Thousands of people had just arrived at work in the heart of New York. Countless mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and children had said goodbye to their families just a short time before. But then, just in the twinkling of an eye, like a scene in a Hollywood blockbuster movie, two enormous explosions pulverised the Twin Towers of The World Trade Center. According to 9/11 commission, the September 11 was a series of committing suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda upon the United States of America. On that black letter morning, four commercial passenger jets took off and shortly after the pilots were ordered to land at a designated airport with a military presence. The 19 freedom fighters who hijacked those commercial passenger jet airliners intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the twin towers. The Pentagon was crashed by the third airliner, while the fourth airliner crashed in a field after it was directed towards Washington. Those towers disintegrated in a volcanic eruption of dust and rubble while the entire world watched in shock and awe on live television. Since there were no survivors from any of the flight, a total of 2,995 deaths, including the 19 hijackers and 2,976 victims were announced. The whole world expressed their heartfelt sorrow, horror and sent condolences to the American people. To respond to this terrible disaster, our former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed expressed sadness, but urged the US government not to seek revenge. According to him, retaliation would lead to the deaths of many people and would be followed by more counter-strikes. However, the day after 9/11 illustrated more tremendous crisis.
First of all, the sadness and further impacts faced by American people and the nation itself. The damages to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, the rebuilding processes of WTC were completed in 2008, the economic hurts and scars had been recovered magnificently by current government of the US. Yet, psychological impacts in the aftermath of the attacks still heavily hurt thousands of people in New York City. Basically, people exposed to the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath might experience emotions such as fear, helplessness, or horror since the events include serious injuries and terrific death rate. Most people exposed to the WTC attack envisaged some signs of stress in the immediate and short-term aftermath of the event. This is a normal reaction that might disappear in a few weeks. Some people, however, continue to experience stress or their symptoms worsen, even years after the WTC attacks. The most common long term mental health conditions seen in those exposed to the traumatic events of 9/11 were post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and other disorders. A person can suffer from more than one of these conditions. People, who continue to experience stress for a long time after their exposure to the horrible tragedy or have stress that gets worse with time may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and shall consider seeking professional help. PTSD is an intense physical and emotional response to the thoughts. People who directly witnessed the WTC attacks and those who participated in the rescue and recovery efforts might be at increased risk for developing depression, with or without PTSD. Depression can be a disabling condition that affects many aspects of a person’s life. Therefore, the traumas become the long-term effect that the American should combat at the first place.
On the other hand, let us take a look on the huge impacts faced by Muslims. As I had mentioned before, the United States government determined that al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, bore responsibility for the attacks, with the FBI stating that the evidence linking al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the most terrible, shocking events taking place in the United States of America was clear and irrefutable. This foundation could be considered as the beginning of the end of the United States’ relationship with the Islamic world and Islam religion. They began to stereotype; All Muslims are terrorists. Their media unceasingly push stereotypes of Muslims which links them to terrorism in a way it doesn't do with other terrorists. There were many news reports talked about the relationship between Muslims and terrorism. It was a great upset for Muslims upon the claim that 98% of terrorist activities that occurred involved Muslims. Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Momar Gaddafi, Louis Farrakhan, Yasser Arafat, Dawood Ibrahim, Abu Nidal were named as the followers of Islam who enshrined the brutality of their crimes and terrorism. And now, Osama and Khalid were labelled as the new generation of freedom fighter who continued the legacy of “Islamic terror”. The great question accrued regarding this situation is, “When did you ever hear a news report which talked of the ‘Christian terrorist group, the IRA’ or the ‘Christian Basque terrorists in Spain?". The media had been very busy putting the blame on Muslims and critically highlighted the ‘barbaric activities’ of Islamic terrorists, thus they became too exhausted as they are unable to open their eyes and direct their sight to the atrocities of Ariel Sharron towards Palestinian. The main point here is, Muslims all around the world should not be blamed for the attacks made by those hijackers who claimed themselves as the faithful followers of Islam. According to Islam, murdering innocent people is a great sin that, unless forgiven by God, brings torment in Hell. Thus, a religious person who has fear of God can never commit such an act.
This stereotype, without any doubt, led to the arising of another unwanted crisis which is religion tension. The vivid images of the 9/11 hijackers are highly memorable and become linked in the West’s minds to all people of all nine hundred million Muslims all around the world. The chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Omar Ahmad, has quoted that a signal will be shown by the administration of US that Islam is a religion of peace and of tolerance to the Muslim community. This was actually his response towards a claim by Jerry Falwell who completed the demonization of Islam by smearing the prophet of Islam as a terrorist in his appearance in the CBS program "60 Minutes”. As a religion leader, he supposed to be very circumspect in the way he talked about 9/11 incident and about other religion. Almost everyone on the earth today is discussing Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. People want to know, "Who was he exactly?", "What did he taught?", "Why was he loved so much by some and hated so much by others?", "Did he live up to his claims?", "Was he a holy man?", "Was he a prophet of God?", "What is the truth about this man - Muhammad?". Falwell has envisaged a false picture of Muhammad as he is in effect of cultivating hates and prejudices towards Muhammad and his teaching. His statement regarding this issue has sparked riots in India, helped religious parties win elections in Pakistan and undermined public sympathy in Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq for the US war on terrorism. It should be noticed that Muslim might come with another counter-response, and this would worsen the conflict between the West and Islam. In order to conclude this disputes, we need to keep in mind that, among those who were killed in Washington or New York, there were people who loved Jesus Christ (Christians), Prophet Moses (Jews) and Muslims. All the three Theistic religions command love, mercy and peace. Terror, on the other hand, is the opposite of religion; it is cruel, merciless and it demands bloodshed and misery. Therefore, we should cooperate rather than directing our fingers towards other religions.
Furthermore, shortly after the attacks, President George W. Bush visited a mosque and claimed that the US war on terrorism was not a war against Islam which he called a religion of peace. Bush spoke before the nation and highlighted that his administration had launched the war on terrorism for the purpose of bringing Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to the justice besides curbing other terrorists’ network. This led to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan was said to be the “main campus” for the Al-Qaeda’s terrorists. Whereas, the stated purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to destroy a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that the government of Saddam Hussein has created and might use. Besides, this invasion was to end the atrocities of Hussein’s government was committing against the people of Iraq. During the first few years after the 9/11 attacks, international support for an aggressive counter-response by the US roused high, however, as the years of the Bush administration seemed to run on without producing any of the promised results, international support for Bush administration policies seemed to wither away and to even turn antagonistic. Since the war did not end in 2003 and Bush was actually planning a fallacy, it continued with explosive arising of deaths both to Iraqis and to US troops. This war has not only provoked widespread anger, but it envisaged that Bush was willing to breach the laws just for revenge. When he urged Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq within 48 hours, he was in effect of breaching the United Declaration of Human Right (UDHR). One of the provisions of UDHR stated that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country. Thus, it is illegal for Bush to use such forces towards the leader of Iraq.
In a nutshell, even though the attacks were happened more than eight years ago, we still can see the ripple effects of the 9/11 attacks in this world. Humanity is yet to obtain perfect mutual understanding between varieties of interconnecting societies that exist in this world. This lacks of understanding have given birth to numerous bloodsheds and tragedies which affect two significant parties, the west and the Islamic world. Bleak future waiting in front of today civilization if the dispute between these two party continue as if there is no end line for this global crisis. The Western world, especially the United State need to reject their stereotypes and prejudices toward Muslims, and speaks as objectively as possible about the situation in order to start new age of reconciliation between West and the Islamic world. To Muslims, wake up and support the spreading of "True Islam", which is a religion of love, friendship, peace and but, on the contrary, a measure serving the best interests of Islam. Our hope is that these measures will help the world to get rid of terrorism and all other bigoted, brutal, barbarous structures. 9/11 was the past; we should critically think about the future and let the wind of change blow away all the problems and polemics that took place before. Last but not least, have a blissful Ramadan n strive diligently to gain His forgiveness.
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