PDF God's Playground: A History of Poland; Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795 by Norman Davies in History

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The denunciation of fundamentalism in France; embodied in the law against the veil and the deportation of imams; has shifted into a systematic attack on all Muslims and Islam. This hostility is rooted in the belief that Islam cannot be integrated into French—and; consequently; secular and liberal-society. However; as Olivier Roy makes clear in this book; Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live concretely in a secularized world while maintaining the identity of a "true believer." They have formulated a language that recognizes two spaces: that of religion and that of secular society.Western society is unable to recognize this process; Roy argues; because of a cultural bias that assumes religious practice is embedded within a specific; traditional culture that must be either erased entirely or forced to coexist in a neutral; multicultural space. Instead; Roy shows that new forms of religiosity; such as Islamic fundamentalism and Christian evangelicalism; have come to thrive in post-traditional; secular contexts precisely because they remain detached from any cultural background. In recognizing this; Roy recasts the debate concerning Islam and democracy. Analyzing the French case in particular; in which the tension between Islam and the conception of Western secularism is exacerbated; Roy makes important distinctions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims; hegemony and tolerance; and the role of the umma and the sharia in Muslim religious life. He pits Muslim religious revivalism against similar movements in the West; such as evangelical Protestantism and Jehovah's Witnesses; and refutes the myth of a single "Muslim community" by detailing different groups and their inability to overcome their differences. Roy's rare portrait of the realities of immigrant Muslim life offers a necessary alternative to the popular specter of an "Islamic threat." Supporting his arguments with his extensive research on Islamic history; sociology; and politics; Roy brilliantly demonstrates the limits of our understanding of contemporary Islamic religious practice in the West and the role of Islam as a screen onto which Western societies project their own identity crisis.