NOTES TO PAGES 11–14
- The Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was taken to task in the appendix to
a recent report by scholars of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of South
Denmark for not receiving a delegation that in October 2005 had requested an audition to protest
‘‘discriminatory tendencies’’ and ‘‘the abuse of Islam in the name of democracy, freedom of expres-
sion, and human rights.’’ This blockage of dialogue, the researchers conclude, constituted ‘‘the real
offense’’ in the whole affair, that is to say, ‘‘not the fact that the Prophet was insulted, but the fact
that the insult was not recognized as such’’ (seeLe Monde, June 6, 2006). A comment by scholars,
made in a personal communication in Copenhagen in June 2006, was as simple as it was insightful:
what the whole affair taught us, they said, was ‘‘there is no longer a local public sphere.’’
- Olivier Roy, ‘‘The Ideology of Terror.’’ See also Roy’s ‘‘La Communaute ́virtuelle: L’Inter-
net et la de ́territorialisation de l’islam,’’ inRe ́seaux(Paris: CENT/Hermes Science Publications,
2000).
- See Roy,Globalized Islam, 42 ff. There is an element of autocritique in this comment, if
we see it against the background of Roy’s pre-9/11 statement that ‘‘aside from the Iranian revolu-
tion, Islamism has not significantly altered the political landscape of the Middle East. Political Islam
does not pass the test of power. In the early 1990s the regimes of 1980 are still in place, and the
Gulf War has established American hegemony. A strange Islamic threat indeed, which waged war
only against other Muslims (Iran/Iraq) or against the Soviets (Afghanistan) and caused less terrorist
damage than the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Red Brigade, the Irish Republican Army, and the Basque
separatist ETA, whose small-group actions have been features of the European political landscape
longer than hizbullahs and other jihad movements’’ (The Failure of Political Islam, ix). For a discus-
sion of the cultural representation of the RAF, see Thomas Elsaesser, ‘‘Antigone Agonistes: Urban
Guerilla or Guerilla Urbanism? The RAF, Germany in Autumn and Death Game,’’ inGiving
Ground: The Politics of Propinquity, ed. Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin (London: Verso, 1999).
- Roy,Globalized Islam, 43.
- Ibid. Mutatis mutandis, this might hold true for changes in the balance of power within
the Middle East itself, where an almost cynical calculation seems to hold sway over ideologico-
religious considerations. See Olivier Roy, ‘‘L’Iran fait monter les encheres: La Strate ́gie de tension que Te ́he ́ran organise hors de ses frontieres inquie`te ses voisins arabes,’’Le Monde, July 21, 2006.
- Roy,The Failure of Political Islam, ix.
- Ibid., x.
- Ibid., xi.
- Ibid.
34.The Economist, June 24, 2006.
- Marcel Gauchet,Le De ́senchantement du monde: Une Histoire politique de la religion(Paris:
Gallimard, 1985);The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, trans. Oscar
Burge, with a Foreword by Charles Taylor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
- Ibid., 44. See also Faisal Devji,Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
- Roy,Globalized Islam, 49.
- Ibid., 50.
- Oliver Roy, ‘‘Get French or Die Trying,’’The New York Times, November 9, 2005.
- David Brooks, ‘‘Gangsta, in French,’’The New York Times, November 10, 2005.
- SeeThe New York Times, January 30, 2006, and the ‘‘BondyBlog,’’ to be found at www
.hebdo.ch/indexBlogs.cfm and the corresponding volume edited byL’Hebdo, together with Serge
Michel,Bondy Blog: Des journalistes suisses dans le 9–3(Paris: Seuil, 2006). The wordblogcomes
from ‘‘weblog,’’ then the pun ‘‘we blog.’’ On the ‘‘New Social Critique’’ and ‘‘La Re ́publique des
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