The Post Islamist Generation

In this very interesting New Statesman article, religious scholar Olivier Roy explains how developments within Islam underlie the changed relationship between politics and religion we have seen in the recent Arab protests:

If Arab societies are more visibly Islamic than they were 30 or 40 years ago, what explains the absence of Islamic slogans from the current demonstrations? The paradox of Islamisation is that it has largely depoliticised Islam. Social and cultural re-Islamisation - the wearing of the hijab and niqab, an increase in the number of mosques, the proliferation of preachers and Muslim television channels - has happened without the intervention of militant Islamists and has in fact opened up a "religious market", over which no one enjoys a monopoly. In short, the Islamists have lost the stranglehold on religious expression in the public sphere that they enjoyed in the 1980s. . . .

The "Salafist" movement emphasises the re-Islamisation of individuals rather than the development of social movements. What has been perceived in the west as a great, green wave of re-Islamisation is in fact nothing but a trivialisation of Islam: everything has become Islamic, from fast food to women's fashion. The forms and structures of piety, however, have become individualised, so now one constructs one's own faith, seeking out the preacher who speaks of self-realisation, such as the Egyptian Amr Khaled, and abandoning all interest in the utopia of an Islamic state. The Salafists concentrate on the preservation of religious values and have no political programme. Moreover, other religious currents until now regarded as being in decline, such as Sufism, are flourishing once more.