Olivier Roy (political scientist)

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Olivier Roy (2017)

Olivier Roy (born August 30, 1949 in La Rochelle ) is a French political scientist , consultant, diplomat and UN envoy who has dealt particularly with political Islam and Islamism and knows Central Asia well.

Life

Olivier Roy comes from a Protestant family and studied philosophy , Persian language and culture as well as political science in Paris , a. a. at the Institut national des langues et civilizations orientales (INALCO). He has been an advisor to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1984 . In 1988 he was an adviser of the reconstruction program UNOC (H) A of the United Nations in Afghanistan . In 1993 he was the representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Tajikistan and in 1994 headed the OSCE mission there.

Roy is Research Director at the National Research Center (CNRS) in Paris. He also teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), at the Institut d'études politiques (IEP, Sciences Po) in Paris and is professor at the Robert Schuman Center of the European University Institute in Florence .

Roy has published numerous books on Islam and Central Asia , especially Afghanistan. One of his early main theses is that the project of Islamism as a political ideology has failed. Instead, gains in the Islamic countries of Ibn Taymiyyah and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab influenced neo-fundamentalism increasingly space which aspire only after that, a puritanical version of Islam by missionaries to spread. Neofundamentalism is a term that Roy himself coined anew in his 1992 book L'Échec de l'Islam politique . As in other religions, the Islamic practice of faith is more idealistic, more individualistic and split off from the prevailing culture. In this way, Islam is becoming more attractive, more tangible, more livable for Western converts and can be more easily instrumentalized by IS .

Terrorist attacks on November 13, 2015 in Paris

Roy argues that these attacks have nothing to do with Islam, they should rather be understood as a youth revolt. It is not a radical Islamism at work, but "Islamized radicalism". The terrorists are young people, without exception members of the second generation of immigrants or converts of native origin, and they seek a violent break with their society, with Western culture and with the culture of their parents' origin at the same time. First and foremost, self-hatred motivates these terrorists. A remarkable number of them have had a career as petty criminals. Jihad offers such failed existences the illusion of self-purification, a new sense of self-worth . Suddenly her life (and possibly death) acquire a higher meaning for her. It is only by chance, according to Roy's thesis, that they use Islam as a justification. Islam is just offering itself; however, it could be any other ideology. However, they did not know any real religious motivation, they were not pious. Rather, they are nihilists , to be compared with mass murderers in American school buildings or on a Norwegian vacation island. (See also: Controversy Between Kepel and Roy .)

Roy argued similarly in connection with the Brussels attacks . A radicalization is not a result of failed integration , but if it were rather young people who were to effect a radical break with their parents and saw than their parents because of their radicalization as better Muslims. In addition, there is a “fascination with suicide” and “violent fantasies” among young people, and this must be given greater consideration.

By seeing the radicalization of terrorists as an individually and psychologically justified derailment, Roy contradicts all those who understand terrorism as a result of religious madness or religious emptiness, historical trauma or social injustice. He opposes calls for the inhabitants of French suburbs to be dealt with much harder. Millions of people there led an inconspicuous life and it would not do to stigmatize an entire segment of the population because of a few thousand criminals and thereby marginalize it even further.

Fonts (selection)

  • Leibniz et la Chine. Paris 1972
  • Afghanistan, Islam et modernité politique. Paris 1985
  • L'Échec de l'Islam politique. Paris 1992
  • Généalogie de l'islamisme. Paris 1995
  • La Nouvelle Asie centrale ou la fabrication des nations. Paris 1997
  • with Farhad Khosrokhavar: Iran: comment sortir d'une révolution religieuse? Paris 1999
  • Les Illusions du 11 septembre. The stratégique face of terrorism. Paris 2002
  • L'Islam mondialisé. Paris 2002
    • The Islamic Way to the West. Globalization, uprooting and radicalization. Translated from the English by Michael Bayer. Pantheon, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-570-55000-1 ; Bpb, Bonn 2006, ISBN 978-3-89331-731-8
  • with Mariam Abou Zahab: Réseaux islamiques. La connexion afghano-pakistanaise. Paris 2002
  • (Ed.): La Turquie aujourd'hui, un pays européen? Paris 2004
  • Laïcité face à l'Islam. Paris 2005
  • Le croissant et le chaos. Paris 2007
  • La Sainte ignorance. Le temps de la religion sans culture. Editions du Seuil, Paris 2008
  • En quête de l'Orient perdu: Entretiens avec Jean-Louis Schlegel. Ed. du Seuil, Paris 2014
  • Le Jihad et la mort. Paris 2016
    • "You love life, we love death". Jihad and the roots of terror. Translated from the French by Christiane Seiler. Siedler, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-8275-0098-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Hesse: Islamist terror is like the RAF. Interview with the Islamism expert Olivier Roy. Berliner Zeitung, January 11, 2015
  2. ↑ Daniel Binswanger : "Come to the IS too ...": It's like in the computer game Call of Duty , only in real life. Why has Islamist terror developed into a global threat - and what do the young IS warriors have in common with the gunmen in American schools? An interview with Olivier Roy, the leading French scholar of Islam. The magazine N ° 12, 2015, Tamedia , Zurich online , scroll down, p. 22ff.
  3. ↑ Olivier Roy: "Le djihadisme est une révolte générationnelle et nihiliste" . In: Le Monde . November 24, 2015, ISSN  1950-6244 ( online [accessed March 27, 2016]).
  4. ↑ Michaela Wiegel: Islam researcher in conversation: "Radicalization is not a consequence of failed integration". FAZ, March 26, 2016, accessed on July 19, 2016 .
  5. ↑ in German for example: "The failure of political Islam." Not published in German
personal data
SURNAME Roy, Olivier
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French political scientist and expert on political Islam
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH La Rochelle