Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern John Gray
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1565848055
Edition: Hardcover; 2003-09-01
Summary:
Americans view the September 11th attacks as the act of an
anachronistic and dangerous sect, one that championed medieval and
outmoded ideals. But as John Gray demonstrates, the ideology of Al
Qaeda is both Western and modern. Itself a byproduct of
globalization's transnational capital flows and open borders, Al
Qaeda's utopian zeal to remake the world descends from the same
Enlightenment creed that informed both the disastrous Soviet
experiment and the neo-liberal dream of a global free market. In this
compact and wide-ranging tour de force, John Gray, the acclaimed
author of False Dawn and Two Faces of Liberalism, narrates the sudden
disintegration of this creed, our "ruling myth," the belief that
societies everywhere will become more modern, more alike, and more
prosperous through the spread of Enlightenment values—ourvalues.
Touching on the philosophical roots of Al Qaeda, the brief history of
the global free market, the collapse of states and the rise of
unconventional warfare, Gray radically revises the conventional
wisdom of the post-September 11 era.
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