Editor's Note

The terrible events of 11 September 2024 were widely seen as a watershed in world politics. This was partly because of the sheer numbers killed by the suicidal terrorists who rammed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: some three thousand civilian deaths constituted possibly the largest loss of life in a single attack outside conventional warfare.

But the singularity of 11 September also resides in the fact that the mainland of the United States—the world’s “hyperpower”, as the French term it—had been attacked, devastatingly, by a foreign enemy for the first time since the War of 1812 with the British. The response of America to this assault on the lives of its citizens and the symbols of its commercial and military might soon became clear: a “war on terrorism” that swiftly led to the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and seemed certain to take in new targets, most immediately Iraq. What are the domestic and foreign-policy implications of this US war on terrorism? Does it mark a radical departure in international affairs, or is it merely an emphasis and extension of trends pre-dating 11 September? Did the 11 September attacks confirm widely mooted theories of a fundamental civilisational fissure between Islam and the West? This issue of Global Dialogue addresses these and other questions raised by 11 September.

Our first contribution, by Khaled Abou El Fadl of the UCLA School of Law, tackles head on the claim that 11 September was symptomatic of a clash of civilisations—a notion he rejects as conceptually flawed and politically pernicious. The author also analyses the historical and ideological roots of Osama bin Laden’s “amoral nihilism”, which he sees as residing in “Salafabism”, a conflation of the puritanical Wahhabist and Salafist traditions in Islam.

Following 11 September, Western critics of Islam found a new public receptivity for their charges, chiefly, that Islamic societies are economically backward, undemocratic and aggressively hostile towards non-Islamic nations. M. Shahid Alam of Northeastern University, Boston, considers the evidence for such claims and where the blame lies should they be true.

The impact of 11 September on US foreign policy is examined by Van Coufoudakis of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. He sees the attacks as producing a shift in the policy priorities of the United States, rather than a new era in international politics. A decade after the end of the Cold War, US foreign policy remains in transition, still looking for a unifying theme.

The domestic anti-terrorism measures introduced by the United States after 11 September are criticised by Michael Ratner of the New York–based Center for Constitutional Rights. He argues that legislation such as the USA Patriot Act threatens fundamental legal protections and freedoms without making Americans any safer from terrorism.

Robert Jensen of the University of Texas inquires into the health of US intellectual and political culture after 11 September. He contends that although Americans enjoy extensive formal rights to freedom of speech, the meaningful exercise of such rights is in fact severely circumscribed. Democracy, he fears, is in danger of atrophying in the United States.

The word “terrorism” is notoriously difficult to define. It is also highly dangerous in its political consequences, warns international lawyer John V. Whitbeck, particularly as embodied in America’s “war on terrorism”. A war whose targets are almost exclusively Muslim and which deems criminal nearly all efforts by Muslims to right deeply felt wrongs will inevitably be seen as a “war against Islam”, with potentially catastrophic results.

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda group is patriarchal and misogynistic, as are numerous other extremist organisations around the world. Valentine M. Moghadam of Illinois State University discusses the gender dynamics of political violence and explores some feminist alternatives to terrorism and militarism.

By any reckoning, Afghanistan must be regarded as one of the most unfortunate countries on earth, ravaged by war, ethnic hatred, poverty and hunger. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed of the UK-based Institute for Policy Research and Development reviews the history of superpower intervention that precipitated the Afghan tragedy, and describes US dealings with the Taliban regime.

The fallout from 11 September confronted several of Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours with fraught policy choices that are weighed in the three articles that follow. The response of Iran to the crisis is considered by Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Sajjad-Pour of Tehran’s Institute for Political and International Studies. Kamran Asdar Ali of the University of Texas, Austin, queries whether the drastic policy reversals forced upon Pakistan truly mark a turn away from religious extremism towards secularism and democratic reform. Vijay Prashad of Trinity College, Connecticut, looks at the Kashmir conflict, the flashpoint for tensions between India and Pakistan—now openly nuclear-armed states—that flared anew in the wake of 11 September.

Our discussion of 11 September comes full circle with a concluding examination of the validity of the clash of civilisations thesis. Analysing the attitudes and socio-political circumstances of British Muslims, Tariq Modood of the University of Bristol rejects the notion that Muslims in the West are a culturally alien and subversive force.

Paul Theodoulou
Spring 2002