Name Olivier Roy | Role Professor | |
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Education Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales Books Globalized Islam, The Failure of Political Islam, Holy Ignorance: When Rel, Secularism Confronts Islam, The new Central Asia Similar People Gilles Kepel, Farhad Khosrokhavar, Antoine Sfeir, Mariam Abou Zahab, Francois Burgat | ||
Olivier Roy (born 1949 in La Rochelle) is a French professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Olivier Roy has published articles and books on secularisation and Islam including "Global Islam" and is known to have "a different view of radical Islam" than many other experts. After the Charlie Hebdo shooting he stated that most French Muslims were committed to prevent violence. Also in 2015, following the November 2015 Paris attacks, the The New York Times published an analysis provided by Olivier Roy.
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Education
Roy received an "Agregation" in Philosophy and a Master's in Persian language and civilization in 1972 from the French Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. In 1996, he received his PhD in Political Science from the IEP.
Career
He was previously a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a lecturer for both the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (IEP).
From 1984 to 2008, he consulted with the French Foreign Ministry. In 1988, Roy served as a United Nations Office for Coordinating Relief in Afghanistan (UNOCA) consultant. Beginning in August 1993, Roy served as special Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) representative to Tajikistan until February 1994, at which time he was selected as head of the OSCE mission to Tajikistan, a position he held until October 1994.
Roy is the author of books on Iran, Islam and Asian politics. These works include Globalized Islam: The search for a new ummah, Today's Turkey: A European State? and The Illusions of September 11. He also serves on the editorial board of the academic journal Central Asian Survey.
His best-known book, L'Echec de l'Islam politique (1992) (The Failure of Political Islam) (1994), is a standard text for students of political Islam.
Roy wrote widely on the 2005 civil unrest in France, rebutting the suggestion that the violence was religiously inspired.
His book Secularism Confronts Islam (Columbia, 2007) offers a perspective on the place of Islam in secular society and looks at the diverse experiences of Muslim immigrants in the West. Roy examines how Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live in a secularized world while maintaining the identity of a "true believer."
In 2010 he published "Holy Ignorance, When Religion and Culture Part Ways" an analysis of religion, ethnicity and culture and the results when these part ways.