Der 11. September 2001 als Epochenbruch

Abstract

Abstract In world public opinion, the events of September 11, 2001, are often interpreted as the beginning of a new epoch. It seems as if the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon buildings near Washington were the initial spark for a change not only in the Middle Eastern world, but also intervened in the relations between the Middle East, the Islamic world and the West. We are still far from defining the period in which September 11 took place as a time between two epochs, i.e., as an epochal threshold. However, there are sufficient indicators that justify assuming the process a rupture of an existing epochal order. An approach to the question, which caesura the events of September 11 meant, and in which process of upheaval this caesura took place, requires to visualize again which consequences and which backgrounds had related to the events themselves. For this purpose, I will proceed in six steps, which, however, will be formulated in very different breadth. I will focus on religion, political representation, and social change. There are good reasons to assume that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did not define a caesura in the narrow sense, but should be interpreted as part of a profound social, cultural, and political change. We must assume that this change has been part of a global process of rupture and that we can define the period in which the terror of September 11, 2001, took place as an epochal break. This epochal break affects not only epistemic orders, but above all the normative order marked by the balance of society and religion.