ABSTRACT
The twentieth century came to its ending with the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The twenty-first century got to its opening with the downfall of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001. The demolition of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the totalitarian regimes of the previous century (though remnants of them prevail) and inspired hopes for a new century of global freedom and abundance, in which the best aspirations of Western modernity would finally be realized. Francis Fukuyama called it the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992). But a backlash to Western complacency had been already lurking in Riyadh, Kabul, Teheran, and elsewhere in the Muslim world and soon instigated the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington and ushered the “clash of civilizations,” as it was dubbed by Samuel Huntington (Huntington 1998).
