Olivier Roy on Jihadism and Islamic Radicalism

Olivier Roy makes an excellent point regarding Islamic fundamentalism. It is not, as popular accounts often claim, a "medieval" sensibility. Rather, it is a radical product of the modern world. He properly brands it "Islamic Radicalism" rather than "fundamentalism" or "Islamofascism", [terms preferred by the left]. He also notes that the real core of the phenomenon is in Europe, not in the more traditional societies of the Middle East, which the Jihadists are attacking.

He writes:

The attacks on London point to a development that has been documented for a number of years. Islamic radicalism is on the rise, above all, in the second generation of young Muslims living in Europe. A certain form of Islamic radicalism, which one could call "Jihadism" is in fact a pathological outcome of the Westernisation of Islam; it is not the result of exporting to Europe the conflicts of the Middle East (there is not a single Palestinian, Afghani or Iraqi among terrorists acting at the international level). This violence is part of a more general transformation of Islam resulting from immigration, the fact of being a minority, and the introduction into Muslim societies of profoundly Western patterns of economic, political and religious consumption.

The radicalisation of Islam is often perceived as the cultural reaction to Westernisation by traditional Muslim societies. Thus, fundamentalism is identified as a Muslim culture that refuses to Westernise itself. Hence the expressions "the clash of civilisations" or "the clash of cultures". But in fact religious renewal, whether it be expressed in fundamentalism or in spiritualism, is doubtless more an expression of the growing separation between religion and culture. Put another way, it results from the re-defining of what is held to be religious beyond traditional culture. This means, in effect, the weakening of such "traditional" cultures by the forces of globalisation. The fundamentalism of today, whether it be Christian or Islamic, expresses a crisis of culture atrributable to globalisation and not a desire to restore original cultures.

Read the whole thing here. It's well worth your time.

I would remind readers that Christian "fundamentalism" is itself a product of the Twentieth Century. It originated as a radical response to the intellectual excesses of late Nineteenth Century biblical criticism and the moral destructiveness of Social Darwinism.