After '911' : defending the global city (in: Symposium on September 11 2001: Terrorism, Islam and the West)

A few months on, we have grown accustomed to seeing what happened in the USA on 11 September 2001 as a watershed event in modern global history. Perhaps it has been, in many different ways, but on the other hand it has also merely accentuated some global issues that we have already been grappling with for some time. In particular, the events have highlighted the intractability of one of the most difficult questions of our time: how are we to live together in a globalized world? The ‘war on terror’, which is politically and morally sanctioned by the wounded superpower’s desire to stamp out those who threaten the peaceful living together of nations, addresses this question at the global international level; but the issue of how to live ‘together in difference’ is perhaps even more acute at the local level, not just in the USA but everywhere (Ang, 2001). In this light, it is what happened in and to New York that is most globally relevant and significant.