Racionalidad del terror

Abstract

Contemporary terrorism is not an ancestral, irrational, oriental, phenomenon. Nor is it a fanatical reaction of the religions that vindicate a backward society as against the developed societies of the first world. The terrorism of today is a thoroughly modern phenomenon: one of the worst monstrosities of modern society, supplied with rational planning of objectives. A captious interpretation of the Islamic religion endows terrorism with a universal projection among the multitudinous audience of the discontented with the might of that diffuse power that we know as the developed Western world. Al Qaeda does not hesitate to present its war against the West as «a war without quarter» lasting until the infidel Christians are eliminated and the world is subjugated to Islam In the meantime, in a similar conflictive sense, the theoretical campaign of Samuel Huntington across the entire planet responds with a paradigmatic post-cold war, capable of inflaming the international conflict, in a sense no less belligerent with the Anti-Occident than that employed by the radical Imams. As has been pointed out by Amartya Sen, to give priority in this way to the religious identity, the response of the West to international terrorism in calling it «islamic terrorism» is very clumsy, as it magnifies the importance of the religious authorities in detriment to governmental ways and means in the solving of problems.