Past Events
Radical Islam and Arab Nationalism
| Location: | OSI-New York |
| Event Date: | April 2, 2003 |
| Speaker: | Olivier Roy, Ph.D. |
Olivier Roy, a senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a consultant with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discussed how Islamic terrorist groups, in particular al Qaeda, are driven more by pan-Islamic nationalism than by religious fervor. In formulating their response to the September 11 attacks, U.S. officials have underestimated the depth of nationalist sentiment in the Middle East, thus potentially increasing the difficulty of containing the terrorist threat, Roy said.
