On this day, twenty-two years ago years ago, Al Qaeda committed the largest terrorist attack in human history against the United States. Over the course of the day, 2,977 innocent people were murdered in cold blood by the terrorists, and to this day the number of dead continues to rise as people continue to suffer and die from health complications from the attack. The unexpected and unprovoked nature of the attack, as well as the fact that it was mostly directed against civilians, makes it stand out as a singular tragedy and crime against the United States. In the aftermath, we made a vow to “Never Forget” and the United States was successfully united in the common cause of bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice, a mission in which we succeeded almost ten years later. However, if we want to honor those who died on 9/11 and in the ensuing War on Terror, it is necessary that we understand the civilizational causes of the conflict, as well as how American and Western resilience can help not only in defending our many positive Western values but also in preventing future attacks.
To understand this, we must first look at the motives behind the 9/11 attacks. Al-Queada’s jihad against America did not begin with 9/11, but with Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of Jihad against the United States. In this document, translated by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, Bin-Laden openly attacked the Judeo-Christian West, which he accused (in an antisemitic and anti-Christian conspiracy theory) of forming a “Judeo-Crusader alliance” and “occupying” Muslim lands. This declaration by Bin-Laden, though replete with falsehoods, bigotry, hate, and conspiracy theorizing, allows us to understand the motives of the terrorists, insofar as it makes clear that they specifically detested and hated the Judeo-Christian religious and cultural patrimony of the West. It was this tension, between Western and Islamic civilizations, that caused the attacks and subsequent War on Terror. I am not alone in this observation and Harvard Political Scientist Samuel Huntington predicted a similar conflict in his 1993 book Clash of Civilizations, where he pointed out that the demographic growth of Islamic countries and the “Islamic Resurgence” would inevitably lead to a resumption of conflict between the West and Islam. Furthermore, Huntington recognized that many of the values cherished in the West, such as pluralism or democracy, are unique to Western society owing to how institutions developed and cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. People should be tolerant of one another and not judge others, whether it be individuals, nations, or societies, on the basis of religion. And there are many examples of Muslims who have adapted to the West and are proud Americans (such as Mehmet Oz). However, the Global War on Terror was in large part caused by the inability to recognize that as large populations of Muslims were either brought into the West or came into contact with the West, a conflict between the two value systems became inevitable. This, of course, is no excuse for those who hold genuinely prejudiced views against Muslims– American values of religious tolerance should embraced by all and for all.
It is by recognizing this fact about 9/11, that it was caused by fundamental differences between Western and Islamic civilizations, that we can honor the dead by preventing any further attacks. However, it seems that much of the West has sadly already forgotten this lesson. For example, during the 2015 Migrant Crisis, European governments (with the notable exceptions of Poland and Hungary) did very little to stop the massive inflows of Muslim migrants, including permitting the entry of many who displayed open contempt for Western laws and customs. According to the Swedish Publish Broadcaster SVT, 58% of Swedish rape convictions between 2013 and 2018 were of men born abroad. Similarly, many migrants take advantage of the generous safety nets provided by Western states and abuse the benefits provided. According to the Danish mainstream newspaper Ekstra Bladet, roughly 84% of couples and one-third of singles on Denmark’s cash assistance program were of non-Western origin, though those of non-Western origin comprise only 8% of the Danish public. Beyond that, countries with large inflows of immigrants from Muslim countries have seen a rise in antisemitic intolerance (due to the rabid hatred that many Islamic countries have towards Israel and the Jewish people), and most major European cities (apart from Budapest) are now unsafe for Jewish residents and tourists. And all of this goes without even mentioning the “French Intifada” and Islamic neighborhoods that the French call the “lost territories of the Republic” due to the inability of the French state to enforce French laws and customs in those areas.
Despite these civilizationally-suicidal moves by many Western governments, there is still time. After all, 9/11 is directly followed by 9/12, the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna when in 1683 an army comprised of a coalition of Western countries (from Lutheran Saxony to Catholic Austria), under the command of the “Hero King” Jan Sobieski of Poland defeated the Ottoman Army that had been besieging Vienna. Up until this point, it was assumed that Vienna would fall to the Turks and that all of Europe would be placed under Islamic rule as a result. However, in this “clash of civilizations,” the West was able to temporarily stop its infighting, unite, and protect its values. Similarly, the best way to never forget 9/11 would be to focus on 9/12/1683 and for Western leaders to meet the challenge of Islamic extremism head-on and to not shy away from standing up for Western values.