The Courage to Re-discuss Ourselves: The politics of justice
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development. Copyright © 2002 Society for International Development. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 1011-6370 (200206) 45:2; 71–75; 024681. NB When citing this article please use both volume and issue numbers.
SID On-line Dialogue
The Courage to Re-discuss Ourselves: The politics of justice LAMIS AL-SHEJNI
ABSTRACT Lamis al-Shejni, a Yemeni woman living in Italy and working throughout the Arab region on human rights and alternative development issues, reflects on the implications of September 11th for social justice movements. KEYWORDS globalization; Islam; the ‘other’; people’s movements; politics; the USA; the West
September 11th Around 4.00 p.m., Rome time, I turn on the TV and I switch between channels, but they are all showing the same image of buildings on fire. I realize it is the news programme, and in the same second an airplane flies into the buildings, the Twin Towers. I remain shocked for a few seconds while my mind recalls images from past Hollywood movies. ‘It is an attack!’ I exclaim, trying to react. The journalist starts telling the story from the beginning, and a sense of confusion mingled with strong excitement takes me over. My first hypothesis is that the US right-wing groups are behind the attack, dismissing the ‘known’ Islamic groups, for it is not their style, as the attack is too elaborate and on a grand scale. I get totally seduced by the political repercussions. I only begin to realize the tragedy a few minutes later: watching the buildings burning, collapsing, the people jumping out of the windows. All those screams, the confusion, the sense of fear and desperation. . . . I pick up my phone and start calling and texting around the globe, just to be sure that at least those I know in the USA and the ones who have relatives there are safe. Once assured, I call a friend of mine with whom I was having a discussion a few months back in Cairo on the possible competitor candidates to the US hegemony. And I recollect my argument with a sense of guilt: I dismissed the old forms of nation-state confrontation, and I saw terrorism (not necessarily Islamic) as the new method of confronting the USA and national governments
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development 45(2): SID On-line Dialogue in general. It is the logic of the defused culture of globalization, and an effective way to face the growing domination of international autocratic institutions. I understood right then and there how we can be cold, abstract thinkers without realizing the implications of our theories and strategies on human beings. We are often so fascinated by the power of politics that we forget the necessity of justice. The need to make sense A few days after the attack I heard an American student of political science ask ‘why do they hate us so much?’ It is this kind of question that many Americans asked themselves after September 11th, moving beyond the rhetoric of terrorists as irrational mad people. Such questions can be considered as a firs
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