September 11th Was Not Religiously Motivated?

Even after 9 years, the events of September 11th are still fresh on most peoples’ minds. Most of us can remember exactly what we were doing when the first plane smashed into the WTC tower. Most of us also remember the events that followed on the heels of the terror attack; Osama bin Laden and al Qaida claiming responsibility for the attacks in the name of Islam and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, according to Hadia Mubarak, who is a doctoral student at Georgetown University in the Islamic Studies department, has informed us that the events of September 11th were not religiously motivated. Let that sink in for a moment.

Her evidence for this fact is that when the WTC was attacked, a lot of different people died, including Christians, Muslims, etc. While I do agree that many different kinds of people died in the WTC attack, the underlying cause was a group of people that believed that they were ordained by “God” to attack the Great Satan. These people were Muslims doing their horrible deed in the name of Islam. When people like Pat Robertson makes stupid comments about the people of Haiti deserving the earthquake that decimated their country or that Katrina was divine retribution for the gays in New Orleans, no one questioned that what he was doing was in the name of Christianity. No one argued that Pat Robertson wasn’t a Christian. The silence from the Christian community about his comments was unspoken approval for what he said.

One point that I tend to agree with Ms. Mubarak is that the Muslim community has not done enough to distance themselves from the actions of extremists, especially in America. Usually when something horrible is done in the name of anything and the following response from said community is a deafening silence, it is seen as tacit approval of the horrible action that was committed. Look at the deafening silence from the crazy militias after Timothy McVeigh blew up the FBI building in Oklahoma City. No one came forward to denounce the act, there was just a vacuum. However, when the government raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX and the compound at Ruby Ridge, you couldn’t think straight from the noise of the uproar from the militia community.

This is a recurring theme with most groups out there. You have silence when something is done in their name that they agree with and riots when something is done against them. Where are the Muslims who disagree with Islam being “hijacked” by people like Osama bin Laden and Iman al-Zawahiri? In this case, silence speaks volumes. Ms. Mubarak argues that violence is explicitly against Islam, but to people like bin Laden and Zawahiri it is. That is the problem with religion as a whole: the “holy books” are so stupid, vague, contradictory, that anyone can take away a message of violence, a message of peace, a message of racism, or a message of equality. You would think if the Quran or the Bible were divinely inspired, they would not be so ambiguous on important subjects like murder and terrorism. People take the crap put forth in the Quron and the Bible seriously! It’s not real though. It’s all musings from different people to fulfill some sort of agenda. I have no use for the Quron or the Bible and would prefer to see the paper put towards something that is actually true, like science and math books.

This article was written to say that the Islamic Center that is being built in New York should be allowed to do so because Islam was not the cause of the September 11th attacks. It did raise some interesting points about the political implications involved in the suicide bombings, such as the US support of Israel while it is crushing Palestine, or the Russian incursion into Chechnya, or the US involvement in Afghanistan. That is an interesting discussion that I am sure everyone has an opinion on and I could write for days on, but to say that religion didn’t play a major role in the WTC attacks is disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst. I wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) expect anything else from someone who writes for the Washington Post, though. I think Ms. Mubarak is trying to find justification for her ridiculous beliefs.