This year on 9/11 is the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93.
I was two months old when approximately 2, 977 victims were killed or fatally injured in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City. Today twenty years older, twenty years later, I want to share my own reflections and thoughts about the terrible tragedy that occurred on this day.
I can’t even begin to imagine what people have gone through, the distress they have been through, watching loved ones stuck in a tower that is on fire, helpless, begging to be let out. I can’t even imagine being that person stuck in one of the tower, not knowing what’s going on, being consumed with fumes and the heat unbearable. I couldn’t make sense of what happened, why it happened, how it happened. Every year I remember watching documentaries, interviews, panoramas, journals of people document what happened before, during and after 9/11 and one thing that kept going around my head was, I don’t believe someone who believes in the same religion as me could be at the hand of this. I remember the first time my parents allowed me to watch a three-hour documentary and at the end of it my eyes were raw red from crying and not being able to understand why someone would do such an atrocious attack.
When I was scrolling through social media a couple of days ago, I came across a thread about the attacks of 9/11 and on the last post in bold worlds it said ‘Muslims don’t have the right to mourn’ it already had 1,897 likes and 560 comments. It made me think of the time I cried after the first time I watched the documentary and made me question should I have not cried, should I sit their void of emotions, stoic? I asked this question angrily to my dad and he said that “whoever wrote that post it says something about their fears and insecurities, that they need an identity that becomes an ‘enemy’ an ‘other, don’t let it affect you”. I pondered over his words but how could I not let it affect me, on this day whenever I go out, I can’t meet other people’s gaze because it doesn’t speak of mutual grief, loss and hurt, it translates to something else. As a British Muslim I am grateful that my experience of 9/11 doesn’t compare to what some of American Muslims have been through. Many stories I have heard and read where being Muslim, was a punchline, I have heard people hiding their identity because they were to ‘visible’. I have accepted that this will continue to happen until we all accept that the person behind this attack wasn’t ‘Muslim’. My religion condones the killing of innocent people so how could this person be Muslim? Why shouldn’t we mourn, are we not human or is it a pick and choose of whom do we show empathy for? I know seeing the statistics, the documentaries, family, friends who were their witnessing and recounting their stories and experiences that it hurts me too. That we should be having conversations of how this tragedy effects ‘everyone’, of the people we lost, the memories, the stories, the frontline who helped, the people who sadly passed.
September 20th, 2001- George W. Bush declares a “War on Terror”. Someone again giving permission to kill innocent people in response to the attack on September 11 where someone killed innocent people. It just makes me questions who wins because to me I don’t see any victory or justice, I see innocent people being in the middle of it having their lives being taken away from them for something they didn’t do.
Twenty years later, I now question what has changed. A pandemic and a new president being sworn in maybe, but war is continuing, narratives have not been changed as Islamophobia still runs deep, people still have a hard time accepting people from the LGBTQ community, abortion laws have come into place, when we just about got rid of them, America are still at war with Afghanistan and have abandoned Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban and the Taliban using Islam for their own means which in turn reignites the white saviour complex. When does it stop? This day is etched into people’s hearts forever, nobody has rights over it more than the others, this is the day we remember, reflect, and mourn for the loss and destruction, this is a day of togetherness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/9-11-american-muslims.html
Hello Fiz,
I read your piece and felt your emotion run through my bones. I do not understand what it means to be Muslim and living as an innocent victim of the blame culture. Many Muslims lost their lives that day in 9/11 and they mourn as well. Take a way religion, take away our differences our flesh and souls are all born the same. Sadly the journey through life is complexed and teachings of ‘right' and ‘wrong' get passed down from generation to generation, so does hate, greed and misinformation. . The first and most important thing we should all learn is acceptance without judgement, forgiveness and to truly understand we are all imperfect. Not to judge one anothe…