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Olivier Roy (born 1949 inLa Rochelle) is a French political scientist, professor at theEuropean University Institute inFlorence,Italy.[1][2] He has published articles and books onsecularisation[3] and Islam[4] including "Global Islam",[5] andThe Failure of Political Islam. He is known to have "a different view of radical Islam" than some other experts, seeing it as peripheral, Westernized and part of a radicalized and "virtual" rather than pious and "actual" Muslim community.[6] More recently he has written on theCharlie Hebdo shooting,[7] and theNovember 2015 Paris attacks.[8]
Roy was born in 1949 in La Rochelle.[9]Roy received anagrégation inphilosophy and a master's degree inPersian language and civilization in 1972 from the FrenchInstitut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. In 1973 he worked as high school teacher. In the 1970s he was active in theMaoist movement "LaGauche prolétarienne" (Proletarian Left).[10] In 1996, he received his PhD inpolitical science from the IEP.
Roy was previously a research director at theFrench National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a lecturer for both the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and theInstitut d'Études Politiques de Paris (IEP). From 1984 to 2008, he was a consultant for theFrench Foreign Ministry. In 1988, Roy served as aUnited Nations Office for Coordinating Relief in Afghanistan (UNOCA) consultant. Beginning in August 1993, Roy served as specialOrganization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) representative toTajikistan until February 1994, at which time he was selected as head of the OSCE mission to Tajikistan, a position he held until October 1994.[11]
Roy is the author of books on Iran, Islam and Asian politics. These works includeGlobalized Islam: The search for a new ummah,Today's Turkey: A European State? andThe Illusions of September 11. He also serves on the editorial board of the academic journalCentral Asian Survey.His best-known book,L'Echec de l'Islam politique (1992) (The Failure of Political Islam) (1994), is a standard text for students ofpolitical Islam. Roy wrote widely on the2005 civil unrest in France, rebutting the suggestion that the violence was religiously inspired. He argues that Islamism is merely the rubric under which troubled youth enact their violent inclinations.[12] A view adamantly opposed by Roy's intellectual rival,Gilles Kepel.[12]
According toJudith Miller, in the wake of theSeptember 11 attacks Olivier argued that militantIslamism of the type represented byAl Qaeda had peaked and was fading into insignificance.[13]
Roy's bookSecularism Confronts Islam (Columbia, 2007) offers a perspective on the place of Islam in secular society and looks at the diverse experiences of Muslim immigrants in the West. Roy examines how Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live in a secularized world while maintaining the identity of a "true believer." In 2010 he publishedHoly Ignorance, When Religion and Culture Part Ways, an analysis of religion, ethnicity and culture and the results when these part ways.
After theCharlie Hebdo shooting he argued that most French Muslims were committed to prevent violence,[14] and after theNovember 2015 Paris attacks, he wrote a strategic analysis of ISIS and the fight against it, published inThe New York Times.[8]
In 2017, Roy's assertion that jihadi terrorism is only loosely connected to Islamic fundamentalism was criticised by French scholarGilles Kepel, who said that Roy neither speaks Arabic nor looks into the Salafi doctrine behind the jihadism.[15] Roy has said "I have been accused of disregarding the link between terrorist violence and the religious radicalisation of Islam through Salafism, the ultra-conservative interpretation of the faith. I am fully aware of all of these dimensions; I am simply saying that they are inadequate to account for the phenomena we study, because no causal link can be found on the basis of the empirical data we have available."[16]
