On September 11, 2001, Abbas was in Siberia when he saw the live TV broadcast of what was happening thirteen time zones away. One year later, looking at the huge cross erected on the site, he wondered if one form of religious intolerance had produced another. He then embarked on a project that would take him through the Islamic world for seven years, and ultimately appear as his book, In Whose Name? The exhibition presents the “making of” the book. The ambition was to understand how the Jihad movement had been able to develop inside the Umma (community of Muslim believers). Abbas traveled through sixteen countries, visiting Jakarta, Istanbul, Zanzibar, Baghdad, Sana’a, Jerusalem and many other sites, in a bid to find the answer to his question: the Jihadists may have lost many battles waged against States which are now hunting them down mercilessly, so why, with the “rampant Islamization” of society, have they failed to win the war for minds?

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11 September 2001, Kyzyl, Siberia

Glued to the television set, as I imagine millions are throughout the world, I am fascinated by what is happening in New York City… 13 time zones away. I watch the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapse, live, after being hit by two commercial airliners.

How will the umma, the world polity of Muslims, react? Will they, once again, perform an exorcism by pretending that jihadists are not Muslims? This is what they did when Islamist ideology was being proposed as an alternative model in their own societies and implemented through violence. For how much longer will Muslims be held hostage, sometimes willingly, by the rhetoric of Islamists with whom they share common values and an equal belief that the Koran is sacred as the word of God?

Doesn’t Islamism feed on Islam?

Three days later, I watch the BBC television interviewing Muslims as they leave a mosque in London after Friday prayers, to record their reaction to the tragedy in New York. A young British man, of Pakistani origin, yells at the TV camera: ‘This is how every Muslim should die!’ He runs away, probably scared by his own daring. I am struck by this nihilism: why should a young man who has been educated according to the values of rationality and democracy – his accent is not that of a recent immigrant – wish for the collapse of these values symbolized by the Twin Towers of New York?

20 September 2002, New York

A deep canyon has replaced the Twin Towers. I discover two metal beams that have been salvaged from the rubble and welded together into a giant cross which makes a deep impression on me. It is a response to the terror inflicted by the jihadists, as if the workers who erected it wanted the world to know that it is not only their country which has come under attack but also their culture, their religion, and therefore their civilization.

Does one form of religious intolerance feed another?

I wonder whether I should abandon my current project on animism for a more urgent quest: how religion is becoming increasingly important in defining people’s and nations’ identity. Will religion replace political ideologies in the strategic struggles of the future? How many conflicts that are essentially tribal, nationalist, economic or ideological are increasingly being perceived in terms of religion?

On that day…

Abbas

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