival. However, an unsophisticated look at Central Asia as another frontier of a clash of civilizations is wrong. Islamist movements have not spurred the appearance of broad, multi-ethnic, multinational identities, but have remained concerned with local politics. They are opposition movements with an Islamist twist. During the Soviet period, Central Asia was almost totally isolated from the rest of the Muslim world. 1 From 1924 to 1941, Moscow launched a direct offensive against all aspects of Muslim social life. Afterwards, limited religious freedom was allowed under the auspices of an official clergy (muftiyya) based in Tashkent, the current capital of Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, in the countryside, unofficial clerics maintained the basic tenets of Islam, even though all mosques were closed. The Muslims of Central Asia took advantage of perestroika to establish or re-establish links with the Muslim world very quickly. Foreign support strengthened this re-islamization trend upon the independence of the Central Asian republics in 1991. The bulk of these new contacts had little to do with Islamic political radicalism. Foreign-based religious movements, like the Pakistani Jamiat ut-Tabligh, sent teams of missionaries into Central Asia to

Tensions and Options Among the Iranian Clerical Establishment

It may be argued that the Iranian revolution is the only “religious revolution” in the modern world. Whether a religious revolution is even possible, however, is an entirely different question. Still, it is clear that any transition in post-revolutionary Iran, as embodied by the spring 2000 elections, will have to deal with the religious legacy and legitimacy of the regime.1 What to do with the clergy and how to interpret Islam in Iran are two of the most critical questions facing any analysis of the Islamic republic.

Conclusion: What Matters with Conversions?

There is nothing new about religious conversions, but the way they have occurred during the last 40 years is rather different from in the past. As far as the history of Christianity is concerned, mass conversions were largely linked to political domination, from the barbarians of the late Roman Empire to the Amerindians and Africans of the colonial period. Conversions to Islam used to occur inside the Muslim kingdoms and empires mostly as a way to align with the dominant power; at the periphery of the Muslim world, where there was no political incentive, conversions, made mainly through merchants and travellers, were perceived in terms of upward social mobility, a factor often associated with conversions in general. In a word, conversions worked vertically from dominated to dominants, as if the top were some sort of magnet attracting subjects. Exceptions, such as the spread of Christianity in the early and middle Roman Empire, remind us more of the present time; in any case, Christianity in the Roman Empire was always perceived by the state as a political issue, with the aim of bringing state and religion together, either by suppressing Christianity or making it the state religion. In a given territory, mass conversions used to concern only one religion, one that was already (or was trying to become) dominant. Conversions thus appeared as a way to make the dominant religion coincide with the dominant power; exceptions, as with the Reformation in Europe, were followed by a string of civil and foreign wars, in the perspective of restoring such a convergence (according to cujus regio, ejus religio, the famous founding principle of the Peace of Westphalia).

Governing Islam and religious pluralism in new democracies

Experiences of democratization, especially those outside core Western democracies, have seen the explosion of different forms of religious expressions in public and political life. After all, democratization is about opening the socio-political sphere, and creating an equal play field for participation of various contenders and alternatives of ‘good life’. At the same time, religious movements are usually among the best-organized contenders to articulate and pursue powerful visions of good life. That inherited legacies of nation-state formation, and the resulting ‘traditions’ of each specific country, are often at odds with the egalitarian-universal principles underlying democratic inclusion of different contenders, however, complicates the application of values of religious freedom and equality. That religious alternatives themselves consist of ‘comprehensive’ and often exclusionary narratives, moreover, makes them a difficult, even if unavoidable, companion of democratic openings. Hence, democratizing polities have to walk a very fine line between accommodation and restriction of religion in order for citizens from different walks of life to perceive the state as a shared home for everyone. Such dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion hinge on broader institutional choices, which concern fundamental questions about who is to be included and excluded, under what arrangements, and with what results.