9/11, Girard, Religion

Sub-stance 2008 Spring issue has an interview with Rene Girard. The topic is 9/11.
Girard insists that people are more and more forgetting 9/11, largely because of its fictitious relation to the Iraq War. He is quite acute when he says that left-wing intellectuals are likely to underemphasize the importance of 9/11 in order to avoid kindling nationalistic kind of resentment. He also talks about the importance of religion: "As the world looks more threatening, religion is sure to return. And in a way, 9/11 is the beginning of this." The state of terror calls for the sense of spiritual community. As for the issue of nuclear weapon, he says that possession of nuclear weapons imply the Western collective belief in violent power, and that this is perhaps the biggest sin of the West. Girard acknowledges some of misrecognitions in one of his books Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, and now insists the importance of emphasizing the notion of sacrifice in Christianity.

Hmmm. As a whole, the interview is immersed with the sense of pro-Christianity. It is clear that he finds a strong, and natural association between Christianity and humanism ... It sounds too simple and naive. It is true that religion is very important for thinking about contemporary terrorism, but Girard is speaking with some certainty about the supremacy of Christianity, and that's annoying.