The spread of Islam around the globe has blurred the connection between a religion, a specific society, and a territory. One-third of the world's Muslims now live as members of a minority. At the heart of this development is, on the one hand, the voluntary settlement of Muslims in Western societies and, on the other, the pervasiveness and influence of Western cultural models and social norms. The revival of Islam among Muslim populations in the last twenty years is often wrongly perceived as a backlash against westernization rather than as one of its consequences. Neofundamentalism has been gaining ground among a rootless Muslim youth-particularly among the second- and third-generation migrants in the West-and this phenomenon is feeding new forms of radicalism, ranging from support for Al Qaeda to the outright rejection of integration into Western society. In this brilliant exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernization, Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or "re-Islamization," results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context.
A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world-including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbollah of Lebanon-and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary ummah, or Muslim community, not embedded in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful, like Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. He shows how neofundamentalism acknowledges without nostalgia the loss of pristine cultures, constructing instead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. Thus contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is not a single-note reaction against westernization but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalization.
Preface1. Introduction: Islam: A Passage to the West The failure of political Islam: and what? Islam as a minority Acculturation and 'objectification' of Islam Recasting identities, westernising religiosity Where are the Muslim reformers? Crisis of authority and self-enunciation Religion as identity The triumph of the self Secularisation through religion? Is jihad closer to Marx than to the Koran? What is Bin Laden's stategy?2. Post-Islamism The failure of political Islam revisited From Islamism to nationalism States without nation, brothers and state The crisis of diasporas Islam is never a stretegic factor as such The political integratoin of Islamists From utopia to conservatism The elusive 'Muslim vote' Democracy without democrats The Iranian Islamic revolution: how politics defines religion Islamisation as a factor secularisation Conservative re-Islamisation Post-Islamism: the privatisation of religion3. Muslims in the West How to live as a sateless Muslim minority Historical paradigms of Muslims as a minority Acculturation and identity reconstruction4. The Triumph of hte Religios Self The loss of religious authority and the 'objectification' of Islam Immigration and reformulation of Islam The crisis of authority and religious knowledge The religious market and the sociology of Islamic actors Individualisation of enunciation and propaganda Faith and self Humanism, ethical Islam and salvation Enunciation of the self Recommunitarisation and construction of identity5. Islam in the West or the Westernisation of Islam The building of Muslim 'churches' Neo-brohterhoos and New Age religiosity6. The Modernity of an Archaic Way of Thinking: Neofundamentalism Sources and actors of neofundamentalism The basic tenets of neofundamentalism Neofundamentalists and Islamists Neofundamentalists and radical violence Why is neofundamentalism successful? The new frontier of the imagined ummah7. On the Path to War: Bin Laden and Others Al Qaeda and the new terrorists Deterritorialisation Re-islamisation in the West Uprooting and acculturation The peripheral jihad The Western-born or second-generation Muslims The converts and the 'protest conversion' The subcontractors The future of Al Qaeda8. Remapping the World: Civilisation, Religion and Strategy Culture, religion and civilisations: the conundrum of clash and dialogue The debate on values Military strategy on abstract territoriesIndex
