ABSTRACT
The cult of a certain period of time is always transitory, meaning that there will constantly be a discrepancy between modernity and its definition. Benjamin puts the paradox: “when modernity sees its rights recognized, its time has passed. Lerner, defending himself for being ethnocentric, postulates that the model of Western modernisation is global and unquestionable. Thus, “what the West is, the Middle East wants to become”: an industrial, urban, literacised/alphabetised and participative society. Jihad is promoted by what we have called “proto-Islam” and “neo-conservatism” involved in a postmodern context. The evaluation of the use of violence in the combat for faith depends upon the ends that are served.
