I was in New York City 15 years ago, when the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack of its history. I remember that horrible day as vividly as if it were yesterday. September 11 was a Tuesday bright with sunshine, which meant that you could easily see the plumes of smoke and ash as they enveloped downtown after the attacks. It didn’t take long for countless handmade posters to appear on poles and walls around the city, urgently and tragically asking about the whereabouts of people who had suddenly gone missing. The unmistakable smell of burning hung in the air for weeks. It seemed like everyone, myself included, was in shock, and we were all mourning the dead.
But these were anxious times, too. I recall the sense of dismay I felt that morning when watching the first plane hit and how that morphed, when the second plane came less than twenty minutes later, into a gut-wrenching realization that this was no accident. If the terrorists turned out to be Muslim, I thought at the time, the future could become very difficult for Muslims in the United States.
Fifteen years later, the War on Terror continues with no end in sight and the question of whether Muslims should even be allowed to enter the United States is being vociferously debated. Some politicians have even invoked Japanese internment as a model to follow when dealing with Muslims in this country. A registry of Muslims, already tried on non-immigrant males from 24 Muslim-majority countries (to disastrous effect), has also been proposed. Most polls put anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States at around 50% of the population. And anti-Muslim violence remains high. According to a Georgetown University study, American Muslims were approximately 6 to 9 times more likely to be attacked in a bias crime in 2015 when compared to pre-9/11 numbers.
Contributing to these depressing numbers and ugly proposals are the incomplete and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the fact that much of the Middle East is unstable, and that terrorist attacks around the world continue to kill innocent people and harden anti-Muslim sentiment. The Washington Post reported that over the Labor Day weekend, while most Americans were relaxing and enjoying the end of summer, the United States bombed six different countries (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan) with dozens of airstrikes. Has waging war become so numbingly routine or do we just not want to pay attention? With this depressing state of affairs, shouldn’t we be asking, fifteen years on, if we have learned the right lessons from 9/11?
This year’s anniversary falls on almost the exact same day as Eid al-Adha, the holiest of Muslim holidays. There is nothing mystical nor nefarious about this simple fact. Because Muslims follow a lunar calendar comprised of 12 cycles of the moon, the calendar shifts back by about 11 days each year when compared to the Gregorian calendar. This concurrence was bound to happen. Still, the nearly overlapping dates can serve as a reminder that Islam shares the same Abrahamic roots of Judaism and Christianity, that we are more alike than we are different. Shouldn’t we all be looking for ways to forge our common destiny and to reject the dangerous notion of a clash of civilizations?
No one can change the fact that Muslims have been a part of America’s history and culture for centuries. And the next time the 9/11 anniversary and Eid al-Adha happen around the same time, in about 33 years, I’m certain that Muslims will still be in the United States. By then, I’m hoping, the War on Terror will be just a bad memory.