Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern

Far from being a throwback to medieval times, the fundamentalism of Al Qaeda is an entirely modern response to the world. This is the controversial view argued in John Gray's take on politics and globalization since September 11, 2001.

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Marx, Mill and a great many economists imbibed the 19th-century Positivist view that every society is destined to go through the same phases of development, ending in a universal civilization based on science, industrial production and secular Enlightenment values. Tracing the impact of this view, via business, politics and academia, Gray argues that September 11 destroyed the idea of globalization as a single pathway to modernity. He also considers the rise and decline of the global free market, the pretensions of economics, the metamorphosis of war and the prospects of an American empire.