Now a year after the 11th of September the comments, commemorations, and new revelations have come to nothing. They have been replaced by a rhetoric used for military propaganda in support of another war against Iraq. But there is another way to commemorate the day: to make it an occasion for discussion and serious dialogue between the West and Islam. Because of that day many walls have been raised which must be pulled down.
Rhetoric exists because of the 11th of September, which we have widely endured for the first anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington. It is the rhetoric of Total War against Evil, which divides the world into friends and enemies, establishes rights and wrongs, and calls for unity and obedience in a crusade that must save the world from the Great Tyrant. It is the rhetoric of Superman and the super heroes of the American cartoons. Simple rhetoric, even ingenuous in its contrasting between Good and Evil. Its message is therefore reassuring and guarantees a happy ending to those who knew to side with the spic and span heroes.
It is understandable that, facing this rhetoric, you prefer to "pull the plug" to bring about silence and sobriety. The 11th of September was a monstrous tragedy, not a comic strip. The scenarios that it revealed and those that it resolved are not as clear as one tends to think. The 11th of September, and in particular the judgment of the Islamic terrorism of Al Qaeda, has divided the Arab world and lacerated anything Islamic. For a year now, there has been a great babel of judgments, valuations and denunciations. There are those who have actively supported the strategy of these attacks and have not hesitated to say so, and those who have supported them but do not want to admit it. There are those who do not reject them in principle and, in the end, understand their "desperate" reasons; as well as those who, either Arab and/or Muslim, have come to believe that at this time the greatest threat to Islam comes from inside itself (that is, from its fundamentalist members who pursue this terroristic strategy).
But, after the 11th of September, even the West talked in different languages. Isn't it the case that, while we are writing this editorial, President Bush is deciding on the date for the attack on Iraq, where as other countries like France and Germany reject (with particular determination) the hypothesis of armed intervention against the dictator of Baghdad. Beyond all that, if Bush Jr. wanted to test himself in international matters, he could more determinedly apply himself to finding a solution to the escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. But for the White House another war against Iraq is not only an old family issue, it is a corollary to the theory of Total War against terrorism, explained and used as propaganda by working on the human and political disdain raised by the massacres of the 11th of September. In that way, a tragedy becomes war rhetoric, useful to generate yet another tragedy for thousands of predestined victims.
But if rhetoric about the 11th of September exists, then anti-rhetoric also exists. Rhetoric that relativizes the impact of those massacres and the political and religious motives behind them. There are those who, because of their intolerance for the political and military use of the victims, would prefer to speak of the other [violence], to avoid every commemoration and to concentrate on denouncing the violence that the United States "inflicts" daily on the poor and dependent countries. However, it seems to us that also this anti-rhetoric is short-sighted and above all ingenuous. That which has happened had important and dramatic consequences on the Muslim world, on its relations with the West, on the fabrication of the myth for a "just violence" against America's unjust violence, on its allies and on Israel. To the theorists of the crash of civilization, this event appears to be the most obvious proof of their theses. We are facing total war that pits progress against barbarism. It is useless to quibble and morally dishonest not to align oneself with it. It is necessary to side with progress and fight. In Afghanistan as well as in Iraq, the Middle East as well as in Treviso, rivers of this simplistic and poisoned rhetoric flood down and it would be very dangerous to denounce them in order to dam them up. In order to build a true peace, the world needs to dialogue and, as we have stated in these pages many times, dialogue with Islam is ever so urgent and necessary. It is through dialogue that the history, logic of the geopolitical relations, and the Abrahamic root that links Jews, Christians and Muslims become appreciated. Above all it moves us toward coexistence which we are experiencing more and more often and that, if we were only able to reduce it to statistics and rate it, would show how very much its enrichment gratifies us today. However, so that this can happen, both the West and the Islamic world need to renounce their own poisons of intolerance, myths of superiority, and ideology of Total War that will bring about World Order or Holy War that reestablishes the Justice of God. The 11th of September, like the war which that tragedy has legitimized and will have to justify in the future, is not only a rhetorical incident. It is a glimpse of an exceptional disorder, of a craziness in politics and religion for which the West also must take responsibility.
Sobriety, reasoning, deepening of understanding, and search for dialogue: these are the key words that can make some sense of the first anniversary of the 11th of September. In short, although we would prefer not to, we still need to talk about that day. We still need to pull down those walls which that day has subsequently raised.
Paolo Naso