The Failure of Political Islam Olivier Roy Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, xi + 238 pp.

Abstract

Olivier Roy, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific
Research in Paris, wrote Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan ( 1985) and
coauthored, with Andre Brigot, War in Afghanistan (1985). Roy seems to
have earned the respect of Western policy makers by making successful
predictions about the war in Afghanistan. Publication of his present work
within two years of its original publication by a leading American university
is a reflection of this. In the present work, translated by Carol Bolk, he
has undertaken a general work on Islam and politics in contemporary
times and has made another courageous prediction: "Any Islamist politi•
cal victory in a Muslim country would produce only superficial changes
and law" (p. ix).
Roy writes in the context of a historical situation that "many consider
an era of an Islamic threat" (p. 1) but does not identify the nature of this
threat. What is this threat and to whom is it directed? From some of his
remarks, it seems that the threat is directed toward Westem civilization, in
general, and our contemporary nation-state system, in particular. His assurance
to those who take the “Islamic threat” seriously is that the nation-state
framework continues (and perhaps will continue) to be the determining factor
because “the UN has globalized Muslim states.” Despite its rhetoric,
even revolutionary Iran has become just another nation-state and “the FIS’s
Algeria will do nothing more than place a chador over the FLN’s Algeria”
(p. 60), counsels Roy ...