Opinion: Modernity And Progess Will Triumph in the End

Time, as the ancient Romans put it, is the master of everything. It puts things in their place. For many politicians, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, are considered a "historical caesura." They speak of a "change in the course of time." Or it was the "day that changed the world."

Indeed, the murder of thousands of innocent people in New York captured on the world's television screens has dramatically affected the emotions of the American population. The United States is at war, and that is what George W. Bush always repeats whenever he demands more money for the Department of Defense or infringes on Americans' civil liberties.

More than ever before, the US has taken on an active role in shaping the so-called Muslim world. American troops drove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan from power. After all, it was the Islamists in Kabul who had provided shelter to al-Qaeda to plan and prepare the 9/11 attacks. Now, Washington and its Western allies, including Germany, are helping the Afghans rebuild their country. At the same time, the Bush administration tries to propagate democracy in other Muslim countries.

It is exactly this push that many Muslims perceive as aggression. They distrust Western democracies and their way of life. In their eyes, the secularism of the West is blasphemy.

Muslims are enduring more suffering than "infidels"

In addition, the US is an ally of the Muslim world's arch enemy, Israel. Therefore, Americans encounter rejection, antipathy, and occasionally hatred, in most parts of the Muslim world. Whenever someone like Osama bin Laden declares war on America, he can count on the sympathies of many Muslims.

The top terrorist's attacks five years ago set a wheel of violence in motion that seems to be spinning faster and faster, reaching almost every continent on earth. The terror feeds on itself, and it is not only directed against the so-called "infidels," Christians and Jews. For the most part, 90 percent of terror victims are Muslims, primarily in Iraq. Sunnis battle against Shiites, radical against moderate Muslims.

Fanaticism loses to progress

It seems then even more incomprehensible, that in Arab states the numbers of those who approve of mass murderers are increasing. They are crowned with an aura of martyrdom for their acts.Good and evil, as categories, are dissipating. Fanaticism and irrationality go hand in hand.

The origins of such developments can be found in the 1990s. The choice of words in bin Laden's 1998 declaration of war against, what he called the "alliance of Zionist crusaders," speaks volumes. Apparently, he is only able to apply a simplified, template-like understanding to the world. The complicated processes accompanying globalization seem to demand too much from him as well as his supporters.

It is entirely possible that the terrorist attacks on September 11 will go down in history books as a revolt against modernity, as an attempt to pulverize the values of the civilized world with airplanes. Yet this experiment is doomed to fail. And not because the US is a powerful country that is able to defend itself. No, but rather because history has shown that in the end, progress prevails, modernity wins.

History also teaches something else. Whoever denies the core of humanness, fails. That was true for East-block communism as well as for Nazism. And it is also true for all other totalitarian ideologies and regimes, including Islamism.

Osama bin Laden may be hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border region, while his diffuse ideas and conspiracy theories are being spread throughout the virtual world. In the war against terror and backwardness, the civilized world will have to undergo an extreme test of endurance.

Miodrag Soric is editor-in-chief for DW-RADIO's foreign languages. (jdk)