September 11, 2001: Nine Years On

 By Frank Salvato

The subject of the attacks of September 11, 2001, seems to validate the notion that the American public has an attention span issue. How else can we explain the “tolerance” argument being foisted upon the citizenry by proponents of the Islamic Center and mosque slated for construction just 500 feet from the epicenter of Ground Zero? How else can we explain the abundance of Wahabbist literature in Saudi funded mosques all over the United States? And how else can we explain the fact that a grotesquely overwhelming number of violent acts are committed, daily, in the name of Islam?

 

Can anyone possibly believe these issues would have been embraced with apathy and conciliation on September 12, 2001; just one day after Americans watched their countrymen leaping from jet-fuel infused infernos only to partially disintegrate as they impacted with the ground below?

 

Can anyone imagine any family member of anyone killed by the bloodthirsty and barbaric Islamist ideologues on that fateful day rationalizing the construction of an Islamic center and mosque on what is literally the graveyard for 2,977 souls; souls dispatched in the name of Allah and Muhammad?

 

And what of the encroachment of Sharia into the Western culture, into the American culture? Would anyone who still remembered how they felt when they saw the first tower of the World Trade Center collapse be inclined to debate whether Muslim communities should be permitted to establish Sharia councils to mitigate issues within their communities here in America; councils that operate outside the constitutionally constrained legal system? Does anyone in their right mind believe that the barbaric Islamic traditions of honor killing and genital mutilation have a place in the 21st Century?

 

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, Americans from all political corners joined hands, minds and hearts in a firm determination to finally say that the scourge of radical Islamist violence needed to be confronted; needed to be vanquished; needed to be erased from the face of the Earth. On September 12, 2001, each and every American knew that to walk away from this battle – a battle foisted upon us not by our own choosing but by fundamentalist and violent Islamists – was to invite an even more catastrophic event to our shores, one that, perhaps and God forbid, could test the strength of the American will in the face of a massive bio-chemical or even nuclear attack.

 

Yet today, nine years later, we have elected as our leaders sympathizers and appeasers who are using the Iraqi and Afghan battle theaters as pawns in an ideological political game; who call the war against aggressive, radical and violent Islam an “overseas contingency plan”; and who do practically everything in their power to undercut the West’s most valuable ally in the Middle East – Israel – short of attacking her themselves.

 

Today, nine years after Muslim radicals, in an aggressive and offensive act of terrorism, dispatched 2, 977 human beings from the Earth, cries from beyond the grave beg for us to protect those still living from a similar fate; cries that ride on every wind that navigates the urban canyons of Manhattan, every ring of the Pentagon and through the fields of Shanksville.

 

But, increasingly, the American public cannot hear the cries. We are listening to agenda-driven news outlets that spotlight our elected leaders telling us we are to blame, that America is bad. We are commanded by the Progressive-Liberals to listen to CAIR and the “bridge-builder” Feisal Abdul Rauf explain to us that we are at fault, that our government made Osama bin Laden and the murderous cretins of September 11, 2001, who flew planes into buildings screaming, “Allahu Akbar!” We are too busy arguing politics to hear the pleas from beyond that warn us all – each and every one of us – to take this confrontation seriously. We are too busy.

 

A cursory examination of the Islamic culture (of which, admittedly, I am not a fan) reveals that the warriors and war designers of the Islamic world view confrontation and conquest in the measurement of centuries not decades or years. By contrast, the United States of America (only 234 years old, give or take the formative years prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence) and more importantly, the American culture, has been trained by the ideologically opportunistic to employ a sitcom attention span to all of the issues it faces; everything must be reconciled in thirty minutes, minus commercial breaks, titles and credits. Where Muslims of conquest are planning for a global Islamic Caliphate ruled by Sharia law, Americans are planning for the weekend.

 

And still the lost souls of September 11, 2001, continue to scream, to implore, to plead to anyone who will listen.

 

While we should be asking why the Islamic culture facilitates an overwhelming number of terrorist acts around the world, doing so in the name of Allah, Muhammad and Islam, many in the West – mostly Progressives, Liberals and one-worlders – insist that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Why? The facts do not lead to that conclusion. Truth be told, the facts lead to the exact opposite.

 

Since September 11, 2001, there have been approximately 16,000 acts of Islamist terrorism. That breaks down to approximately 4.8 acts of violence, 4.8 acts of Islamist terrorism, each and every day. Does this qualify Islam to claim the moniker “religion of peace?”

 

As with every other religious text, there are contradictions in the Quran. But, unlike other religions, the Quran mandates reconciliation for these contradictions. It is explained in the Quran that if two passages contradict each other the passage written later supersedes the one written earlier. Given that the “peaceful” and “tolerant” passages of the Quran were written in the early years and the violent conquest and supremacist oriented passages in the later years, the violent tenets of Islam – per the Quran – abrogate the peaceful tenets. Why haven’t we taken the time to understand this absolute fact about this ideology? Why haven’t the so-called “moderate Muslims” shared this fact with other cultures? Why do we allow appeasers and sympathizers to Islam mislead us on what the Quran actually mandates?

 

And what of the Wahabbist tenet of al taqiyya? Al taqiyya is defined, literally as,

 

“Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger – whether now or later in time – to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.”

 

In essence, al taqiyya can be generally defined as the legitimization of deception. Yet Progressives, liberals and one-worlders insist on the peaceful purity of Islam, as they seek to negotiate, to extend an “unclenched fist,” to Islamists like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad; to enter into peace talks with the Taliban and Mullah Omar. Would we be so quick to accept the “sincerity” of fundamentalist and radical Islamists were we not ignorant of the deception employed through al taqiyya?

 

What else don’t we understand about Islam? About jihadists? About the Quran? Why are Progressives, Liberals and one-worlders entered into such a dysfunctional relationship with Islam? Why are they playing the roles of “useful idiots” to Islam’s thirst for conquest?

 

If we do anything to honor the 2,977 souls lost on September 11, 2001, we should weigh heavily on the facts surrounding Islam, its history, its philosophy, its ideology and the intentions of those who follow the Quranic edicts of Muhammad blindly. If we do nothing else to appease the restless souls of those slaughtered by the Islamists of 9/11 we must quest for the truth so that we might act to secure our future.

 

We, Americans, have forgotten the pain of the fire that burned us on September 11, 2001. We have allowed the pain to subside, the scar to heal; we have done our best to “move on.” Sadly, in a confrontation of cultures, such as this is – ideological, violent, totalitarian, deceptive and oppressive – moving on leaves our society and the culture of the Western World open to conquest. We “move on,” we forget, at our own peril.

 

God bless the lost souls of September 11, 2001, comfort their families and friends and give us the strength to survive, as individuals and as a nation.

 

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative.