Jihad and death

'Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State' by Olivier Roy, translated by Cynthia Schoch (Hurst, 130 pages, £16)

After every jihadi attack in the West, fevered media debate centers on familiar questions. Who are these people? What is their relation to ISIS? How to stop them? Why do "they" hate "us"?

French sociologist Olivier Roy is one of the rare sane voices in these discussions. A professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Roy has long argued that we're seeing an "Islamization of radicalism," not the "radicalization of Islam." Jihadi terrorist violence that has unfolded in the past 20 years or so has little precedence in the history of the Muslim world. Roy's latest, "Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State," argues that a kind of "generational revolt" lies behind this phenomenon. It is a slim but stimulating book, though not without flaws and not without drawing some questionable conclusions.

Roy bases his analysis on police reports, journalistic investigations, and testimonials from militants, family members and their peers. The typical radical profile that emerges is vivid. They are generally "a young, second-generation immigrant or convert, very often involved in episodes of petty crime, with practically no religious education," Roy writes. They have a "rapid and recent trajectory of conversion/reconversion, more often in the framework of a group of friends or over the internet than in the context of a mosque; the embrace of religion is rarely kept secret, but rather is exhibited, but it does not necessarily correspond to immersion in religious practice." Generally their religious fervor "arises outside community structures, belatedly, fairly suddenly, and not long before they move into...