9th September 2004:
The problem is that there is no such thing as global terrorism. Terrorism occurs on a global scale – that much is evident, and has been the case since at least the turn of the last century – but the misnomer “Global Terrorism”, a rent-a-concept to subsume all aspects of supranational violence, hinders effective understanding of the phenomena as it simultaneously perpetuates the myth of the all-powerful Osama, a myth that leads us blindly down the dead end of New World imperialism and Old-World isolationist ideology.
So, was Jakarta this morning an Event of Global Terrorism? Hardly. Neither does it suffice to ground violence – Jakarta, Beslan, Talafar – in political chicanery.
The anti-modernist strain that has most trenchantly embedded itself within Islam must be understood as a response to the differentiation of the modern, and this violence as a challenge to the separation of Church and State.
