olivier roy | Pandaemonium

TALKING ABOUT RADICALIZATION

April 20, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I took part last month in a discussion about ‘Contemporary Understandings of Radicalization’ at King’s College, London. Organised by the King’s College War Studies Society and the Remote Control Project, the other speakers were Shiraz Maher and Claire Lauterbach of Privacy International. Here is my introduction. One of the problems with discussing the concept of radicalization is that it can mean all things to all people. In one sense it simply means ‘the process by which terrorists become terrorists’. But, radicalization, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: islam, islamism, jihadism, left, muslims, olivier roy, radicalization

THE FOURTH WAVE OF EUROPEAN JIHADIS

April 3, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Rik Coolsaet, Professor of International Relations at Ghent University and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, has just published an important and insightful paper on Belgian jihadis. It provides a comprehensive overview of jihadi scene in Belgium and, in doing so, challenges many of the myths about radicalization that I mentioned in my recent New York Times article. It is worth looking at Coolsaet’s argument in detail. Today’s European jihadis comprise, Coolsaet argues, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, War on terror • Tags: europe, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, marc sageman, olivier roy, radicalization, rik coolsaet, terrorism

OLIVIER ROY ON EUROPEAN JIHADIS

December 10, 2015 by Kenan Malik

There are few academics who possess a more nuanced and cogent understanding of contemporary Islamism, jihadism and radicalization than the French sociologist Olivier Roy. Here are extracts from a lecture he gave last month at a conference organised by the Bundeskriminalamt (German federal police) on ‘International terrorism: How can prevention and repression keep pace?’ Roy’s lecture – which can be downloaded in full, together with all the other presentations, from the conference website – was entitled ‘What is the driving […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: europe, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, olivier roy

REASONING ABOUT TERROR

May 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, has stirred up controversy with his claim, on Iran’s Press TV, that behind the Boston bombings lay anger about Western foreign policy and its attitudes to Islam: There was such ignorance in the Bush White House about Islam and about the history of so many disputes that exist in the Middle East. People get angry. They lash out. It’s the whole squalid intervention that has disfigured the record of the Western democracies. I […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: chechnya, islam, islamism, olivier roy, terrorism, usa, war on terror

BEYOND THE SACRED

January 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk called ‘Beyond the sacred’, on the changing character of ideas of the sacred and of blasphemy, at a conference on blasphemy organised this weekend by the Centre for Inquiry at London’s Conway Hall on Saturday. Here is a transcript. To talk about blasphemy is also to talk about the idea of the sacred. To see something as blasphemous is to see it in some way as violating a sacred space. In recent years, both the notion […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: behzti, blasphemy, charles taylor, free speech, identity politics, islamism, jesus and mo, kolokowski, liberties, muslims, olivier roy, religion, rushdie affair, sacred, salman rushdie, ziauddin sardar

NO GOING BACK. THE ARAB REVOLTS AND THE REMAKING OF THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

February 21, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The brutal, blood-soaked response of Arab rulers, especially those in Bahrain and Libya, to the revolts engulfing their nations exposes the desperation of old tyrants clinging to the past. But the revolts themselves reveal the extent to which the Arab political landscape has irrevocably changed. The ‘strong man’ model of rule that has held sway over much of the Arab world for the past half century has rested primarily on two props: the ability to constrain opposition at home, and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab world, democracy, egypt, islamism, james baldwin, muslims, nasser, olivier roy, palestine, protests, regime change, usa, western policy