By Olivier Roy

In this publication, Olivier Roy, Europe's major student of political Islam, argues that the results of the ''war on terror'' have artificially conflated conflicts within the heart East in this type of means that they look like the expression of a common ''Muslim anger'' opposed to the West. yet actually, there are not any us and them. in its place, the West faces an array of ''reverse alliances'' that function in line with their very own common sense and dynamics.

The West helps basic Musharraf in Pakistan, but his army intelligence companies are in league with the Taliban; in Iraq, the U.S. shorelines up a central authority that's heavily associated with its archenemy, Iran; Iraqi Kurds, allies of the americans, provide sanctuary to the PKK, an adversary of a fellow NATO member, Turkey; whereas the Saudis aid the Iraqi Sunnis who're, in flip, struggling with Coalition forces. as though those concerns weren't advanced sufficient, the ever-worsening Shia-Sunni divide now threatens to disrupt any destiny strategic making plans the West may perhaps test within the heart East.

Roy unravels the complexity of those conflicts with a purpose to larger comprehend the political discontent that sustains them. He additionally emphasizes that the conflict on terror shouldn't be seemed in simple terms as a geopolitical blunder dedicated via a perimeter workforce of neoconservatives. it's as a substitute a frustrating outgrowth of our deeply rooted Western perceptions of the center East, together with the assumption that Islam, instead of politics, is the overarching think about those conflicts, hence explaining the West's help for both would-be secular democrats or (more or much less) benign dictators. Roy's end argues that the West has no replacement yet to interact in a discussion with the political forces that actually subject& mdash;namely the Islamo-nationalists of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.