Six years after 9/11 French sociologist Olivier Roy produced a collection of essays to explain what went wrong with American policy in the Middle East. Building on a long career spent studying, analysing and interpreting religious and political trends in parts of the Muslim world and Europe, Roy’s recent book builds on complex but lucid theoretical position and sound methodological skills, both enable him to carve for himself a sound academic niche and emerge as an authority on current social, political and religious developments that are today not confined to specific countries or regions but are themselves globalised.
Roy’s The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East is a short collection of essays that captures a long scholarly engagement with Islamism, social movements, globalisation, and political development. Unlike some of the French academic literature on the Muslim world that has emerged since the 1970s, most of which has been grounded in dogmatic secularism and revulsion towards the new Islamist social movements, Roy offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of sociological and political trends that are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
After ongoing military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Pakistan, and possibly in Somalia and Yemen in the near future, the world that America imagined would move towards democracy, stability, prosperity, and security is still far from materialising. In fact, it seems that the neo-conservative vision of the Great Middle East had stumbled in many regions and resulted in what Roy describes as chaos. The rationale behind Bush’s military strategy summed up as ‘whole sale and rapid annihilation of the enemy’ failed miserably to deliver the desired outcome.
Posted by Main at 03:41 AM. Filed under: Book Reviews •