epilogue

prologue:

trialogue:

bibliography:

It is difficult to resist drawing conclusions. Conclusions create the lie of security and truth. The only certainty that remains in this arena of political and academic discourse is that the construction of the self and the other, of state interests and state threats, remains ambiguous. Lies are never entirely false, truth is never wholly true. What we construct as reality arises from the play between these seeming opposites. We never arrive at certainty because what we construct will inevitably be challenged by re-ocurring forms of physical violence.

We can freeze the mixture of falsehood and truth. That is what we have done by our past association of terrorism and authoritarianism. This association has been transformed into the equation of Islamists (and therefore "Islam") with terrorists, and finally the equation of "Islam" with authoritarianism. Our own construction of western civilization, where we define ourselves as fundamentally opposed to religious or secular authoritarianism, has legitimated the fallacy. The "clash of civilizations" seems inevitable. Yet even this clash, with all its inherent contradictions and paradoxes, remains a true lie.

The coming confrontation will remain true so long as we continue to believe in the paradox that liberal democratic values are applicable in their totality to the rest of the world, while they define the unique civilization of the West. The other can not be reduced down to particulate religious essences, let alone essences which are fundamentally opposed to our own "secular" core. It is imperative to question the taxonomy of cultures so crucial to the theory of the clash of civilizations. We will forever be astonished at who "they" are and what "they" do.

Participants in the debate have failed to re-examine the most fundamental assumptions and characterizations regarding the constructed enemy. This is most obvious in relation to "Islamic terrorists." The very existence of this term illustrates the dangerous and often intentional lie that Islam is associated in its very essence with terrorism and authoritarianism.

There are terrorists who are Muslim. They often embed their motivations and goals in a particular construction of "Islam." It is painfully ironic that when they do so they play into the deliberate obfuscations of politicians with vested interests in promoting the fear of a confrontation of civilizations. It is less ironic that the interests of the vast majority of Muslims should align with the interests of the non-Muslim West. Both groups must strive to understand that the real enemy is not only terrorism itself, but also the political and religious inveiglers who associate it with Islam.