As with many books written in English by Frenchmen this is written in exceedingly complicated English to the point that many sentences deserved a second read.
The main thesis of the author is that Moslems living in Western Europe feel deterritorialized and their paradoxical way of Westernizing Islam is by reaching back to an imaginary super pure form of Islam that has never existed. Consequently these Western Moslems are becoming even more extreme than their counterparts living in countries with a Moslem majority.
Similarly, Moslems living in the Middle East have become disenchanted with the ossification of Islam in the hands of the ruling elite and are reacting by also reaching back to a similar super pure form of Islam.
I am not educated enough on this subject to be able to tell you that his arguments are sound but they do sound reasonable.
Roy also makes another interesting point. He explains that Western intellectuals often search for an explanation for the current world in Islam itself and suggest that it is an extreme religion which has always put violence on a pedestal. He argues that this kind of thinking is wrong. Instead he posits that the ruling elite of the Middle Eastern countries have taken command of Islam and have prevented it from growing with the times as other Western religions have grown. He says that Islam has become an instrument of the Middle East elite and is not something that controls the elite.
I firmly believe in this part of his argument.
1 comment:
It sounds as though he has a few reasonable theses in this book. I have been suspicious of how Islam is portrayed from the other end. After 911, Bush et al got up and made a big deal about how Islam is about peace and brotherly love. It all sounded too simplistic too me. I mean fundamentally you could say the same thing about Christianity but it has become as hateful and exclusionary as someone wants it to be.
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