September 8, 2002

On September 11, 2001, I was scheduled to give a lecture at the University of Arizona entitled, “Freedom and multiculturalism in Islamic philosophy”. That morning, I was woken up by a phone call from the assistant director of the Centre for Middle East Studies, where I was invited to speak, asking me whether I had a television. In my bleary half-conscious state, I thought she wanted to know whether I needed audiovisual aids for my lecture that afternoon, but I was soon rudely awakened from my academic slumber by the spectacle of the smoking towers.

Needless to say, the lecture was postponed for a few days, as an entire continent seemed dazed and confused by the fateful hijackings that occurred on that day. For some time afterwards, there seemed to be little room for anything but platitudes and jingoism, much less for a lecture on the democratic values inherent in the Islamic philosophical tradition.

“September 11”, or simply “the eleventh”, has become a metonymic way of referring to an entire mindset, to the loss of innocence that allegedly befell the United States as a result of the attacks that took place on that day. In the US, it is conceptualized as a day that splits the history of humanity into two eras, like Adam and Eve’s fall from paradise. Just as there is supposed to be a moral chasm between the pre- and post-lapsarian phases of history, here also the moral history of humanity has been divided in two.

After September 11, the world has come to be viewed in a strictly Manichean mode, where terror is identified with the forces of evil and anti-terror with the forces of good. Anyone who does not see the world in this way is dismissed with the withering phrase: “so September 10”.

Much can be said about what did and did not change as a result of September 11, both in the United States and the world. Though I am not of the Manichean persuasion, and do not date everything from that fateful day, it has become such a prevalent worldview, that one cannot but address it.

Strictly speaking, September 11 had little to do with Palestine. But ironically, the protagonists on both sides are adamant to show that it did — and they have largely succeeded in forging the link. Osama bin Laden is keen to associate the destruction of the Twin Towers with the liberation of Palestine, intimating to his supporters that the operation takes them another step closer to Jerusalem. And the US administration, egged on by the Israeli government, is bent on equating the attackers of 9/11 with the Palestinian suicide bombers who have been mounting a campaign against Israeli society.

Both are wrong. The motives and aspirations of those who engaged in these activities are quite different. The Bin Ladenites were raised largely in the oil-rich Gulf states, which are completely dependent on US power and patronage. As Rousseau argued in his Discourse on inequality, extreme dependency breeds contempt. This contempt, along with the resentment over the division of their corrupt societies into two main classes, princes and commoners, makes their youth particularly susceptible to an ideology that combines a particular interpretation of Islam with a xenophobic fascism. The injustices in Palestine add fuel to the fire, to be sure, but they are not the main issue.

The Palestinian bombers have different biographies and a different cause. Having grown up literally under the bayonets of an occupying army, they are trying desperately to bring the cost of occupation home to their oppressors. They have seen their elder brothers killed and incarcerated, their mothers shoved to the ground, and their fathers summarily dismissed from their menial jobs in Israel. Their utter desperation causes them, time and again and with increasing frequency, to detonate themselves, killing as many people as they can find from the other side. Moreover, their ideologies do not bear more than a passing resemblance to that of Osama bin Laden and his entourage.

Both are using cruel and unusual methods to get their points across, but their points are quite different. Do the bin Ladenites have a legitimate grievance? The US certainly supports repressive autocratic regimes in the Gulf, and it throws its military weight around the area in a heavy-handed manner, not least in the form of numerous military bases. Should the US cease these activities? Certainly. Would this stop the bin Ladenites? Maybe not, but it would give them less of a leg to stand on.

What about the radical Palestinian factions? Here, the case is somewhat more pressing. Palestine has been denied independence for decades and Israeli governments of all stripes have refused to give the Palestinian people a semblance of freedom and sovereignty. The repression that they are reacting against is far deadlier and has a greater impact on the lives of an entire people. A negotiated peace may not satisfy all the extremists in the Palestinian camp, but it would leave them marginalized and largely ineffective.

Governments sow terror too. When an Israeli air force pilot deliberately levels a city block in pursuit of one man, and this is done at the express orders of his government, he is practising state terror. Similarly, when Israeli soldiers are under orders to shoot unarmed protesters even when they are not being threatened, they are terrorizing a civilian population.

In this case, one cannot put the actions down to the machinations of the marginal fringe. It is terrorism as a matter of state policy carried out in the name of an entire society. The only way to stop it is by getting the Israeli government to engage in meaningful negotiations with the representatives of the Palestinian people (not representatives of its own choosing).

Terrorism is the wanton and deliberate killing of civilians in the service of a political goal. But terrorism is not a “natural kind”: it does not group together actions that share an essential trait. Though the effects are similar, the causes are different. In each case, terrorism results from different objective conditions and can be stopped or curtailed using different means. As a category, “terrorism” is more like “fever” than “tuberculosis”. That is why it is senseless to wage a war against it, just as it would be folly to look for a “cure for fever”. A physician claiming to be on a mission to combat fever is likely to be a charlatan. The same goes for a superpower that claims to be waging a “war against terrorism.”

What is the alternative? Simply addressing the causes in each case separately and by different means. “Appeasement”, cry the self-styled experts on terror, and “reward for terror”, goes the tired refrain. Hardly. These are moral issues that should be addressed anyway, and terror is merely a sign that things have got out of hand. You are not rewarding terror by pulling the rug out from under it.

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