From this perspective, the attacks no longer appear, as they did to so many immediately afterwards, to reflect an incomprehensible, irrational, and uncivilized mentality, or a different civilization altogether – pre-modern, unenlightened, and fundamentally “traditional” (in other words, undeveloped). It is in this unflattering sense that Islam, the dominant religion of an economically backward part of the world, was said to have motivated the attacks of September 11, 2001.