The West can no longer answer these questions because humanism rather than religion now provides the framework in which we live our lives. While rational, materialist principles have led to extraordinary control over the natural world, they cannot provide answers to questions of meaning. Conse- quently people in Western cultures live in a state of moral bankruptcy, in which material excess masks the hollowness of their existence. Carroll argues that it is this moral bankruptcy that lies behind Osama bin Laden's attack on the West. Unlike other Muslim fundamentalists, he is not seeking to create a Muslim society but to destroy a culture which he believes is fundamentally immoral. The attack on the twin towers was above all a symbolic act which demonstrated the ultimate vulnerability of a culture which substitutes knowledge for belief Bin Laden is, therefore, the enemy within, revealing to us that which we already know. For Carroll it is this that explains the immense emotional impact that September 11 had on Western consciousness. It was