Just after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (who later won the Nobel Prize) observed, in Istanbul, the ordinary and peac… - Tzvetan Todorov

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Just after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (who later won the Nobel Prize) observed, in Istanbul, the ordinary and peaceable inhabitants of the city displaying great joy at the collapse of the Twin Towers. What was the explanation? ‘It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries.