The purpose of this essay is to examine how three contemporary and Marxist
oriented researchers try to explain the events in the USA in September 11, 2001
and the effect these events have had in relation to religion and religious
fundamentalism at large and for Islam specifically. The essay examines how these
ideas can be understood in relation to Marx’s ideas. The method consists of
qualitative text analysis and focuses on the ideas presented rather than who is
presenting the ideas. The hermeneutic approaches for analysing content and
argumentation has been used. The essay also has a comparative approach. In order
to understand the results in comparison to Marxist theory ideal types were created.
The result indicates that more long term as well as contemporary historical
processes are of importance in order to understand the attacks, that social and
economic inequality are significant and that religion in both these cases has a
subordinate position. The result rejects the idea of a “clash of civilisations” and
suggests instead a “clash within civilisations”. Religious fundamentalism is
understood as a part of modernity and Islamism as but one expression of Islam, a
maximalist one.
2015.
marxism, marxist theory, religion, religious fundamentalism, islamism, terrorism, september 11