Review: The Failure of Political Islam by Olivier Roy

During the worldwide fall of Communism, beginning in the 1980s, the West was gripped by the rise of political dominance of Islamic Movements and Political Islam in Eastern countries. Within a decade, the preoccupation with the ‘Communist authoritarianism’ that had existed for decades was transformed into a preoccupation with the rising tide of Islamism in the ‘third world’ countries. This was the period of the Fall of the Najibullah government– and the simultaneous rise of the Mujahideen – in Afghanistan, the rise of FIS in Algeria, the spread and terrorism of Al-Qaeda, etc. Olivier Roy’s work, The Failure of Political Islam is a manifestation of that obsession and accompanying apprehensions in the West.

The book is limited to the contemporary movements in the Islamic World. It offers no historical context or any theoretical explanations of the causes of the rise of Islamic Movements in more than 1400 years of the history of Islam. Hence this work is to be seen through the lens of the 1990s, with the backdrop of the Afghan Mujahideen, the fall of communism, the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, etc. In this respect, however, the author hasn’t been able to escape himself from the lucrative Orientalism.

Though the author explicitly targets Orientalists, and – rightly so– compares the more or less similar understanding of both the Islamists and the Western Orientalists of the nature of Islam and politics associated with it – that ‘as if there were one Islam, timeless and eternal’, there can be cited, nonetheless, numerous ‘conceptual shortcuts’ and unneeded generalizations that may not be exclusively a feature of Orientalist literature – that it could also be found in the literature of non-Islamic origin, but become Orientalist when originating from the West. 

Reasons for the failure of Political Islam

Part of the reason– to my understanding – why Roy limits himself to the contemporary currents and leaves untouched the historical context of Political Aspects of Islam is because the currents witnessed by him had less to do with traditionalism and more with modernity. Modernity is an important and inalienable cause of the rise of Islamism.

The Islamist movements are “products of the modern world”, he asserts. “The militants are rarely mullahs; they are young products of the modern educational system and those who are university-educated tend to be more scientific than literary”, he adds. Here he contradicts himself with the Weberian idea that there is no Modernity outside the political model of the West.

He also clarifies the nuanced distinction between Islamic Fundamentalism and Islamism, which collectively constitute Political Islam. The former is a traditional mass movement and a modern phenomenon. Islamism is a top-down approach; a Leninist method to capture the power first and Islamize the society after that. Political action is instrumental to it. While the Fundamentalists have never been able to capture power through their mass movement methods, Islamists have captured power in the case of Afghanistan (the Afghan Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996) and Iran through an all-out revolution. 

How is Political Islam a Failure?

Then how is Political Islam a failure? Roy contends that the failure rests on two buttresses– on Intellectual and historical ones. The former, the author argues, “destroys its innovative elements” because the society that is essential for the believer to achieve total virtue functions only by the virtue of its members. Thus, Islamism, as he puts it, “ends up dissociation itself from the very components of Politics, seeing them as mere instruments for raising moral standards”….. “and thereby returning to the traditional perceptions of the Ulamas”.

The latter– historical basis – is a failure as neither in Revolutionary Iran nor in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan a new society– that is fair and Islamic — has been established. This is a general trend in political Islamic movements. The historical failure of the Islamist movements is their inability to invent a new society that remains their rallying point before capturing power. The autocracy that is unleashed after their capturing of power is inherently a modern phenomenon. Hence the failure of political Islam is due to the political nature of the movements that profess it. 

The author also touches on the issue of the impact of Islamism. In socio-cultural terms, he writes, “marks the streets and customs but has no power relationship in the Middle East.” It doesn’t influence either state borders or interests. Moreover, the Islamic Economy – which Roy calls a Social -Democratic vision, envisions the concept of ‘Islamic Socialism’. Here he again draws comparisons between communism and Islamism, adding that ensuring social justice through the distribution of wealth and prevention of its accumulation, remains a major vision of the Islamists, much due to the purpose of political survival.

Key Features of Political Islam in the Book

While going through the book, a reader is easily impressed by Roy’s objective knowledge and subjective understanding of issues of the Islamic World. When coupled with one-liners, such as Islamic Political Imagination, the reader’s interest is enhanced. The author also leaves no social aspect related to Islamic society untouched in his book, be it sociological, historical, ontological, and so on. He touches on political Islam, using his deep understanding of the sociology of Islam to explain his proposition.

The traditional Shia-Sunni rivalry– and instances of cooperation, the Political Economy of Islamism, the concession given by the state to such movements, and many such issues relating to Political Islam are dealt with. Thus the selling point of the book is its comprehensiveness, albeit – for much of the topics discussed– lacking clarity, depth, and sufficient details. 

One key feature of this book is the myriad invoking of the similarities between the methods of Islamists and Marxists, sometimes even between Islamists and Nasserites. “The same individuals who followed Nasser or Marx in the 1960s are Islamists today”, he writes. Though not without, once again, presenting his Orientalist understanding of Marxism in the Middle East. Soviet Union, and its downfall and its impacts on the rise of the Islamist movements. He attributes the rise of many of the movements in the Islamic World to the fall of the Soviet empire and the transfer of masses to the former. 

The author gives his distinct vision vis-à-vis The Islamic Revolution in Iran and the political Islam practised by it. The revolution “is the only Islamist revolution in which the Clergy played a decisive role” but adds that the revolution was a “Third world revolutionary movement generated by an unprecedented alliance between the fundamentalist Clergy and radical intelligentsia”. Hence the Islamization that followed didn’t take a conservative nature.

Iran was made a constitutional republic, following the rallying slogans during the revolution of Isteqlaal, Azadi, Jomhuri-ye-Islami (Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic). According to the author, Iranian Islamism differs from other forms in another crucial way– the presence of institutions. “The Iranian model is a secular model, in the sense that it is the state that defines the place of the clergy and not the Clergy who defines the state of politics”, he adds. 

Conclusion

The book, despite numerous generalizations and a pinch of Orientalism in it, is welcome to the existing literature on Islamism in particular and Political Islam in general. Roy had earlier authored the book, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, which captured the nuanced warlord-ship politics of Afghanistan and the Political Islam practised by the Taliban. His experience in the Islamic World has wielded this book. As the Islamists themselves are not used to penning down their ideas, it is authors like Roy who enable young scholars to understand Political Islam.