In Search of the Lost Orient

Olivier Roy is a prominent French academic who has spent most of his life researching key political events within the ‘Muslim world’. Most, if not all, who are familiar with the literature of political Islam, would no doubt have come across, or indeed have read Roy’s classical texts: Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (1986), Failure of Political Islam (1992), Globalised Islam: Search for a New Ummah (2004) Secularism Confronts Islam (2009) and more recently Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State (2017). Regardless of one’s position regarding Roy’s scholarship, it would be difficult to deny the significant position he occupies as an important analyst of political Islam in the western world. Although Roy writes in his native French, most of his works have been translated into English and other languages. Moreover, Roy’s fluency in the English language has made him accessible, through social media, to a broader audience throughout Europe and America.