Politics Book Review Roy, Oliver. Term Paper

Neo-fundamentalism's pan-Islamic ideology has a profound appeal only for such displaced Muslim ethnic groups, as is also evidenced in Palestinian radical mobilization in such groups as Hamas.

But for Algerian Muslims living happily in Algiers, in comparison, this is not often the case. In fact, the author points to the behavior of the Algerians during their last election, noting that many nationals were openly calling for greater democratization in the street. They did not see this as incompatible with an Islamic state, necessarily, because they were more secure in their fused national and Islamic identity, and did not need neo-fundamentalist Islam to be the main source of their status and identity. The more secure, nationalistic, and unified the Islamic populace, the less appeal neo-fundamentalism's pan-Islamic ideology has, while "deterritorialism" has produced the transformation of Islamic conservatism into terrorist, radical Islam united across borders, as migrant and alienated Islamic ethnicities strive for some coherent voice and identity. (2) Oliver Roy even goes so far as to call such political movements "post-Islamism" for often the political needs of the groups are subsumed to the religious expressions of Islam. Roy calls the old ideology of fused interests in the name of Islam a "myth," but sees the current neo-fundamentalist ideology as no less mythic in the way that it denies social and regional needs in a schematic polarization and politicization of the tenants of the religion.Roy's book is sharp, bracing, eschews politically correct waffling, and one wishes it were a 'must read' for the current administration. He states that "it makes no sense to hope that Muslim societies undergo the same secularization as the West," because the "everyday relation between religion and politics" is fundamentally different than even existed during the secular processes of the West. (6) the most secular states with a large Muslim population, such as Tunisia, pre-war Iraq, Turkey, and Bosnia within the context of the former Yugoslavia were not the most liberal, but often the most politically stifling, promoting not democracy but subservience to a dominant but secular leader. One of the first things such leaders often did was to ban political pronouncements by religious leaders. To deflate the pull of militant Islam, which the author regards as a chimera for both Islamic peoples as well as a danger to the West, Palestinians and other displaced groups must have national security, racism against minority Muslims must be contained in Western contexts, and national borders must be respected. This will give rise to states that do not necessarily resemble our own, but can live more tolerably with the currently existing network….....