September 11

 

Beams of light at the site of the Twin Towers in New York City, in memory of those who were killed. Photo: pxfuel.com

September 11, 2001 - Nine-Eleven, according to the American way of writing dates. Over the twenty five years since that day, political, cultural, economic and, above all, religious divisions around the world have increased sharply. This single date changed not only America, but the entire world.

When this was happening in America on the morning of Nine-Eleven, it was the early hours of September 12 in Melbourne. At the time I was renting a room in Phil's apartment. I did not have a television. Phil had brought a twelve-inch black-and-white analogue television into my room. Digital television was just beginning to arrive then. People were throwing away their old analogue televisions. Phil had picked up one such discarded television from the footpath and put it in my room. I had fallen asleep while lying down and watching it. Suddenly, after waking in the early hours of the morning, I saw the events at the Twin Towers being shown on television. At first I could not understand what I was seeing. I thought a movie was on. But very soon I realised that this was no scene from a film; it was live coverage of what was happening in America at that very moment.

By the next day, everyone knew what had happened there. Nineteen al-Qaeda militants, divided into four groups, had hijacked four passenger planes at almost the same time. Two of the planes flew into the two towers of the Twin Towers. The third plane was crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. More than three thousand ordinary people died within just a few hours. Invoking Islam, the terrorists had cold-bloodedly planned and brutally murdered so many people - women, men and children.

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burning. Photo: skeptic.com

September 11, 2001, 8:45 a.m. New York time. Manhattan's office district had awakened to a bright, sunny Tuesday morning. An American Airlines Boeing 767 flew into the 80th floor of the North Tower of the Twin Towers. In an instant, fire from twenty thousand gallons of aviation fuel spread through the building. While firefighters were making every possible effort to save lives, and television cameras had begun broadcasting the event live as what appeared to be a simple accident, another Boeing 767 - United Airlines Flight 175 - flew in eighteen minutes after the first impact and crashed into the 60th floor of the South Tower. It then became clear that these were not accidents, but direct attacks.

Within fifteen minutes, the entire South Tower collapsed. By half past ten, the North Tower too had been reduced to the ground. More than two and a half thousand people were buried beneath the rubble.

Attack on the Pentagon. Photo: Flickr.

While millions of Americans were watching the attack on the Twin Towers live on television, American Airlines Flight 77 was circling in the sky above downtown Washington, DC, the capital of the United States. At 9:45 a.m. it crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US military. A large section of the enormous building collapsed. Within minutes, the 64 passengers on the plane and 125 military officers had lost their lives.

 

The fourth plane, United Flight 93, was travelling from New Jersey to California with 44 passengers. Forty minutes after take-off, terrorists disguised as passengers took control of the aircraft. By then, many of the passengers, as well as the captain and crew, had learned about the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They realised that none of them was likely to survive. Rather than die helplessly, they decided to do something before they died and rushed at the hijackers. Several passengers sent messages to their families by mobile phone to say goodbye. The passengers attacked the terrorists in the cockpit. The plane lost control and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. Everyone died. Had the passengers not resisted in this way, the plane might have crashed into the White House or Capitol Hill.

Later, much later, it became known that the principal planner of the attack was al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and his group. Many of the 19 militants had received flight training in the United States for more than a year. They had remained in America for more than a year, planning how to destroy America. There were also al-Qaeda people among airport security personnel. With their help, the militants boarded the planes carrying knives. Without any other weapons, they used the aircraft themselves, together with their fuel, as giant missiles.

A total of 2,996 people were killed in the Nine-Eleven attacks. In trying to save those who were under attack, 343 firefighters and medical workers, and 60 police officers, lost their lives.

For the past twenty years, the chain of action and reaction following this event has continued. Air-transport management and security systems around the world have changed fundamentally. The US Department of Homeland Security was created. Following this model, airport security in other countries has also become excessively expensive and frustrating.

Beyond all this, perhaps the greatest change is that people's trust in one another has broken down. Within a few days of Nine-Eleven, I was asked the same question several times: 'Are you a Muslim?' What did that imply - that a Muslim is automatically a dangerous person? That a Muslim can no longer be trusted?

In October 2001, I travelled to New Zealand. At the airport I saw what the aftershock of Nine-Eleven really meant. In April 2002, I went to the United States. It took four to five hours simply to pass through the security gate. And then there were the looks of distrust, suspicion and hatred. In February 2003, I visited Ground Zero, the site of the Twin Towers. The marks left by the deeds of a few religious fanatics are still there. And so are the tears of three thousand families.

This is how it has happened throughout the ages. Everyone has to bear the consequences of the actions of a handful of bad people.