Evangelical Islam

By Scott Horton

Olivier Roy gives us a typically brilliant introduction to the threat of radical Islam within Europe in particular: what drives it, how it parallels developments among Christian Evangelicals, and its inherent proximity to globalization as an issue. A sampler:

So, for the Taliban, to be a believer, to be a Muslim, meant strict observance of religious obligations—for instance, praying five times a day. If interrupted when praying, however, one had to begin again from scratch. The Taliban argument is the following: if you are praying and the bird in your room starts singing, you will be distracted and your prayer will be nullified. If you are a good Muslim, you will have to stop immediately and start all over again. But we are not sure you are a good Muslim and that you will have the strength to start all over again. Therefore, it is easier to ban the birds, since then they cannot bother you and distract you from your duties. Same thing with kites: a kite can get tangled in trees and, if it does, you will climb up the tree to untangle it because you paid good money for it. However, from the top of the tree, you can look over your neighbour's wall and you run the risk of seeing a woman without her veil, which is a sin. Why run the risk of burning in hell for a kite? Kites are banned.

This rationale is pushed to its limits, in other words, this form of religiosity cancels out culture, by the following reasoning: either culture belongs to religion and therefore culture is not needed or culture is something different from religion, and therefore must be eliminated because it distracts you from religion. Indeed, this denial of all distraction, of all that is not linked to religious practice and the seeking of salvation, is a line of thought found in a lot of religions. It is the standard line of thought and can even be found, for instance, in some forms of American Protestantism.

This type of fundamentalism is also a major cause of the loss of cultural identity; in fact, it vindicates the loss of cultural identity. It considers not having any cultural identity as positive.

It always amazes me to run into seemingly well read Americans who have picked up a book or two by Bernard Lewis and feel they know something about Islam and the Middle East. I’ve read every major work that Lewis has published—they’re consistently very well-written—but I came away feeling that I knew more about the region based on infrequent observations from my own eyes than I’ve ever learned from Lewis (the exception would be perhaps his book on Turkey—at least up to the arrival of Kemal Atatürk). There are very important authors on this region, two in particular: for the nationalist legacy and its struggle in the last century and into this one—my Columbia colleague Rashid Khalidi, and for the menacing minority, and particularly the Salafi phenomenon, Olivier Roy. You shouldn’t consider yourself read in this area unless you’ve read them. Lewis you can dispense with.