For some, it is hard to believe that the deadliest terrorist attack in human history, occurring on September 11 of 2001, is now a quarter of a century removed. Three months after that attack, the U.S. Congress approved a measure allowing the President to designate 9/11 as “Patriot Day.” The question is whether “Patriot Day” in time will resemble “Labor Day,” “Presidents Day,” or other non-working holidays on our calendar. Are we at all capable of remembering in appropriate ways the supreme tragedy that befell our nation twenty-five years ago?
I shall never forget my own reaction to an announcement on the radio on September 11, 2001, of the first terrorist attack. I was on my way to the university campus to teach a late morning class. Turning on the radio, I heard a voice announce that at 8:46 that morning an American Airlines flight #11, flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had just flown directly into – not “near” or “around” but into – the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. My immediate reaction was one of stupor and disbelief, and my initial thought was that some deluded on-air comedian was engaging in a form of wildly offensive, inappropriate humor. But, as it turned out, this was no joke; it was an emergency broadcast and not some sick comedian’s attempt on public airwaves at preposterous humor.
Upon arriving at the university soon thereafter, I found that the entire campus community was making its way toward the university’s chapel. It was as if a flood was approaching the campus perimeter, with everyone seeking shelter. There in the chapel, once assembled, we learned more. At 9:03am, United Airlines flight #175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:37am, American Airlines flight #77, departing from Dulles (DC) to Los Angeles, flew into – again, think of it! – the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, just outside of the nation’s capital.
Then at 9:59 am, the South Tower – all 110 stories of it – collapsed. At 10:03am, a fourth plane, United Airlines flight #93, departing Newark for San Francisco, crashed into a field in Shanksville, PA, (roughly 100 miles west of Gettysburg). Twenty-five minutes later the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
No one – no one – can imagine what it must have been like to have witnessed the sheer horror and monstrosity of the evil that occurred on that day. First-responders, chief among whom were fire-fighters, community workers, and law enforcement agents who were on the spot, and who then lived to tell of such horror, are surely to this day scarred for life because of what they experienced. For the rest of us, simply revisiting photos or film clips of the mountains of crumbling skyscrapers and the thousands of people literally running for their lives in lower Manhattan – all the while first-responders and public servants were headed in the opposite direction and into the blazing inferno – leaves one utterly speechless, and trembling, even today. Words simply cannot describe the magnitude of evil that was unleashed on that day.
The human cost? 2,977 people died on September 11 – 2,753 in the WTC Towers, 184 at the Pentagon, and forty passengers and crew members who died as the fourth plane nosedived into a field in rural Pennsylvania. (Afterward it was learned that several passengers aboard this fourth plane, United Airlines flight #93, valiantly attempted to storm the cockpit.) Oh, yes, nineteen terrorists who carried out such evil also lost their lives.
THE JIHADIST IMPERATIVE
As I write, I read that the European Union is supporting, both logistically and financially, a Muslim Brotherhood Youth event on “Islamophobia” that is planned for late September in Brussels, Belgium. Which would seem to be akin to the antisemitic “pro-Palestinian” activism that has multiplied across campuses here in the U.S., particularly since the October 7, 2023, massacre – in which (though we’ve already forgotten) 1200 people were murdered by Hamas and 254 taken hostage in Gaza. Can we connect the dots?
Better said: are we willing to connect the dots?
The widespread use of the term “Islamophobia” in our day invites serious moral reflection, particularly in light of more than a millennium of well-documented Islamic teachings and history. Learning of that history would be painful for most Muslims, who would find it difficult to confront the fact of forceful Islamic expansion among non-Muslim peoples. One might reasonably argue that the problem is twofold: both (1) those of us in the West are being deceived about Islamism and jihadism and (2) hundreds of millions of moderate or non-radical Muslims are being deceived as well.
I write as one who affirms the wisdom of the just war tradition – a tradition that extends, at least in the Western cultural context, for the better part of two millennia. The wisdom of this tradition is that it is universal and enduring, with moral principles that speak to every age in any context; yet that tradition is pliable, able to allow application in varied contexts. Just war moral reasoning can speak to issues of conventional war as well as non-conventional conflict, international terrorism being one of those. Major contemporary proponents of just war thinking – I have in mind Michael Walzer, William V. O’Brien, James Turner Johnson, and Jean Bethke Elshtain – uphold its validity and application in addressing the broader problem of international terrorism. But in approaching the question of terrorism we must be able to define the problem at hand.
Although over 100 definitions of terrorism are present in governmental, political, and scholarly literature, one definition will suffice for our purposes. It comes from the very first International Conference on Terrorism (1973) and has warrant to the present day; it is both accurate and concise: terrorism is “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.” In broader terms, four elements may be said to comprise the essence of terrorism: as an act it is (1) premeditated and not random violence; (2) political in its essence; (3) aimed at civilians rather than military targets; and (4) an attempt to capture media attention.
From the just war perspective, terrorism, regardless of its origin or application, violates every primary moral criterion of the just war tradition. As it concerns ius ad bellum (i.e., going to war), it violates the necessary conditions of just cause, legitimate authority, and right intention. And as it concerns ius in bello (i.e., just conduct in war), it represents a supreme violation of noncombatant immunity and proportionality.
THE ISLAMIST VISION
But here we must understand the nature of the worldview against which we battle. Islamism, in its essence, is theocratic, and it has always been such from its inception. Hence, the Islamist vision, which is by no means majoritarian but which nevertheless holds sway over countless millions worldwide who identify as Muslims, stands in rejection of the liberal state. The difference in visions regarding religion and the state is crucial. European culture, in general (at least until recently), has been molded by a Christian understanding of the state, whereby “Caesar” and God are in co-existence; they are distinct yet coexisting. In Islamist ideology, by contrast, God is Caesar; he is alone the supreme head of state, the source of sovereignty, and hence the supreme authority over matters of law.
Viewed from the Islamist perspective in our generation, the burden of Islam is to counter the abandonment of sharia, the systematized law of Islam, and to resist what Muslims perceive as “infidel” cultural practices and law. Thus, in our day, the Islamist vision is to “undo all the political, legal and consequent social changes that have been introduced during the period of Westernization, and to restore the panoply of the Islamic state and the Islamic holy law. Only when the neopagan apostates who rule in Islamic lands have been deposed, and their laws and institutions abrogated and annulled, will the true Islamic life become possible, and the true mission of Islam be accomplished. But this is not a position with which those of us in the “free world” can negotiate, for therein is no possibility for a principled pluralism, no working for a common social good, and quite clearly no religious freedom.
Such is the challenge that we face in the Western cultural context. As we approach September 11 and prepare to memorialize the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are confronted with unsettling questions. Are we willing to acknowledge that Islamist and jihadist ideology, despite the increasing claims of “Islamophobia,” is committed to the utter destruction of our cultural heritage, and therefore, where possible, to mass murder? But at the most basic level, can we recognize evil and call it what it is?
And will we teach the next generation the truth of good and evil, and therefore, the need for justice in the face of evil in a fallen world? Such instruction only occurs in a free society, which alas is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon in our day.