Friday, March 9, 2007

9/11 and Baudrillard continued

In answer to Josh's post about Jean Baudrillard and September 11: I haven't read Baudrillard's relevant work, but from Josh's description count me among the troubled disputers of his governing theory -- "that 9/11 had nothing to do with a clash of civilizations or religions." Josh writes:

Instead, he insisted, the terrorists were striking a blow against globalization: The World Trade Center was a symbol, around the world, not of America and its freedoms, but of capitalism triumphant, he claimed; the twin towers were a symbol, at a deeper level, of the perceived lack of alternatives, the closing off of even the possibility of imagining any non-neoliberal modes of organizing the world's societies and economies.

But that would be a strange point of complaint coming from the September 11 hijackers and, by extension, Osama Bin Laden. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers, and of course Bin Laden himself, came from Saudi Arabia. And, according to the US State Department:

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy without elected representative institutions or political parties.... The Basic Law sets out the system of government, rights of citizens, and powers and duties of the State. The Basic Law provides that the Islamic holy book the Koran and the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad are the country's Constitution. As custodian of Islam's two holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, the Government bases its legitimacy on governance according to Islamic law.

Two other hijackers were from the UAE, which has no political parties and which is ruled by those holding power on the basis of their dynastic position.

In other words, these guys were hardly under great threat of capitalist-democratic steamrolling. Sure, they probably viewed globalization with a great wariness, since it's a word that means in essence a creeping dominance of the West and in fact of the US and its philosophies. But I still think the attack was carried out, if we can name one reason, because of what we do and do not value, which implies a clash of civilizations, in the well-worn phrase. If they were unhappy with the spread of our politics, it is because those politics involve a separation of church and state, and a church they reject besides. They wanted religious government, and they wanted our crass, commerce-worshiping secularism defeated.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 09:36 AM

Print | E-mail to a friend | Permalink | Subscribe via rss