The idea
The text presents al-Qaeda’s attacks as a comprehensive rejection of the globalized world, not merely as a partial objection to a particular policy or decision. What is meant here is a challenge to the global structure itself, including its relations, values, and representations. For this reason, the attacks acquire a broad negative meaning, because they do not confront a part of the system but move toward negating the whole of it.
Concise formulation
al-Qaeda attacks: reject the globalized world
Its place in the book’s argument
This claim lies at the heart of the book’s interpretation of the nature of violent action, because it expands its scope from the immediate event to a global horizon. The authors do not describe the attacks as an isolated local response, but as an indication of rejection of an entire mode of the world. Accordingly, understanding them requires looking at what they oppose, not only at their form.
Why it matters
Its importance emerges from the fact that it reveals that violence here is directed toward the meaning of the world, not toward a separate incident. This helps in understanding Arkoun’s critique of closure and simplification, since the question of violence’s relationship to modernity and to forms of globalization becomes part of the reading itself.
Brief evidence
The text presents al-Qaeda’s attacks as a comprehensive rejection of the globalized world, not merely as a partial objection to a particular policy or decision. What is meant here is a challenge to the global structure itself, including its relations, values, and representations. For this reason, the attacks acquire a broad negative meaning, because they do not confront a part of the system but move toward negating the whole of it.
Reading questions
- What is the difference between partial rejection and comprehensive rejection in this context?
- How does describing the attacks as a rejection of the globalized world give them a dimension that goes beyond day-to-day politics?
Degree of documentation
High: the claim appears in a clear location in the book’s material.