ABSTRACT
As we now know from Atta’s testament and from Bin Laden himself, the suicidal murderers who made living bombs of civil aircraft, directing them against the capitalist citadels of Western civilization, were motivated by religious beliefs. For them, the symbols of globalized modernity are an embodiment of the Great Satan. And we, too, the universal eyewitnesses of the “apocalyptic” events, were assailed by biblical images as we watched television repeat again and again, in a kind of masochistic attitude, the images of the crumbling Manhattan Twin Towers. And the language of retaliation-which the President of the United States was not the only one to resort to in response to the unbelievable-had an Old Testament ring to it. As if the blind fundamentalist attack had struck a religious chord in the very heart of secular society, synagogues, churches, and mosques everywhere began to fill. The hidden correspondence,
however, failed to induce the civil-religious mourning congregation, gathering in the New York Stadium a week later, to assume a symmetrical attitude of hatred. For all its patriotism, not a single voice was heard calling for a warlike extension of national criminal law.1
