Olivier Roy: The Tunisian Revolt: Where Have All the Islamists Gone?
[Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, is the author of “Holy Ignorance” and “The Failure of Political Islam.”]
The novel characteristic of the first peaceful popular revolution to topple a dictatorship in the Arab world is that there is nothing Islamic about it.
The young Tunisian street peddler who triggered the revolt by publicly burning himself reminds us of the Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 or of Jan Palach in Czechoslovakia in 1969 – an act of precisely the opposite nature from the suicide bombings that are the trademark of present Islamic terrorism.
Even in this sacrificial act, there has been nothing religious: no green or black turban, no loose white gown, no “Allah Akbar,” no call to jihad. It was instead an individual, desperate, and absolute protest, without a word on paradise and salvation.
Suicide in this case was the last act of freedom aimed at shaming the dictator and prodding the public to react. It was a call to life, not death....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
The novel characteristic of the first peaceful popular revolution to topple a dictatorship in the Arab world is that there is nothing Islamic about it.
The young Tunisian street peddler who triggered the revolt by publicly burning himself reminds us of the Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 or of Jan Palach in Czechoslovakia in 1969 – an act of precisely the opposite nature from the suicide bombings that are the trademark of present Islamic terrorism.
Even in this sacrificial act, there has been nothing religious: no green or black turban, no loose white gown, no “Allah Akbar,” no call to jihad. It was instead an individual, desperate, and absolute protest, without a word on paradise and salvation.
Suicide in this case was the last act of freedom aimed at shaming the dictator and prodding the public to react. It was a call to life, not death....