This brief article deals with the persistence of a single motif — the medieval Christian association of Islam with the Apocalypse — in the vocabulary of an early modern thinker (Schlegel), and its reappearance in the geopolitical mindscapes of two postmodern philosophers (iek and Baudrillard). The medieval motif has two variants: a thirteenth-century Franciscan version (one which sees Muslims as unconvertible signs of the Apocalypse to come) and a seventeenth-century Protestant millenarianism (in which the Muslim becomes an anti-Papist ally whom Protestant Christendom can form a coalition with, convert and ultimately march together with onto Rome). Essentially, the author argues that in his essay on the first Gulf War, Baudrillard reveals himself to be a Franciscan, whilst iek's approach in his treatment of both 9/11 and his book on Iraq is that of a Calvinist.
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