ABSTRACT
Damocles lived in Greece under a despotic king, Dionysius, who was his best friend. Indeed, the tyrant’s wealth only surpassed his cruelty. Today, different swords are over our heads but we do not have someone with whom we may exchange places. Today, a minority of individuals feel that to be Muslim allows one to fly planes against buildings, kill children on their first day of school, blow themselves up among innocent people at a tube station and call it jihad. Every morning, millions of us wake up waiting for the next suicide bomber, war, extradition, kidnapping, Guantanamo bay, Abu Ghraib torture, shoot-to-kill policies, unjustified arrests, Islamophobic attitudes and terrorist threats. The jihads that are inflaming our cities and countries are beyond Islam but part of one of the many ‘circles of panic’ into which people are sucked. The question is whether we will be able to avoid the fate of Damocles.
