Two worthwhile books with flawed logic from a French theorist: The Failure of Political Islam & Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah by Olivier Roy.
Will fundamentalist Muslims manage to take power, or will the mostly nonfundamentalist autocrats now in power stay there?
The fundamentalists could well take over several governments in a short period: Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has launched a virtual civil war; in Egypt, radical fundamentalists control parts of the cities and countryside; fundamentalist parties are gaining in nearly all the Muslim countries with electoral politics (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Malaysia). The fundamentalist challenge to the established order is real.
So how is political Islam a failure?
The failure Roy refers to is one that distinguishes between Islamism and neofundamentalism. For Roy, the former means the drive for political power, and the latter means focusing on the family and the mosque. Think Iran for Islamism; think Saudi Arabia for neofundamentalism.
Islamism has failed and the weaker cause of neofundamentalism has flourished accoring to Roy.
True enough, Roy points out that fundamentalist Islam is a form of modernization. Contrary to the usual assumption, it is not medieval in spirit at all but an acutely modern form of protest. In Roy's elegant formulation, it "is the sharia [Islamic sacred law] plus electricity."
Though fundamentalist Islam cannot work, what Roy misses is that the realization that fundamentalism does not work could be years or decades off. We have no idea whatsoever from knowing the full import of fundamentalism. For example, as the Marxist-Leninist precedent shows, regimes kill and repress their opponents and also export their ideology abroad. The mullahs in Iran relish in power as most people appear to enjoy it. The salient point: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely," Lord Acton, is not discussed by Roy.
In 1933, sixteen years after the Bolshevik revolution, communism had a strong life after the revolution; sixteen years after the Iranian Revolution fundamentalism is alive and well, despite Roy's objection.
Roy was wrong on Algeria. The Muslim FIS in Algeria is superceded by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA): they specialize in murdering the children of police officers, women without veils, unsympathetic journalists, and non-Muslim foreigners. They kill their victims in particularly horrifying ways, slitting throats and cutting off heads. Educated and/or Western-oriented, French speakers, or those wearing a business are attractive as potential victims.
Leading American specialists on the subject, such as John Entelis, John Esposito, and John Voll, argue that we should look beyond fundamentalism's rough edges and bristling rhetoric and relax.
However, you can only engage in dialogue those who are willing to accept its consequence: democracy, freedom, free choice.
We need to learn from history and to hope with the Who, "We don't get fooled again."
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