Rules of the game

IT IS a risky business nowadays to engage in debate about secularism; doubly so if the subject is French-style secularism (laicité) and its confrontation with Islam. As a respected French scholar of the modern Muslim world, Olivier Roy has clearly grown tired of the uninformed polemics of those he wryly dubs the “Islamologists of court, academy or cocktail party”. In a work of sustained deconstruction, he takes apart the myths, clichés and prejudices which characterise the current conversation about Islam.

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His central contention is that “[the] problem is not Islam but religion or, rather, the contemporary forms of the revival of religion.” For the past 20 years or so, the notion that religion should be a purely private affair has been challenged by a new breed of charismatic (often born-again) Christians, Jews, Muslims and others. The new believers are often individualistic, rejecting conformity with either orthodox theology or institutionalised religion. The secular European state, where mainstream religion is in decline, is uncomfortable with this new, assertive and unconventional religiosity.

I have to read this book first, but isn't it a relief to suddenly find out that the problem is not Islam after all!!!! D'OH!