The author of the book, Olivier Roy, has been a director of
studies at the School of the high studies in social
sciences (EHESS) and works on political Islam for more than
15 years. It is a very fine expert of the Islamic networks
in the world and especially famous for its not very
orthodoxe approach of the subject: it writes and develops
its arguments from its lived on the ground with the Middle-
East and in Central Asia and not in a purely theoretical
way. Thesis: "traditional Moslem space is also crossed by
the phenomenon of globalisation" the sight of Islam as a
religion whose political expression is inevitably a
extremist and thus incompatible with the values of the
Occident is rather widespread today; even scientific works
contribute to reinforce this perception. It is against
this current that Olivier Roy writes his book, to show that
there are today a diversity of Islamic movements and not a
single political expression of Islam. It wonders about the
contemporary Islamic movements, of the approaches which one
can consider humanistic or liberal with the movements
violent one proclaiming the jihad. Key words:
Réislamisation: double movement of individualization and
deterritorialisation which aims at recreating the Islamic
community but no longer in a territory but in a virtual
form. It is the "conscience that Moslem identity, up to
now considered as self-explanatory because belonging to an
inherited cultural unit, can survive only if it is
reformulated and clarified apart from any specific cultural
context, that it is European or Eastern", p.12 Néo-
fundamentalism (wahhabism, salafism): movement which
wishes to circumvent the perverting of the religion by the
Occident by a return to the original texts and the model of
company of the time of the Prophet. These movements result
from an occidentalization of the Islam which is him also
subjected to universalization. Its passage to the west is
accompanied by a disconnection by a concrete culture and
the actors are then obliged to do a whole work of
reformulation of the religion, initially individual
reformulation (the collective authorities do not exist any
more). The Moslem minorities of Occident belong from now
on at a new religious community, which is a virtual
community which is not defined any more in terms of culture
and territory but of a code (to make, not to make) and a
border (inside or outside). The religious choice must
constantly be renewed and clarified (port of the veil)
since it is not subjected any more to the legal coercion,
it is believing it which decides and either the law or the
company. The secularization of Islam does not go in the
direction of a laicization but in that of a personal
appropriation of the divine one. Two principal elements
define the néo-fundamentalism or salafism which are the
radical versions of this reformulation: theological
scripturalism and the anti-occidentalisme cultural one.
The obsession of the innovation and to make close-cropped
table with the past are conducting wire in a refusal of the
concept even of culture to the profit of that of religion.
This refusal can take a dogmatic form as at Saoudiens
(allies of the Americans but refusing any church on their
ground) or militant by a call to the jihad as at Bin
Laden. Olivier Roy insists on the idea not often perceived
that néo-fundamentalism is pure produced globalisation. To
take the example of Al-Qaïda, it is a question well of an
individual survalorisation by attacks suicides: some
individuals make the history and not a community. The
suicide does not exist in the Islamic tradition, just as
the rupture with the family. This individualization is
completely modern and in total rupture with the tradition,
the jihad promoted by Bin Laden is a personal obligation
and either a Community expression as in the tradition.
Olivier Roy tries to put in gardesur the contradiction
between the erroneous Western vision of an Islam conqueror
and the perception of the Islamic militants which is that
of a suffering and oppressed Islam. There is no
géostratégie of Islam because there is no more territory of
Islam but only one disintegrated religion and Moslem
populations qu negotiate their identities in a peaceful or
violent way. The work allows a lighting on the Islam of
today and a better comprehension of its various forms and
especially of néo-fundamentalism; it is a work rich in
information and which takes many examples of contemporary
reality. It is a reading recommended for any person
interested by the subject.