Terror and World System Futures (2001)

Sohail Inayatullah[1]

The events of September 11, 2001 should be seen in global human terms as a crime against humanity and not as a war against anyone. This is not only because those in the WTC come from many nationalities [2] but as well issues of solidarity and efficacy of response move us in that direction.. In this sense, the framework for dealing with terrorism must be from a strengthened World Court (in the context of a reformed United Nations), just as those responsible for Rwanda and Srebrenica have been dealt with (or will be dealt with).[3] That international law has not prevailed in this conflict tells us a great deal of the nature of the world system (it is still strategy and power that define and not the rule of law or higher culture). That he has not done so reinforces the nation-state and moves us away from world law, and, indeed, world peace. Years later we will look back at this costly mistake in dismay – what could have been and the path that was not followed. 

While Bush should be commended for the search for allies in the Islamic world, seeking an indictment within a world court framework would not have only granted increased legitimacy – for a campaign that has been increasingly seen like vengeance, (not to be mention economically motivated), and not justice – but created a precedence for the trial of future terrorists (of cyber, biological, airline and other types). 

The equation that explains terror is: perceived injustice, nationalism/religious-ism (including scientism and patriarchy), plus an asymmetrical world order.  One crucial note: explanation is analytically different from justification. These acts, as all acts of mass violence, can not be justified. 

The perceived injustice part of the equation can be handled by the USA and other OECD nations in positions of world power. This means authentically dealing with Israel/Palestine as well as the endless sanctions against Iraq. Until these grievances are met there can be no way forward.  Concretely this means making Jerusalem an international city, giving the Palestinians a state, and ensuring that there are peace keepers on every block in Israel-Palestine. It means threatening to stop all funding to both parties (the 10$ billion yearly from the USA to Israel, for example, and from Saudi Arabia and others to the Palestinian authority). It means listening to the Other and moving away from strict good/evil essentialisms, as Tony Blair has attempted to do in the Middle-East (or more appropriately South-West Asia).  Dualistic language only reinforces that which it seeks to dispel, continuing the language of the Crusades, with both civilizations not seeing that they mirror each other.  Indeed, at a deeper level, we need to move to a new level of identity. As  Phil Graham of the University of Queensland writes: “We are the Other. We have become alienated from our common humanity, and  the attribute, hope, image, that might save us – is  the “globalisation” of  humanity.”[4] 

However, Bush giving increased legitimacy to Ariel Sharon once again strikes most of the world as hypocritical. While Arafat has already lost any legitimacy he may have had as a leader of the Palestinian people, at least he is not under likely indictment for war crimes committed in Lebanon. For Bush to cozy up to one war criminal and attempt to eliminate others (Mullah Oman and Bin Laden) worsens an already terrible situation. 

MACROHISTORY 

From a macrohistorical and structural perspective, the USA is a capitalist nation with military might buttressing it. Osama Bin Laden and others are capitalists with military strength. Both are globalized, both see the world in terms of us/them, both use ideas for their position (extremists drawing on Islam; American intellectuals using linear development theory). Both are strong male. The USA builds twin towers, evoking male dominating architecture (as argued by Ivana Milojevic and Philip Daffara, of the University of the Sunshine Coast[5]) and the terrorists use the same phallic symbol – the airplane – to bring it down. Boys with toys with terrifying results for us all.  And with over 50% of Americans believing that Arab Americans should have special identity cards and the now defunct Taliban having legislated that hindus where special insignia on their clothes, these chilling similarities return us back to Europe sixty years ago. 

In the terms of spiral dynamics, as developed by Beck and others[6], these are both red forces (passion) fighting each other. The world is desperate for a Blue force, a higher order legal framework, to resolve the violence.  What has occurred however is the elimination of one red force by a combined effort of two other red forces, American and Northern Alliance. While the terrifying actions of the Taliban are paraded in propaganda machines throughout the world – the CNN lie machine – little mention of the Northern Alliance brutalities are trumpeted. Fortunately, there is more to this world than state power, and thus Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have focused on all the parties (but none yet on USA bombing mistakes – such as those costing the hands of Afghani children. Food packets being the same color as cluster bombs can be seen as unfortunate or as paradigmatic. While seeking indictments against US military personnel is going too far, Afghani victims of the war should have the right to legal redress, especially financial compensation. There can be no negotiation on this. Indeed, it is this fear of indictments that keeps the US away from a world court. 

Still at least at the official level, American and Western leaders have called for tolerance, for openness, for respecting Islam and muslims, for seeking terrorists, ie criminals, and not other categories. [7] Indeed, there have been legal cases against USA airlines for not allowing those of south asian and middle eastern ethnicity to board on planes.  This type of legal recourse was certainly not available to Abdul Haq, murdered by the Taliban  in late October.  Not surprisingly,  Osama Bin Laden  called  for a struggle against America and Jews (and now the United Nations), resorting to tired racist and hateful rhetoric, which in the long run will  bring little solace to those suffering – essentially the language and madness of conspiracy theory. Moreover, after the struggle against America and the Jews, who then will it be, the shias (which are already targeted by many Taliban supporters)? And then? Once the politics of exclusion begins, only ever increasing dogmatic futures can result.  Interestingly, far right wing hate groups in the USA have endorsed Osama Bin Laden’s action, arguing that the Federal Government and the world Jewish conspiracy is the problem (and as would be typical in male discourse, saying that while they agree with politics and tactics they would not desire them to marry their daughters and visa versa). 

However, Osama Bin Laden’s demand for rights for Palestinians must be heard. Like a child who is not heard, the shouting gets even louder. Or a body that is sick, getting sicker and sicker, calling attention  to the disease, and even killing the host (meaning the planet itself), unless there is some foundational and transformative change. While the USA and others prefer the chemotherapy and radiation approach to health (thus bombing appears natural, ie the USA exists in epistemological reductionism)  if we are interested in the long term, then perhaps the naturopathic  homeopathic or chiropractic might work much better. Can there be a truth and reconciliation commission?   The shouting is also getting louder as muslims are undergoing a religious renaissance, argues Riaz Hussan of Flinders University, Australia.[8] As they move toward increased religiosity, there is far less interest in extremist political positions, in those who live in the conspiracy discourse. Thus, Osama Bin Laden and other extremists find their pathways cut off, both from within the Islamic world and as well from the globalized multicultural world. Attacking old symbols of imperialism becomes the only way for them to survive. Creating new futures, new economics, new cultural texts, however, is the real challenge. 

What is especially challenging to the USA is that the demands from many muslims, including extremists, is not for money or territory but for the West (and nations claiming to be muslim) to change, to become less materialistic, more understanding of the plight of the poor, and more religious – and to return to their pre-Columbus borders. And, American public opinion appears to share this, with a majority calling for a return to a moral core, away from crass materialism (but not yet from jingoist war).  As Kevin Kelly has written, communism collapsed because the West offered something better. For extremism of the Islamic variety to collapse, more than McDonalds will have to be available.[9] 

The demands of the  West on Islamic nations generally has been the opposite: to become more materialistic, more growth-oriented in terms of the formal economy (but not more people) and more sensate, scientific – to develop.  From a macrohistorical perspective, each distorts what it means to be human by focusing on one dimension, and in extreme forms.  From an individual view, we can see how  those in the periphery develop a love-hate relationship with the center. The terrorists drinking, gambling, cavorting in strip clubs before the 11th of September shows how they  internalized what they struggled against. It also shows how Islam for them was strategic, a text that could be used to justify their own pathological worldview.  

In the long run, the events of September may be viewed as an isolated attack of terrorism, or they may be seen as: (1) events that clearly define who is the world’s hegemon ending the competing (Europe, East Asian, China) nation’s theory – Americanism, for now, and forever; (2) as a renewal of the Islamic world, with extremists, literalists, declining in popularity, and a new vision of Islamic modernity emerging, leading to the beginnings of a global ecumene; (3) a challenge by the poor to the world capitalist system, in effect, continuing the pattern of the decline of Communism, decline of grand religions and the collapse of capitalism. In the sense, as the system collapses, the question only future historians know is: what new forms of power will reign? What will emerge from the chaos?  A world state? 

The second part the equation is a shared responsibility, within the Islamic world especially, but essentially a dialogue of civilizations.  This means opening the gates of ijithad (independent reasoning and a capacity to adapt to change) instead of blind imitation.  And here, the crucial language is a dialogue within religions, between the hard and soft side. Certainly the Taliban argument that Muslims have a duty to fight with them in case of an attack on Afghanistan did not help matters.  The Taliban spent the last decade fighting against Muslims with USA indirect support (creating what is now know as the Afghan Arabs) –  why would anyone desire to support such a state? It is the failure of the modernist statist paradigm and support of tyrannical states by the West that pushes groups in this extreme direction.  Unfortunately, leadership in the Islamic world that can give legitimacy to the softer side has been silenced. As long as these leaders do not stand up and challenge dictatorships, they will indirectly participate in the creation of endless Osama Bin Laden’s. Anwar Ibrahim is the most potent symbol of a global muslim leader who seeks a dialogue within Islam and between Islam and the rest of the world in language and on terms of dignity and global ethics. Unfortunately, he remains falsely imprisoned in Malaysia and is symptomatic of the crisis in the Third World. 

While the hard side has clearly defined the future – every bomb dropped, every moment of bio-terror –  reduces the possibilities, this need not be the case.  There are alternatives.   The hard side (not the US military), to some extent, has become de-legitimized.  For example, even the right wing in the USA cringed when Pat Robertson blamed the terror attacks on God ceasing to provide protection to America because of the rise of  feminism, etc..  And Muslims everywhere, are hopefully, beginning to see that more terror will not work and is morally wrong. The Islamic leaders meeting in Qatar was a step forward. The message must be: the injustices are real but non-violent global civil disobedience (against companies, nations around the world, leaders)  is a far more potent method for long-term transformation. In Pakistan, the elimination of the extreme right wing has given hope the middle-class. The carrot of US$ has allowed Pakistan to move away from the rightist politics of General Zia. 

Unfortunately, the hypocrisy in the West does not help matters, and increases daily. Until the USA shuts down its own terror training camps, as for example, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (Whisc), change is likely to be incremental if at all. Whisc was called the School of Americas and argues George Monblot has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen,” largely involved in death squads against their own people. For example, in Chile its graduates ran Pinochet’s secret police and his three main concentration camps and Human Rights Watch revealed that former pupils … had commissioned kidnappings, disappearances and massacres.”[10]Asks Monblot, provocatively,  should there be bombings of Georgia? Of course not, still double standards do not lead well to civilizational dialogue or world systems transformation. But others nations perhaps should lead the USA by example, showing that hypocrisy does not need to be how the game is played. 

The third part  of the equation really is what the social movements can and must continue, challenging the asymmetrical nature of the world system – the structural violence, the silent emergencies –  and pushing for a new globalization (of ideas, cultures, labor and capital, while protecting local systems that are not racist/sexist/predatory on the weak).  The social movements can through their practice and image of the future, show, and create a global civil society, challenging the twin towers of capital and military.  Real transformation, as in the changes in Eastern Europe, was  pushed through partly through the people’s movements. This process of creating a post-globalization world must continue.  

Resolving the equation of terror then must be both very specific and short term – crimes against humanity  cannot be tolerated – and must transform perceived injustices, the isms, and the structure of the world system, the long term civilizational perspective.  New Internationalist reminds us that on September 11, 2001, 24,000 people died of hunger, 6000 or so children were killed of diarrhea and 2700 or so children died from measles. [11] 

Of course, there are as well bio-psychological hormonal factors (testosterone and chakra imbalance)[12] that may account for the terrorist actions, but they do not always lead to such massive horrendous actions unless there is a historical and structural context.  Thus, terrorist as sociopath is an understandable description but there are deeper levels of analysis. 

SCENARIOS 

What then of the future? What are the likely trajectories? Here are four scenarios for the near and long-term future. These are written – a first draft was written september 20 – to map the future, to understand what is likely ahead, as well to create spaces for transformation.

(1) Back to Normal. After successful surgical strikes against Bin Laden and others, the USA returns to some normalcy. While trauma associated with air travel remains, these are seen as costs associated with a modern lifestyle, ie just as with cancer, heart disease and car accidents. The West continues to ascend, focused on economic renewal through artificial intelligence and emergent bio-technologies. More money, of course, goes to the military and intelligence agencies. The Right reigns throughout the World. Conflicts remain local and silent.  Over time, the world economy prospers once again and poorer nations move up the ranks just as the Pacific Rim nations have. Already the crusader look was presented at Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s design collection and is considered likely to take off.[13] La vie est Belle (but just don’t look like you are from south asia or the middle east or have an Arabic name). 

(2) Fortress USA/OECD. Australia, for example, is already moving in that direction,  with basically a prison lock down ahead, especially to newcomers (who desire to enter the Fantasy island of the Virtual West escaping sanctions and feudal systems) and those who look different.  In the USA this is emerging through tighter visa restrictions and surveillance on foreigners, as well as, citizens. The carrot is of course usa citizenship being offered to informants from troubled spots. Of course, once they gain citizenship, they can spent a life time under surveillance. 

However, the costs for the elites will be very high given globalized world capitalism, and with aging as one the major long term issues for OECD. The Fortress scenario will lead to general impoverishment and the loss of the immigration innovation factor.  In the short run, it will give the appearance of security, but in the longer run, poverty will result, not to mention sham democracies with real power with the right wing aligned with the military/police complex.  Increasing airport security is a must but without root issues being resolved, terror will find other vehicles of expression. After all, fortresses are remembered, in history, for being overrun, not for successful defense against “others.” 

The response from the Islamic world will be a Fortress Islam, closing civilizational doors, becoming even more feudal and mullahist/wahbist, and forcing individuals to choose: are you with us or against us, denying the multiplicity of selves that we are becoming. The economy – oil – will remain linked but other associations will continue to drift away. 

(3) Cowboy War – vengeance forever (with soft and hard fascism emerging). Bush has already evoked the Wild West, and the Wanted – Dead or Alive image, indeed, even calling for a “crusade” against the terrorists. We have seen what that leads to all over the world, and the consequences are too clear for most of us. Endless escalation in war that will look like the USA has won but overtime will only speed up the process of  decline. They will remember the latest round, and the counter-response will be far more terrifying, with new sorts of weapons. In any case, with the USA military, especially the marines  rapidly increasing its percent of its members who are muslim (through conversion and demographic growth rates)[14], cowboy war will start to eat at the inner center. And once state terror begins, (or shall we say continues) there is no end in sight. Bush has already stated the assassination clause does not apply to Bin Laden and others since the USA is acting in self-defense. Cowboy war, again, will work in the short run. Crowds will chant USA, USA, until the next hit. The CIA can get back to business (already 1 billion has been appropriated and Bush has asked Congress to increase the Pentagon budget by 50 billion usa $), and continue to make enemies everywhere. Most likely, this will globally lead to an endless global “Vietnam”, well, in fact, an endless Afghanistan.[15]     

However, there are signs that Bush and others are listening to a tiny portion of their softer side and seeking to focus on the action of terror and not on Islam or any other wider category.[16]  They could use the sympathy from the rest of the world to “eliminate” terrorism (just as piracy in the high-seas was ended earlier) and, hopefully, in the longer run, seek solidarity with all victims of violence. The trauma from the bombing could lead Americans to genuinely understand the traumas other face in their day to day existence, to a shared transcendence, or it could lead to creating even more traumas. We can hope he – and all of us – keeps on listening and learning,  and with the war in Afghanistan over, the soft future may be possible. But if health in Afghanistan and the Islamic world is not resorted, there will be more trauma on the way. For All.  

Thus in this future, there will be no real change to the world system. Once all the   terrorists are caught –  well actually the perpetrators are already dead –  no changes in international politics or international capital will occur,  OECD states simply become stronger, while individuals become more fearful and anxiety prone.  A depression of multiple varieties is likely to occur (economic and psychological).  The depression will likely lead to anti-globalization revolts throughout the world, either leading to states to  bunker themselves in for the long run, or possibly – transform. Most likely, we will see a slow but inevitable movement toward global fascism – the soft hegemony of the carnivore culture (and anti-ecological in terms of land use) of McDonalds’s with the hard side of Stealth bombers.  The West will become a high-tech fortress, using surveillance technology to watch its citizens. Dissent is only allowable in peace times, and since the war against terrorism is for ever, submit or leave! 

However, “Fortress” in the long run may be difficult, as the globalization forces have already been unleashed and the anti-thesis in a variety of forms has emerged (the socialist revolt, decolonization movements, and even, terrorism). “Cowboy war” will likely only exacerbate the deep cleavages in the World Economy (that the richest 350 or so own the same as nearly 3 billion individuals). Indeed, a case can be made that this was Bin Laden preferred scenario. Bush attacks lead to destabilization in the Arab world, with the possibility of a nuclear accident and leading to extremists in Islamic nations rising up against modernists. 

Over time in this scenario, there may be a transition in who plays the central role in the world system, and is among the reasons the attacks have led to global anxiety – world system shifts are not pretty events or processes.  The periphery tends to see its future through the lenses of the Center; if the Center can be bombed, what future is there for the impoverished periphery? 

The deep divide cannot be resolved, however, merely by the “hearts and minds” strategy for this involves making traditionalists modernist, ie from loving land and God to loving money and scientific rationality. Rather, it involves moving from tradition to a transmodernity, which is inclusive of multiple but layered realities (the vertical gaze of ethics), moving toward an integrated planetary system (loving the  planet and moving away from exclusivist identities but transcending historical traumas). But can this transition occur? Can there be a Gaian polity? This is the fourth scenario. 

(4) Gaian Bifurcation. A Gaia of civilizations (each civilization being incomplete in itself and needing the other) plus a system of international justice focused not only on direct injustices but structural and cultural.  This would not only focus on Israel/Palestine (internationalizing the conflict with peace keepers and creating a shared Jerusalem)  as well as ending the endless sanctions in Iraq, but highlighting injustices by third world governments toward their own people (and the list here is endless, Burma,  Malaysia’s Mahathir, India/Pakistan/Kashmir). The first phase would be  far more legalistic, developing a world rule of law system with the context would be a new equity based multicultural globalization. This aspect would have an hard edge, developing a global police force and a military force. The second phase would be values driven, moving from military to peace keeping to anticipatory conflict resolution. In this phase, this future, the  USA would move to authentically understanding the periphery, seeking to become smaller, globally democratic. This means transforming the world system, focusing on a post-globalization vision of the future, and moving to world governance. Specifically, this means: [17] 

·      human and animal rights;

·      indexing of wealth of poor and rich on a global level, that is, economic democracy – employee ownership;

·      prama[18]based- creating a dynamic balance, between regions, rural/city, seeing  the world economy through the ecological metaphor but with technological innovation;

·      self-reliance, ecological, electronically linked communities (becoming more important than states);

·      gender partnership;

·      and a transformed United Nations, with increased direct democracy, influence of the social movements and transparency within multinational corporations. 

It means moving away from the modernist self and the traditional self, and creating a transmodern self (spiritual, integrating multiplicities and future-generations oriented). 

In terms of epistemology, this means moving from the strategic discourse, which has defined us for hundreds of years, to the emergent healing discourse (within, toward others, toward the planet, and for future generations).   Healing means seeing the earth as an evolving body. What is the best way to heal then, through enhancing the immune system, listening to the body, or through massive injection of drugs? 

In workshops  run around the world, Islamic, Western and East Asian nations, for example, this alternative future emerges as a desired future. Muslim leaders in a March 1996 seminar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the Ummah in 2025  desired a future that was based on: 

·      gender cooperation

·      a cooperative economic system (and not capitalism)

·      self-reliance ecological electronically linked communities (glo-cal), and, a

·      a world governance system 

This perspective appears to be generally shared by  the cultural creatives, an emerging demographic category in the West (www.culturalcreatives.org) In the Non-West as well there is a desire to move away from feudal structures but retain spiritual heritage, to be “modern” but in a different way.

DIRECTION 

To move toward this direction, ultimately means far more of a Mandela approach, what Johan Galtung is doing via the transcend (www.transcend.org) network, than the traditional short term Americanist approach. 

Indeed, 9/11 must be seen in a layered way. How it is constructed defines the solution. If we use the piracy discourse, then  a global police force must be developed to combat terrorism. If, however, it is a natural consequence of globalization, of a shadow NGO attacking a world hegemon, then the focus should be on the pathologies of globalization. If  this is essentially about injustice, about deeper worldviews being extinguished by modernity, then structural transformation and conversations with the other are far more important.. Depth peace is needed. While there may need to be short term actions against criminals, rehabilitation requires changes of culture and of economic opportunities, ie dismantling of the interstate system which allows capital to travel but not labour, and certainly restricts ideas from the periphery to travel and circulate freely. 

In this sense, the fourth scenario is about the long term and about depth. This fourth scenario is a vision of a global civil/spiritual society. It stands in strong opposition to the declared nation-statist position and the extremist groups all over the world. It challenges the strategic modernist worldview as well as the short termism of most governments. 

The first scenario continues the present; the second is a return to the imagined past; the third the likely future; and the fourth, the aspirational .  This means moving beyond both the capitalist West and the feudalized, ossified non-West (and modernized fragmented versions of it) and toward an Integrated Planetary Civilization. 

On a personal note, in utopian moments, I can see this civilization desperately trying to emerge at rational and post-rational levels,  and there are huge stumbling blocks – perceived injustices, the isms,  the asymmetrical world order, and national leaders unwilling to give up their “god-given” right to define identity and allegiance. 

Do we have the courage to create this emergent future? As we move into 2002, the aspirational future moves further and further away – the window of opening for cultural dialogue, for understanding deeper issues, has all but closed. But it will open again. Let us hope that opening does not come in the same fashion as 9/11 did. And I hope we will learn from all the mistakes committed this time.


[1] Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan; Sunshine Coast University, Maroochydore; and Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.  Co-editor, Journal of Futures Studies (www.ed.tku.edu.tw/develop/jfs), Associate Editor, New Renaissance (www.ru.org). s.inayatullah@qut.edu.au, www.metafuture.org. Inayatullah was born in Pakistan and raised in Indiana, New York, Geneva, Islamabad, Kuala Lumpur, and Honolulu. 

[2] Around 500-700 Pakistanis are presumed to be missing, as based on data from SBS Television Australia and Pakistan’s The News. It is not only Americans that is being attacked by certainly Muslims (possibly around 900 or so in the WTC and  some in the Pentagon, perhaps, not to mention attacks of terror toward Muslims in the last 15 years from all sources) as well. As of September 23, the figure is 200 pakistanis. http://www.pak.gov.pk/public/transcript_of_the_press_conferen.htm. By February 2002, this figure has been revised downwardly to 3000. The number of non-Americans killed is unknown.
[3] As Tony Judge and others have argued, www.uia.org)
[4] Personal comments. September 18, 2001.
[5] Personal comments. September 16, 2001.

[6] Jo Voros of Swinburne University offers these thoughts (email, October 8, 2001):What’s really going on (in Spiral language) is that purposeful-authoritation higher-order-seeking BLUE is activating its fundamentalist side and is becoming entrenched on both sides of the conflict. And each side of the conflict is basically talking about God being on *their* side (the classic  Higher Authority invocation) therefore, the “others” are unjust, unrighteous and deserve to be damned forever. BLUE needs a clear-cut right and wrong; by default “we” are right and “they” are wrong, which is the dynamic now playing out on either side.

Therefore, we have the US talking about “bringing to justice” (punitive arm of BLUE) those responsible for WTC attacks. The US talk of a “crusade” is a RED-BLUE effect; unrestrained RED asserts power and domination, often with violence, and when aligned with the “righteousness” provided by the higher authority, this violence is assumed to be righteous, resulting in violence glorified, allowed and exalted in the name of the Higher Authority. This is the same dynamic as on the West Bank between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Once you strip out the context-specific content, the same dynamical process is easily seen. On the facing side, the fundamentalist Taliban are saying the same sort of stuff — that it is the US who are terrorists and criminals, and thus unrighteous, etc — and invoking “jihad” — the semantic equivalent of “crusade”. The RED is starting to flow, both figuratively as a Spiral Dynamics vmeme, and as the blood of the now dying in vain. *sigh*

So, what we really need in this conflict is a super-ordinate Even Higher Authority to provide “good” authority (as opposed to the excessive fundamentalist form present on both sides) and bring the two sides to heel. Unfortunately, this is not present on Planet Earth. Each side claims sanction and legitimation from the Ultimate Higher Authority (God), so any non-God authority is, by definition, beneath this level.

[7] Of course, one friend of mine, commented that if he did know me, because of my name and facial features, he would have problems flying on the same plane as me. Another commented: “They are everywhere” (meaning arabs/south asians/muslims).
[8] See Hasan’s Faithlines: Muslim Conceptions of Islam and Society. Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
[9] Kevin Kelly, “The New Communism,” The Futurist (January-February, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2002), 22. Writes Kelly: “I think we need to enlarge Western civilization so that we have something young Islamic believers want. Providing it will be the only way, and the only honest way, to triumphh.” (22)
[10] George Monblot, “Looking for a terror school to bomb? Try Georgia, USA. Sydney Morning Herald (November 1, 2001), 12.
[11] New Internationalist 340, November 2001, 18-19.
[12] In the Indian health system, there are seven chakras. When the chakras are imbalanced, then negative emotions and behaviors can result. Yoga, meditation and diet are ways to balance the bodies hormonal system.
[13] Sally Jackson, “Star-spangled fervour in style,” The Australian (October 31, 2001), 15.

[14] Ayeda Husain Naqvi writes in “The Rise of the Muslim Marine” (NewsLine, July 1996, 75-77) that while hate crimes against Muslims rise all over the world, surprising the US military is one of the safest places to be a Muslim. Indeed, Qasem Ali Uda forecasts that in 20 years, 25% of all US marines will be Muslim. Given the incredible influence that that former military personnel have on US policies (ie a look at Who’s Who in America shows that military background and law school education are the two common denominators on the resumes of America’s most influential people), inclusion is the wisest policy.

[15] I am indebted to Mike Marien, of the World Future Society for this insight.
[16] As the conflict matures, Colin Powell and others have understood that surgical strikes as well as seeing the other in far less essentialized terms (the many Islams, the many Afghanistans) is crucial for strategy and success. Bush entering a mosque, without shoes, and publicly stating that this is a war against terrorists and not Muslims are all excellent steps forward. In addition, protection of minorities in the USA against direct violence is as well to be lauded. Even his willingness to change the title of the American Infinite Justice operation to Enduring Freedom confirms that he is getting some good advise, or rapidly growing up.  However, if total lack of capacity to understand the role of honor in Pushtun culture once again shows that Americanism can be dangerous for the world, in that complexity, other ways of knowings are not only not misunderstood but not seen as relevant at all. An approach that understoon Pushtun culture would search for honorable ways for them to withdraw from this conflict.
[17] See, Sohail Inayatullah, Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory and Transformative Knowledge. Leiden, Brill, 2002.
[18] Prama means inner and outer balance.  For more on this, see, Sohail Inayatullah, Sitatuing Sarkar. Maleny, Gurukul Publications, 1999.