Interpreting the Arab Spring.

• Author: DeAtkine, Norvell B.

Interpreting the Arab Spring

by Olivier Roy, European University Institute

Text: http://www.brookings.edu/[Tilde]/media/Files/events/2011/1213_raymond_aron/20111213_arab_spring.pdf

Famed scholar of Islamic studies, Olivier Roy, who painted a bleak outlook for the governance of political Islam in his widely acclaimed book The Failure of Political Islam, foresees a much more positive future for the results of the "Arab Spring." In a speech given at the Brookings Institution he posits the consequences of the Arab Spring as "irreversible." While observing that what happened is a revolution, he acknowledges that the revolutionaries were not put in power but rather an old, more conservative and traditional leadership. He also admits the gains of the Islamists in the political realm.

Here the reader has to understand that in Roy's definition, political Islam and Islamism are not interchangeable, a distinction many other scholars do not make. Roy goes further in stating that Islamism can be reconciled with democracy. He sees this as a result of "deep" social, cultural, and religious changes taking place in the Middle East. Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, must recast their ideology in terms of the "centrality"...