Even to innocents, the interrogation is unsettling. It entails a violation of privacy that most Americans would find objectionable. Beyond that, the system requires a degree of ethnic profiling that would be viewed here as bigoted. (U.S. News and World Report) Maybe we can. Americans are generally unfriendly to security measures that intrude too much on their privacy. But that was before last week, before they saw the crematoriums in New York City and Washington and started to wonder if the next dive-bombing airliner could be aimed at them. If ever there was a time when they might be receptive to trimming their accustomed freedoms, that time is now. (U.S. News and World Report)

This website was intended to guide you through our search for an answer. We began with total confusion, so we did research and came to the conclusion that we were totally ignorant in the subject of the Middle East and the way that this area of the world operates. We tried to educate ourselves because even though we still don't have a concrete answer to the question of why this happened, as I suspect there is no one, final answer, we have started down the path of understanding something of which we were formally ignorant. Maybe someday this method may lead to a sastifactory answer to the question that September 11th forced us to ask...

I have added some links to fellow classmates' pages to offer different perspectives at the various stages of our research:

1)http://www.duke.edu/~lsw2/Writing%2020/writing_20_index.htm -Liana's final essay comparing Arendt and Egypt clearly brings out point by point how Islam is the factor that makes Egypt different from the West and thus makes Arendt's model invalid for that culture and society.

2)http://www.duke.edu/~icb/ -Irene's final essay specifically relates Arendt to Egyptian women. Her paper makes it very clear that Arendt can only be applied to certain classes of Egyptian society. She draws the line between the aspects of women's lives that are like the West and those that cannot be explained by this model.

3)http://www.duke.edu/~sls24/ -Sarah's first essay dealing with Arendt points out a fact that I had overlooked everytime: Arendt states the three things that she feels had the most impact in the modern world, but none of these had anything to do with the Arab world, or Egypt for that matter.

4)http://www.duke.edu/~eib2/NEW/ -Liz's final essay not only points out that the basic unit of interaction in Egypt is the family but also describes the "role play" that goes on with each member and goes into the social implications of having to preserve a family's honor.

5)http://www.duke.edu/~mea11/ -Meg's first essay dealing with America's position I find a bit depressing, to say the least, but it points out a popular view at the time that this "war on terrorism" would lead to worldwide conflict. In our final writing class, we discussed the interesting fact that this has not come to fruition and the implications of America having so much power would be an interesting thing to research next...