Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah [Paperback]

ROY'[This] new book provides one of the best and most detailed snapshots of A"real existing IslamA" currently available.' -The Guardian'a new book by Roy [is] something of an event [A...] Globalised Islam is a highly original, meth-odologically rigorous [A...] superb and complex sociological study.' - The Washington Post'High-octane brainwork A... a large and highly intelligent contribution.'-The Economist'Olivier Roy is perhaps the most provocative and innovative writer on Islamism today. [A...] There is no more reliable guide to this labyrinth.' -Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly'A characteristically informed and incisive analysis of the new transnational movements and globalized responses that have developed in that past twenty years or so in the Muslim world. [A...] Roy is one of the most important analysts of political Islam today.'-James Piscatori, fellow, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Wadham College, University of Oxford

High-octane brainwork...a large and highly intelligent contribution. The Economist Olivier Roy is perhaps the most provocative and innovative writer on Islamism today... There is no more reliable guide to this labyrinth. -- Martin Kramer Middle East Quarterly His new book provides one of the best and most detailed snapshots of 'real existing Islam' currently available. -- Jonathan Steele The Guardian Nuanced discussion. -- Nader Hashemi Globe and Mail Roy cuts through the mystical veil of religion... Globalized Islam gets under the skin of today's quintessentially modern forms of Islam and points the debate in a new direction. -- Josie Appleton Spiked Online Roy's sociological analysis is always insightful. -- Mahmood Mamdani Foreign Affairs Superb and complex sociological study. -- Fawaz A. Gerces Washington Post Book World [Roy] suggest[s] that the important events in the world of Islam are taking place not in the regions we ordinarily think of as Islamic but in Europe. -- Noah Feldman New York Times Book Review 2/6/05 A very well-informed tour of the complexities of contemporary Islam. Future Survey 26:11 Nov.04 Oliver Roy's writings are always worth reading, and Globalized Islam is no exception. Middle East Journal Winter 2005 An in-depth analysis...An ambitious project...Recommended. Choice 6/1/05 This book is a wonderful exploration of ideas on the future of Islamic radicalism. -- LCDR Aboul-Enein Strategic Insight 7/1/05 Always ahead of his time. -- Reuel Marc Gerecht Weekly Standard 7/25/05 Roy is enormously knowledgeable and well aware of the problems faced by young Muslims. -- Lawrence Rosen London Review of Books 8/4/05 Roy's sociological theories cast a refreshing light on Islam's role as a minority religion in the West. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Spring 2006 An essential key to understanding not evident in similar-sounding discussions. Midwest Book Review: California Bookwatch 12/1/2006 This is an important book, one that must be read... [and] will serve as a useful referent for some time. -- Sanford Silverburg Digest of Middle East Studies Spring 2007 One of the Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International's 25 Top Books for Today's Bookshelf on Terrorism. Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International 4/1/07 The most comprehensive and rigorous study of the subject to date. -- John Gray Harper's 1/1/08 Richness of analysis and breadth of data make [ Globalized Islam] a pioneering contribution to the literature on globalization and Islam. The International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol 38, 2006 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Investigates the emerging phenomenon of militant fundamentalist Islam of a global nature and without links to a particular country or culture. Olivier Roy investigates here the emergence of a militant 'de-territorialised' Islam that has fewer and fewer links to any particular country and/or culture. His main contention is that contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is largely a consequence of, and a factor contributing to, globalisation. Roy argues that mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world have become 'Islamo-nationalist', recasting their political action within a national framework (e.g. Islamic Iran, the Hamas of Palestine, the Hezbullah of Lebanon), thereby relinquishing their internationalist agenda.Hence a schism has emerged between 'political Islam' and the modern, uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary 'Ummah which is not embedded in any particular society or territory. A detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful like Tabligh Jamaat and the Islamic brotherhoods or violent like Osama bin Laden, forms the core of this book. In parallel with this 'deterritorialisation', new forms of 'Western Islam' have put down strong roots.For the first time in history, a huge Muslim population has come voluntarily to live in non-Muslim countries. Among these migrants pristine ethnic cultures are being eroded and giving way to the recasting of Islam as a mere religion, one that is less and less embedded in a particular, localised culture. In this sense the 'Salafist' or neo-fundamentalist approach, which stresses the return to an authentic Islam, shorn of local traditions and superstitions, is both a consequence and an agent of the contemporary process of acculturation and globalisation. Roy also examines relations between neo-fundamentalism and globalisation, and the recasting of Islam into a personal faith. To be a 'true' Muslim in the West is an individual choice, because it usually means a double break: with an overly traditional familial environment and with the dominant secular society.

Olivier Roy, a researcher at C.E.R.I. in Paris, is a world authority on Islam and politics. His books include The Failure of Political Islam (Harvard University Press, 1996) and The New Central Asia (New York University Press, 2000).

From Chapter 3: 'Muslims in the West'

Muslims throughout history have experienced forms of globalisation,
through travel, pilgrimage or the widespread role of Arabic
and of a common teaching curriculum. A ‘community of the
learned’ existed above all linguistic and ethnic divides, using Arabic
as its lingua franca, and travelling from Morocco to India to learn
and teach in a network of comparable and homogeneous institutions
(akin to medieval European clerks, using Latin and travelling

from universities to monasteries). This premodern globalisation
was effectively connected with the attempt to revivify, through the
medium of Arabic, a common Muslim culture, although it was an
elite phenomenon. The Muslim ‘community of the learned’ no
longer circulates in a purely Arabo-Muslim context, and English is
as important as Arabic, if not more so, outside the Arabic-speaking
world, which comprises only 20 per cent of all Muslims. In short,
the earlier form of globalisation did not borrow its linguistic and
technical tools from another culture, which is the case nowadays.
Contemporary globalisation is not an elite phenomenon but a mass
one, and it has a backlash at the core of the countries of origin,
while traditional society was left unchanged by medieval globalisation.
Contemporary Muslim minorities have to undergo a process
of deculturation that has no precedent in history and is not imposed,
but is the consequence of voluntary displacement and shifts
from pristine cultures to a common, uprooted Muslim identity.
The growing ‘deterritorialisation’ of Islam nevertheless entails a
reflection on what it means to be a Muslim living in a minority. It
is often argued that because Islam is an all-encompassing religion
that addresses all aspects of individual and social life – from law to
politics, from diet to socialisation – it is impossible for true believers
to live permanently under non-Muslim rule: they should leave
or, more precisely, migrate (hijra) to a Muslim land, the Dar-ul-
Islam. This premise fuels the debate on the compatibility of Islam
with Western values and on its ability to accommodate democracy
and secularisation. Such a debate raises two issues: is there a dominant theoretical paradigm that rules the case? And even if this were the case, are the practices and choices of today’s Muslims really shaped by a theological paradigm? In a word, to what extent is the question ‘What does Islam or the ulama say about …?’ relevant to an explanation of the practices of Muslims?