The founders of America said our rights come from God. That is what we have celebrated recently with America at 250.
But there is a very different understanding of who God is between Christianity, the worldview held by the Founding Fathers, and radical Islam. As the whole world saw 25 years ago, when nearly 3,000 people were killed.
By way of review, on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 Muslim men hijacked four airplanes filled with passengers. They managed to fly two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City – bringing down those magnificent towers. A third plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C.
And the fourth hijacked plane was also on its way to Washington, but because the flight was providentially delayed, and because passengers aboard heard about the other three hijackings, they decided to fight back. This caused the plane to crash into an empty field in Pennsylvania.
Scholars note that the motivation of the 19 hijackers was what they understood to be rewards in the next life. They died as jihadist “martyrs” to their cause.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright, observes, “Martyrdom promised such young men an ideal alternative to a life that was so sparing in its rewards. A glorious death beckoned to the sinner, who would be forgiven, it is said, with the first spurt of blood, and he would behold his place in Paradise even before his death. … Martyrdom offers the conjugal pleasures of seventy-two virgins.” (p. 123)
Lately, we have seen the rise of influence of Islamists in our culture. Islamist and socialist Hasan Piker is a pal of Michigan Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed. Piker has a lot of influence among many young people on the left – he reportedly has 3 million followers. Piker says America deserved 9/11.
He’s not the only one. Democratic Socialist Candidate Melot Kiros, running for the U.S. Congress in the Denver area, basically said the United States deserved what happened to us that fateful Tuesday a quarter of a century ago.
Meanwhile, the media often downplay the Islamic angle to 9/11. But, in contrast, scholars note that the Quran teaches the faithful Muslim should “Fight those who do not believe in Allah” (Surah 9:29).
Recently, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said that they would not allow people to call 9/11 a “terrorist” attack. But the hue and outcry caused them to reverse course, only for the case of 9/11.
One of the lessons the West seems not to have learned in these 25 years is to recognize that there is a vibrant strand within Islam that is committed to violent jihad. No whitewashing can wish this away.
Post 9/11, one study found a 31% increase in mosques in the United States, just from 2010 to 2020.
We cherish religious freedom in America, and well we should. But we don’t welcome those who would kill to advance their faith. Of course, there are virtually no churches in Islamic countries.
One of my favorite books on the subject is Robert Spencer’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).” Spencer runs the site jihadwatch.org.
He once told me the ultimate goal of jihad is to force upon the world strict Islamic rule: “The imposition of Sharia is the goal of jihad. Jihad is fought in order to bring sharia to a land where it is not enforced today. Sharia is Islamic law. Islamic law is considered to be, by Muslims, the law of god, just as much as Christians understand the Ten Commandments to be the Law of God.”
Thankfully, not every Muslim buys into the radical jihad vision. Dr. Zhudi Jasser is the author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam” and the president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He once told Coral Ridge Ministries-Television, “The root cause, I believe, as a Muslim, is the ideology of Islamism. The ideology of wanting to create Islamic states that are supremacist; that believe there should be an Islamic law and government. That no other legal system takes precedence”
But if we don’t realize that? Says Jasser, “I think we are going to continue chasing our tails domestically and globally for the next many generations to come.”
Earlier we mentioned Lawrence Wright, author of “The Looming Tower.” Wright quoted the ultimate architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, who said, “This is jihad! … This is the way we want to go to heaven!”
September 11 presents a very different vision of America’s founders, like George Washington, who said in his Circular to the States (1783), we can never hope to be a happy nation unless we imitate “the divine Author of our blessed religion” (Jesus). What a contrast.
