The year 2001 was not just any random year on the calendar: as the beginning of a new millennium it marked a kind of threshold in the historical development of humankind. As is well known, the approach of this year was accompanied in many places by a good deal of anxiety and apprehension. For some, the shift between millennia occasioned fears of grand technological mishaps or debacles; for many others—inspired by dark scriptural passages—the shift stirred up intense millennarian and even apocalyptic expectations. As it happened, none of the anticipated debacles came true— until much later in the year when calamity struck on a major scale. The calamity occasioned not only havoc in New York and huge losses of human lives (surely horrible effects); it also dimmed the more hopeful visions of human life on this planet. For, quite apart from nervous doomsday scenarios, the approach of the new millennium had also been greeted by many people around the world as the advent of a better future—a future profiled against the dark contours of a twentieth century marked by world wars, holocausts, and grim episodes of ethnic cleansing. It was in this hopeful spirit that the General Assembly of the United Nations had designated 2001 as the "Year of Dialogue among Civilizations." It was in the same spirit that 2001 was inaugurated on the first day of January by a "World Day of Peace," at which time Pope John Paul II urged people everywhere to foster the dialogue between cultures for the sake of a "civilization of love."¹