Globalized Islam or Best Laid Plans

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Author: Olivier Roy

The spread of Islam around the globe has blurred the connection between a religion, a specific society, and a territory. One-third of the world's Muslims now live as members of a minority. At the heart of this development is, on the one hand, the voluntary settlement of Muslims in Western societies and, on the other, the pervasiveness and influence of Western cultural models and social norms. The revival of Islam among Muslim populations in the last twenty years is often wrongly perceived as a backlash against westernization rather than as one of its consequences. Neofundamentalism has been gaining ground among a rootless Muslim youth -- particularly among the second- and third-generation migrants in the West -- and this phenomenon is feeding new forms of radicalism, ranging from support for Al Qaeda to the outright rejection of integration into Western society.

In this brilliant exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernization, Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or "re-Islamization," results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context. A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world -- including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbollah of Lebanon -- and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary ummah, or Muslim community, not embedded in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful, like Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. He shows how neofundamentalism acknowledges without nostalgia the loss of pristine cultures, constructinginstead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. Thus contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is not a single-note reaction against westernization but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalization.

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Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future

Author: Randal OTool

Drawing on 30 years of experience reviewing hundreds of government plans, Randal O'Toole shows that, thanks to government planners, American cities are choked with congestion, major American housing markets have become unaf-fordable, and the cost of government infrastructure is spiraling out of control. The book makes the case for repeal of federal planning laws and closure of gov-ernment planning offices. Every American who worries about the insidious growth of the Nanny State must read this book.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
Forest Planning     7
The Case of the Fake Forests     9
Garbage In, Gospel Out     15
A Process of Natural Selection     23
Analysis Paralysis     33
The Return of Fire Dominance     41
Why Planning Fails     45
Radical Doctrine or Rational Decisionmaking?     47
Human Barriers     57
Planning Is Not Necessary     69
Land-Use Planning     73
Urban Renewal     75
Turning Portland into L.A.     83
How Smart Is "Smart Growth"?     93
Smart Growth as Oppression     105
Homeownership     111
Housing Affordability     117
Housing Bubbles     127
It's Supply, Not Demand     133
Portland Housing     137
Smart Growth and Crime     143
Portland Planning Implodes     149
Why Planners Fail     157
The Planning Profession     159
The History of Planning     167
The Ideal Communist City     171
Urban Renewal in the United States     179
From Radiant City to SmartGrowth     185
Typical Planning Methods     189
Transportation Planning     195
Planning vs. Chaos     197
The Benefits of the Automobile     203
Costs Exaggerated     221
The Panic Over Peak Oil     227
Planning for Congestion     237
Building Auto-Hostile Streets     243
The Rail Transit Hoax     249
Transportation Myths     267
Why Government Fails     279
Power and Rationality     281
Legislators: Seeking Reelection     289
Special Interests: Looking for Handouts     293
Bureaucrats: Maximizing Budgets     297
The Executive: Distracted by Detail     303
Courts and Voters: The Last Lines of Defense     307
Instead of Planning     311
246 Varieties of Cheese     315
Make the Market Work     319
Turn Open-Access Resources into Property     325
Protect Public Goods with Trusts     329
Understand Government's Limits     335
Reforming Public Land Management     339
Reforming Transportation     343
Reforming Land Use     349
The American Dream      353
Notes     357
Index     393