Islam, Gewalt und westliche Ängste

Abstract

The disappearance of the Sowjet- Union resulted in the loss of the image of an enemy, precondition for the construction and definition of the otherness of the “We”. The lack of a collective threat was rapidly and systematically replaced by a new image of the enemy: Islam. The old – racist - orientalist characterization of the “genetic” inferiority of Semitic people was re-invented as the “cultural specificity” of “Islam”, which became the new aggressive, irrational threat of Western culture and its “rational modernity”. The invention of the “clash of civilizations” not only became constitutive for the construction of Western identity in the post cold-war world, it is used as well for legitimizing the demolition of the norms of international and humanitarian law. The “war on terrorism”, justified as the struggle against the fanatic and irrational evil, consequently destroys the humanitarian principles on which civilization has been based since the Age of Enlightenment, provoking what it intends to combat: terrorism.