avariety of Islams with different histories and interpretations of theKoran. The violence of the portrayal ofIslam as one thing corroborates andincreases the violence of the interpretation of Arabs as having a special Arabmind that, as an object of knowledge, is regarded as something to be managedfrom an expert, scientific, or evensuperior position, as Edward Said shows brilliantly in Orientalism. The idea of aTerrorist Mind also enters here. Beingthe lowest and most inferior form of being in this scale of superior-inferiormind (and here the world leaves only these two options, it is dual), theTerrorist functions as a scapegoat for the explanation of social-historicalconflicts. It can function as a simple wayof dismissing complex stories of oppression and resistance in favor of ametanarrative, the one about the Mind, that seeks to explain away history in asimplistic and arrogant framework which reproduces domination and does notaddress it directly. It is thispathologization of the Other, which allows one to disregard history, whichmakes the U.S. media, for example, completely disregard the links of terrorists to the CIA. In the magazine Time Annual 2002, for example, no link is made between Bin Ladenand the CIA training and encouraging of a holy war, which, as we have seen,was a CIA-sponsored construct, to which Wahhabiyyah ideologues contributed andbenefited from[49]. Bin Ladens history is portrayed simply as apersonal history in an Islam enclosed upon itself, and Islamic fundamentalismis also not linked to U.S. (or U.K.) support of the Saudi regime[50],now or in the formation of that State as fundamentalist. All this can be forgotten because of anassumption that the U.S. has a natural right to intervene in places wherepeople supposedly lead barbaric, mad lives. History is once more cut off of the conversation. Global racism wins. The terrorist isportrayed as one entity, withdisregard for the specific peoples and histories involved. Thus, in a U.S. magazine entitled War onTerror, one of the first pages describes the terrorist as the Islamicfundamentalist type only, of the martyr that goes to heaven type. Indeed, the idea of going to heaven throughfighting evil is the dominant explanation given in the media for the terribleactions taken by terrorists. It is athingification that disregards, for example, the fact that Palestinians are notworried about going to heaven; they would rather stay on Earth if it were onlyfor the Israeli State to withdraw from their lands and let them have alife. But instead they are treated asless than human, as a people with no values and against freedom anddemocracy. The Free World, as aself-identified morally superior element in the world, sees itself as thegood fighting evil, in a binary opposition that eradicates any relation tothinking and to history itself. The sentiment of moral superiority also presentsitself as a rational and impartial position, in liberal discourse. In accord with the metaphysical tradition, ifthis impartiality is directed towards two parties in a conflict, that seemslike the perfect condition for a complete understanding of a situation. The doubles reinforce each other, and aposition that is considered fair and balanced is that of theself-identified - morally superior - one from where the liberal can see