Olivier ROY: Radical neo-fundamentalists (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

We do not read Olivier Roy's book, The Failure of political Islam, in this
course but this is an interesting analysis of the Bin Laden phenomenon,
which is well outside the mainstream of political Islam but also embedded
in a postcolonial dialectic with "the West."

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 08:59:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Gary G Sick <ggs2@columbia.edu>
To: gulf2000 list <gulf2000-list@columbia.edu>
Subject: Olivier ROY: Radical neo-fundamentalists

G2K member Oliver Roy wrote an article in November entitled "Bin Laden:
An Apocalyptic Sect Severed from Political Islam" which appeared in
INTERNATIONALE POLITIK (Dec 2001).

It argues that the Bin Laden-style movements belong to a different current
than the important Islamist parties. In order to situate Bin Laden's
position he retraces the evolution of political radicalism. He first
examines the nationalist underpinnings of important Islamist movements,
followed by "Conservative Re-Islamization: Neo-Fundamentalism." He then
identifies "Radical neo-fundamentalists: Bin Laden" -- an excerpt:

"This subduing of the important Islamist movements and their integration
into a form of nationalism has left an open field for a new kind of
radicalism, which is Sunni, ideologically conservative, and supranational
in both recruitment and ideology. It is not created by schisms within the
important movements, but rather by the radicalization of conservative
milieus (like the Afghan Taliban) and their collaboration with small,
radical terrorist groups that are simultaneously marginalized and
radicalized by repression (like the Gama'at and the Egyptian Jihad) in the
context of globalization and the circulation of "de-territorialized"
militants. The prototype of this movement is the network which has formed
around the Saudi militant Bin Laden (in the Al Qaeda organization)....

"The primary characteristic of these networks is that they recruit from,
situate themselves within, and take action on the margins of the Muslim
world, with the exception of Egypt, while maintaining a center of gravity
in the Afghano-Pakistani conglomeration. In addition to Egyptians, they
are comprised of Palestinians--coming from 1948 refugee camps, not from
the current territories--Sudanese, Yemenites, people from the Gulf, and
Algerians, but also immigrants recently settled in Great Britain and the
U.S. Their activities take place in East Africa, Yemen, Pakistan, New
York, and so on. The Jihads of preference are in Kashmir, Afghanistan, and
Bosnia, but not in Palestine. Although the nexus is not very clear, the
networks of activists in France often have an "Afghan" connection....

"The Bin Laden networks rely on two generations. The first is the
generation of "Afghans" (including no real Afghans), that is to say, the
foreign and mainly Arab volunteers who came to fight in Afghanistan during
the war against the Soviets. The second is a group of young people most
often recruited in the West in the nineties, who have, in general, no
previous history with religious activism or political militancy. Bin
Laden's network is now Westernized, as much in its recruitment as in its
sphere of activity."

Finally, he looks at "Anti-American Radicalization," "The New Militants,"
and "Characteristics of New Fundamentalist Radicalism:"

"Neo-fundamentalism represents an Islam which has been globalized and
de-territorialized: in a word, "de-Middle-Eastified". This is the negative
side of the Westernization of Islam, as paradoxical as that might seem;
more precisely, it is the result of the imbrication of very traditional
infra-state networks (madrasa, tribes, etc.) with globalized networks that
have modern means of operation and bypass state jurisdiction."