Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah.(Book review)

Middle East Quarterly, June, 2007 by Schwartz, Stephen

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. By Olivier Roy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 364 pp. $18.95, paper.

Since its first publication, Roy's survey of the present crisis in Islam has won much praise. From his position at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, he has managed to account for all the significant trends in today's global Muslim community, or the umma. One need not agree with every detail of Roy's work nor overlook its occasional factual errors and swings toward excessive generalization to recognize its virtue, which is its breadth.

If Roy has a basic weakness, it resides in his affection for the anthropological rather than the politico-economic approach to the challenge of the "new umma."...

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