25 Years After 9/11
To our children, 9/11 has become just something else they are learning about in history class. Much like “the day of infamy” on December 7th. But to many of us, the memory of that September 11, 2001 day and its aftermath are ingrained in our souls.
The stories of 3,000 innocent people killed. The restaurant chef who chose to jump to his death rather than burn alive. The airline passengers who gave up their lives to take down the airplane they were on rather than let it hit the hijackers’ target. The firefighters who didn’t come home to their children that day.
Three firefighters solemnly raise the American flag together in the ruins of the World Trade Center buildings in lower Manhattan – an image captured for the annals of history by Thomas Franklin, a photographer of The Record in New Jersey.
And then there was the aftermath. The leaders of our country diverting our attention away from the manhunt for those responsible in Afghanistan to a different war in Iraq premised on the false notion of weapons of mass destruction and a supposed correlation to 9/11. The veterans who were sent blindly into Iraq, including those who didn’t make it back, and those who made it back but were never the same again.
And at home, there were the violent hate crimes against Muslim Americans, and also less obvious bigotry against them. Bigotry against Muslim-American teachers, soldiers, doctors, taxi drivers, and, certainly, the Muslim kids on the playground at school. Enough that a new phrase was coined to name the trend: Islamophobia. Even non-Muslims were the target of Islamophobia, including the Democratic nominee for President – Barack Obama – who was attacked by his political enemies for being called a Muslim.
The ignorance was rampant. Many Americans didn’t even realize that Muslims, like Christians, believe in the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus, the lessons of whom Muslims also follow. Something that was never conveyed watching the portrayal of Muslim Americans in television and the movies then.
To the extent that the 9/11 attack has become a literal history lesson for our children, it begs the question: what has changed in the last 25 years, and is it for the better or worse?
The drumbeat of war has risen again. This time the target is not Iraq, but Iran. But the unpopularity of the war in Iran is itself a change from the last one against Iraq. The public seems more discerning now in what the government represents to them. Also, these days, actual Muslims are running for public office, and winning, like Mamdani in New York City. There is also Adam Hamawy — a Muslim-American physician who won the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th District. He’d be the state’s first Muslim member of Congress if he wins. Also, the new Democratic nominee for Michigan senator is Abdul El-Sayed. Election wins that would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.
What hasn’t changed is the slurs their political opponents level against them on the basis of their religion, despite their patriotism and service. Hamawy served in Iraq as a U.S. Army surgeon. But that didn’t stop a Democratic primary opponent from calling him a “radical extremist.”
Times are changing. So much so that the inevitable conclusion is that the next 25 years cannot be predicted, if history is any lesson. But where certainty in predictions is lacking, there is always hope.
The hope that on the 50th commemoration of the 9/11 attacks, the schoolbooks will show that America’s arc of history bent towards acceptance and unity. Towards lessons learned on the international stage, and among each other at the local level. Towards a veteran population free of any PTSD. And, most important of all, towards peace and harmony.