Olivier Roy, Translated by Carol Volk
With demonstrations taking place in much of the Arab world and most of its constituent states in a period of flux, observers are wondering what the role of political Islam may play in these developments. With this speculative question in mind, it is useful to turn back to author Olivier Roy’s seminal work on this topic, The Failure of Political Islam, translated by Carol Volk (originally L’Echec de l’Islam politique, 1992). Written before Osama bin Laden was making headlines and the United States was engaged in two protracted ground wars in Muslim countries, its analysis and predictions offer a fascinating, hindsight appraisal of the gap between his predictions and reality.
Roy makes a clear distinction between the Islamists who seek political power, whose approach is embodied in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the neofundamentalists, who are more focused on the family and mosque, and whose beliefs Saudi authorities sponsor. Roy’s basic thesis is that the “enfeeblement of Islamism into neofundamentalism brought an end to the revolutionary dynamic”, and that these neofundamentalist networks have “never been able to shape an international policy that amounts to anything more than a reflection of the conflicts of interest among regional states.” He writes that the impact of Islamism, excluding the Iranian revolution and the war in Afghanistan, is essentially symbolic, marking the streets and customs but bearing no influence on state borders or interests.
Broadly, Roy’s description of political Islam and the underlying forces that empower it, primarily joblessness and an inability to satiate disaffected youth, are illuminating. However, his conclusions and predictions have proven with time to be wrong. The Hamas electoral victory in Gaza offers a strong example of Islamist success rather than failure. Beyond merely replacing secular (Fatah) language and symbols, its rise to power fundamentally altered the foreign policy of the Palestinian Authority toward a greater propensity for armed conflict and rejecting the peace process.
The author dedicates a few chapters to the role that political Islam plays in the economy, foreign policy, and government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He writes that, “Iran’s foreign policy has boxed itself into the Shi’ite ghetto without actually controlling this ghetto”. However, again, his conclusion fails to pass the test of time. In particular, Iran’s strong relationship with Hezbollah in Lebanon coupled with the organization’s dramatic increase in popularity among both Shi’ite and non-Shi’ite populations following the end of Israeli occupation in 2000 refutes his conclusions. Additionally, Hezbollah’s increased presence as a political party in the Lebanese government (prior to its resignations earlier this year) further demonstrates that Iran’s confinement to relations with the Shi’ite ghetto is false.
Certainly, Roy knows a great deal about Islamic movements and about Afghanistan in particular. Yet, predictions regarding Islam and the Middle East prove to be notoriously difficult, especially in the face of paradigmatic-shifting unforeseen events, such as the September 11th attacks. Written in the early 1990s, it is not surprising that his book makes no mention of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. And while Al-Qaeda has been unable to take the reins of a state and direct a foreign policy, the impact of its form of political Islam can hardly be called a failure. Rather, the “success” of the group is in its ability to fundamentally alter the foreign policy of its target states, in particular the United States. In that sense, the group has certainly managed to create a “third force” in international relations, something Roy predicted political Islam would fail to do.
Finally, with the so-called Arab Spring ongoing, one can only speculate as to whether Roy’s predictions will come true in states such as Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and Libya. Again, his book’s usefulness stems more from its descriptive rather than predictive functions. He presciently describes the underlying forces galvanizing the protesters across the Arab world almost two decades later: “Islamism is a sociocultural movement embodying the protest and frustration of a generation of youth that has not been integrated socially or politically.” Depending on which route the protests take, one might consider replacing “Islamism” with “liberalism” in Roy’s statement.