Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways (Columbia/Hurst) - Hardcover

Roy, Olivier

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231701268 ISBN 13: 9780231701266

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Olivier Roy, one of the world's most distinguished analysts of political Islam, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and sociocultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture.

The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to such fundamentalist faiths as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or "deculturate" through "purification" rituals, such as speaking in tongues, which allows believers to utter a language entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, Roy argues we are witnessing the individualization of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. This has placed culturally integrated religions, such as Catholicism and eastern orthodox Christianity, on the defensive, and presents new challenges to state and society. Roy explores the options available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups, and he considers whether marginalization or homogenization will further divide believers from their culture.

About this title

About the Author

Olivier Roy is professor of social and political theory at the European University Institute in Florence. His books with Columbia University Press are Secularism Confronts Islam, Globalized Islam, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, The Search for a New Ummah, and, with Mariam Abou Zahab, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection.

Review

An important book fit for a wide audience, and Olivier Roy's erudition is simply flabbergasting.

(Nicholas Guilhot, author of The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order)

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0231701268
• ISBN 13: 9780231701266
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288