ABSTRACT
The notion of cultural equality has assumed increasing importance in the normative discourse of international relations. Since the end of World War II, the international community has repudiated decisively the older tradition of a racial or ethnic hierarchy, and come to endorse the idea of human and ethnic equality. Indeed, with the rise of East Asian economic power in the 1980s, policy-makers and academia placed particular emphasis on the notion of cultural equality. Nevertheless, the events of 11 September 2001 seem to have stalled this trend, undermining the value of cultural equality and perhaps rendering it impossible because of a supposed civilizational conflict between Western and Islamic cultures.
