Globalised Islam

"In this exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernisation, Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or 're-Islamisation', results from the efforts of westernised Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context. A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world - including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbollah of Lebanon - and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary unimah, or Muslim community, not attached to any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful like Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. He shows how neofundamentalism acknowledges without nostalgia the loss of pristine cultures, constructing instead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. Thus contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is not a simple reaction against westernisation but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalisation."--Jacket.