not merely a reaction to the physical horror of Ground zero but a shocked recognition of the power that religious belief can wield against a culture that has lost its moral foundations, sociology and Islam In attempting to understand the conflict between Muslim and Western societies sociologists have begun to question the underlying assumptions of the discipline. Exploring Muslim societies involves under standing the subjective experiences of Muslim people and the relationship between their experiences and their cultural practices, such as the wearing of the veil by Muslim women. To do this requires casting aside some of the Eurocentric assumptions of the discipline Building on sociological arguments about the relationship between knowledge and power, Connell points out that the development of the social sciences did not occur in a political vacuum but were part of the tools of colonialism. Western scientific knowledge was elevated to 'universal' knowledge and used to deny the validity of alternative cultural understandings of knowledge and truth (1997). Its rationalist assumptions are challenged by people whose belief system asserts the priority of religious understandings across all forms of knowledge. Yet understanding situated subjectivities is a core task of the sociological endeavour.