Fifteen Years After 9/11
Fifteen Years After 9/11: Has the West Learned Its Lesson?
Jacob Thomas
27 September, 2016
Judging by the way Western political leaders look at Islam and its global challenge fifteen years after 9/11, hardly any changes can be observed. President Barack Obama, the Governor of New York, and Mayor of New York City, were very reluctant to refer to the coordinated attacks on Saturday/Sunday, September 18/19 in New York City, New Jersey, and St Cloud, Minnesota, as acts of Islamic terrorism.
As long as West leaders continue to regard Islam as a religion like the rest of the major World religions, they prove their ignorance. Islam began as a religious faith, that was in 610 A.D. Beginning in 622 A.D., when Muhammad moved to Medina, Islam became a religion fused into a political system with global imperial ambitions.
Nowadays, Muslims have perfected the art of propaganda. They portray a tolerant face that’s willing to work out a “peaceful coexistence” with Western civilization. It’s nothing else than the practice of their age-long “Taqiyya.” This was typified in 2008 at a meeting that took place in Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut.
The following is the text of an article I wrote at the time; it demonstrates that quite often, when a Christian-Muslim encounter takes place, it’s the Christian side that compromises, while the Muslim side manifests its usual intransigence.
On Sunday, 16 November, 2008, an article appeared in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal with this headline: “A Common What? Yale hosts a Christian-Muslim ‘reconciliation’ conference – behind closed doors.” The author, Sarah Ruden, who is a visiting scholar at Yale Divinity School (YDS), expressed shock at the school’s requirement that everybody on the campus behave properly during the Conference toward its Muslim guests by exhibiting deference to their sensitivities!
Before I comment on her article, some necessary background about the conference is needed.
Back on 13 September, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made a reference to Islam in his address at Regensburg, Germany. A month later, 138 Muslim scholars addressed the Christian World in an open letter entitled, “A Common Word Between Us and You.” One Christian response to the “Common Word” overture came from scholars of the Yale Divinity School. They released a statement “warmly embracing the open letter ‘A Common Word between Us and You.’” It was entitled, “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word between Us and You.” Here is a sample of the flowery language used in that response:
“‘Let this common ground’—the dual common ground of love of God and of neighbour – ‘be the basis of all future interfaith dialogue between us,’ your courageous letter urges. Indeed, in the generosity with which the letter is written you embody what you call for. We most heartily agree.”
The authors of the Yale Divinity School Response asked others to sign on to its “Response” and gathered many signatures throughout the USA. Some responses were surprising because they came from conservative Protestant institutions that typically are not willing to cooperate with organizations like YDS which they deem to be theologically liberal. But other Christian leaders saw through the YDS Response, regarding it as a weak and evasive document that served only the Islamic cause and did not reflect even basic Christian points of doctrinal difference with Islam. The YDS Response was seen as submitting needlessly to the Muslim scholar’s terms of engagement. Even without expressly stating it, they brought to light the fact that those signing on to the Response acted just like dhimmis, meekly and obediently agreeing to the terms for dialogue set forth by the Islamic scholars.
The July, 2008 “Christian-Muslim ‘reconciliation’ conference” was the first formal meeting since the “Common Word” initiative was launched in October, 2006. The WSJ article, offered a needed critique from one woman’s dissident standpoint of a Conference that was definitely less than stellar. Once again, apparently, the fundamental issues that separate Christianity from Islam were not sufficiently on display.
What now follows is Sarah Ruden’s thoughts on the Conference, about which I will reflect in due course:
“I’m a visiting scholar at Yale Divinity School, not a student, and as a Quaker I can’t be ordained, so I delete most of the institutional email notices unread. But I eagerly read the announcement that came in July of this year about the first conference to follow from the document called “A Common Word between Us and You.” That public expression by Muslim leaders of their solidarity with Christians had received a warm response from Western churches and universities, and now the conference was warmly entitled “Loving God and Neighbor in Word and Deed: Implications for Christians and Muslims.”
“I recalled my excitement about the many luminaries’ denial that there was any need for Christians and Muslims to be at each other’s throats; I had been proud of the role played by Yale religious scholars. I now wanted to attend the conference and help to assure the guests of Christian goodwill, but also ask some of the hard questions that Quakers in South Africa, my second home, had been asking for decades, especially since the failures of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“But as I learned to my anger, neither I nor any other ordinary members of the Divinity School community could attend any panels of “Loving God and Neighbor.” All of them were closed—extremely unusual for this institution. The purpose of Dean Harold Attridge’s email was not invitation but warning: “I am writing today to let you know how these events might impact life on the [Yale Divinity School] Quad” (his emphasis).
He continued in normal font. “Firstly, some of you have been asking about any adjustments regarding dress or behavior that might make both you and our guests feel more comfortable during their visit here. I have attached for your information a document prepared by the Reconciliation Program at YCFC [Yale Center for Faith and Culture] to guide all staff directly associated with the upcoming workshop and conference in regard to dress and behavior.”
“My anger grew as I read the attachment …
“Because we seek to have a ministry of reconciliation, it is our aim to defer to our guests’ [author’s emphasis] sense of propriety whenever possible, by behaving and dressing in a manner that reflects the honor and dignity we wish to bestow upon our guests. In this specific context, Muslims and Christians are working together to organize this conference, but Christians are the primary hosts, meaning that during this conference we deferentially choose to define “decency,” “honor” and “modesty” by what our Muslim guests consider “decent,” “honorable” and “modest” (rather than by our own culture’s definitions), giving new cultural expression to the dignity and respectability with which we normally conduct ourselves.”
“[H]ere we were being asked to ‘defer’ in all ‘definitions’—not just in our actions, that is, but in our thoughts. … We were to do this merely to allow meetings between some of our associates and people who would not, for fear of defilement, enter the same building we entered in our usual clothes and with our usual manners.
“But it isn’t simply that I was ticked off (though I was) at being asked not to wear sandals or speak at any length to any male or even smile at one or shake one’s hand, in order to accommodate a gathering, I was excluded from, though it was held in my workplace. It’s that the Western leaders of what may be the major push for Christian-Muslim reconciliation appear to be so single-mindedly zealous, so prone to create impressions in conflict with reality, and so oblivious of what this could lead to, that a mere waste of time and money might be the best outcome.
“It is natural to suspect (especially because of the much greater secrecy) that both sides of the ‘Common Word’ project have motivations—if only careerism—beyond the desire to see Christians and Muslims kill each other less often. And it somehow makes sense that ordinary people world-wide are not gushing in letters to the editor and in coffee houses, ‘Thank goodness that they’re talking to each other! Now everything will be OK.’
“The cost of a phony love-fest between Christian and Muslim leaders could be high. There is already a great imbalance in knowledge or respect, if not both. As part of our confirmation course, when I was a teenage Methodist in rural Ohio in the 1970s, we were taken not only to a synagogue but to a mosque and learned the basics of both faiths. But the Muslim cleric who lectured to us clearly disapproved of Christianity, and the minister misled him to keep the peace. We don’t want to be called Mohammedans, the Muslim huffed; we don’t worship Mohammed, who was a man. The minister jumped in to assure him that we were just the same—we didn’t call ourselves Jesus-ans or anything like that. I nearly gasped at the lie, but I wasn’t bold enough to challenge it.
“I’m bolder now. And truth in theology while theology approaches politics is worth a bold defense. Essential to Muslim extremism is the notion that the West is decadent and not attached to its professed values. Not to speak up for Christianity with complete honesty sends our Muslim interlocutors home with a time-bomb version of us: either that we have no objection to being like them, or that we are in essence like them already. America has made the mistake of assuming our values are universal, and we may be encouraging the same kind of assumption about ourselves.”
Perhaps Ms. Ruden was not the best person to reflect on this conference because her arguments are not as effective as they could be. She exhibits some flippancy and over-personalizes the situation and appears to be a theological liberal. She was perturbed about the demand that all the westerners show decency, modesty and honor in their attire at the Conference based on Islamic terms. Not being allowed to wear “sandals” bothered her as well. It should be noted, however, that conservative Christians also believe in dressing with decency, modesty and honor. Of course, that would not mean being forced to wear a hijab in the presence of a Muslim, but there should be no undue concern about wanting to honor guests by dressing appropriately. For instance, I would hope Ms. Ruden would agree that one wouldn’t go into the presence of the Queen of England in shorts and sandals. What is worth noting about the issue though is that the YDS seems quite willing to overlook such virtues in the Christian theological tradition by making no similar code for its own scholars in their normal daily attire on the campus. Yet it is willing to impose such a code upon its scholars if they wish to attend the Conference because they must show deference to Muslims. So they are not really as interested in decency, modesty and honor as they are in being politically correct and deferential to Islam.
A more serious flaw, however, was the YDS demand that the American women at the Conference had to be careful how they interacted with male Muslims. Doesn’t this attempt by the YDS to placate Muslim malehood indicate an almost amusing example of Dhimmitude in action? What the YDS would never for a moment dare to implement at its own school it has allowed Muslim scholars to achieve. To placate the Muslim Men’s Islamic faith, the YDS allowed them to show their utter disrespect for Western women, particularly Americans, by making sure Muslims weren’t offended by having to interact with free, Western women at the Conference by any supposed misstep any such women might make in interrelating with them. What an egregious view of women these Islamic scholars hold! Why were they allowed to practice their peculiar disrespect toward women while the hosts set aside their own codes of honor toward women that apply in all other instances on the Yale campus? The hosts truly make themselves look ridiculous, showing an almost criminal disregard for and disobedience of all the rules of decency, dignity and honor toward women which they so willingly comply with at all other times.
Of even more significant concern, however, is the attitude the Yale Divinity School displays when dialoguing with representatives of Islamic organizations. They almost totally gloss over the real obstacles standing in the way of genuine dialogue. There are numerous theological differences that are simply incapable of being softened or toned down to comport with Islamic demands. But the YDS is representative of a type of Christianity that does not necessarily hold to the historic Christian faith and is open to the idea that all religions are equally valid. Most Christians would not agree with the YDS interpretation of Christianity. Therefore, they are not considered the best types of people to even be dialoguing with Muslims.
In the “Common Word initiative” Muslims were insistent on attempting to prove that there were subjects that are supposedly “common” to both faiths. This is a theory needing much elaboration and explanation before one can note “common” themes in both religions. Certainly, some simple things are similar but when explaining the overall beliefs of Christianity, most serious issues are definitely not “common”. This Conference gave Muslims another opportunity to press their claims in this regard and perhaps even go further in attempting to ever more subtly put the YDS types of liberal Christians into more compromising positions. And the Christian hosts of the Conference showed their willingness to bow down to the demands of their Muslim guests in creating a campus milieu at Yale University that would abide by Islamic rules. This attitude is reminiscent of others throughout history that were subjected to and complied with the Qur’anic requirement that dhimmis must not only pay the Jizya tax, but should do so with utter humility and self-abnegation!
I wonder! Are these Western scholars, who regard themselves as representatives of Christianity, really aware of the authoritative texts of Islam that require submission of all non-Muslims to Allah’s religion? And what about their knowledge of the history of the last 1400 years when the Islamic Futuhat brought into the orbit of Daru’l Islam, large areas of the world from Indonesia to Morocco? And if the American hosts at YDS don’t yet feel the pressure of the Muslim population in the USA, would a visit to Paris, Marseilles, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, and Berlin open their eyes as they observe how the growing Muslim populations are making ever more strident demands that, if heeded, would alter forever the democratic nature of those societies?
I write these words mindful of two recent Arabic articles, one from the Alawan, and the other from the Elaph sites telling the unbelievable accounts of ethnic-religious cleansing that is going on in Mosul, Iraq, against Christian communities. Christians are being driven from their homes and forced to flee for their lives by organized Islamist gangs.
In the rarified atmosphere of Yale Divinity School, such present-day tragedies are ignored because they don’t fit the alternative reality the YDS is attempting to instill on those gullible enough to accept them. Christians are forever reminded of and must apologize for the Crusades but the long, bloody history of Islam’s attempt at world domination is downplayed, if not totally ignored.
The scholars of YDS, while claiming that they are in the forefront of a movement that will bring reconciliation between Christians and Muslims, close their eyes to the fact that, throughout history, aggression has more often come from the Islamic side. Honesty must always surround discussions between opposing parties. Ignoring the lessons of history, and covering over the radical differences between Christianity and Islam, does not advance the cause of peace. Rather it increases the sufferings of Christians who live within Daru’l Islam.
Let us hope there will be more people like Sarah Ruden willing to critique the inroads of political correctness on divinity school campuses and elsewhere in America. We need to be cognizant of any future conversations between those who launched the “Common Word” initiative and their gullible friends among the YDS faculty and elsewhere.
That 15 years after 9/11, Islam is still being blamed, underlines the justifications Radical Muslims give for armed Jihad against the West.
France were the first people we heard to have come out and declared the whole thing a bloody lie.
http://911review.org/Wiki/PentagonAttackDamage.shtml
People are abused, accused, and reviled, simply for having BRAINS, and using them to THINK.
How can AVIATION FUEL melt STEEL GIRDERS- as they claim happened with the World Trade Centre Towers?
How can aviation fuel burn an AIRLINER to ASHES, or VAPORIZE it entirely- as they say happened at the Pentagon?
How can one possibly have missed hearing about this, since all these years?
17 of the 19 alleged Muslim Hijackers were SAUDI ARABS- therefore, it made total sense to bomb IRAQ, and attack AFGHANISTAN!
Where did everyone’s MINDS go?
Where were the SCIENTISTS and the LAWYERS to come out and prove this was all a lie?
NO WONDER THEY WANT TO FIGHT BACK- THEIR COUNTRIES WERE ATTACKED FOR NO JUST CAUSE!
Even Osama bin Laden, who died by 2002, according to former White House aide, STEVE PIECZENIK, from Natural Causes, denied having anything to do with 9/11- then they presented all these videos of some loser, who didn’t even LOOK like Osama- and said: “THIS IS A VIDEO OF OSAMA BIN LADEN, THREATENING US AGAIN!”
Where was the OUTCRY: “IT’S A LIE!!!”?
They killed this man NINE TIMES-innocent people besides- and NOBODY is ACCOUNTABLE???
Are you people all MENTAL?
We, as Americans, fifteen years after 9/11 should have had learned that the god of Islam is not the God Bible of the Bible. Likewise, we should have leaded that the god of Islam is a vicious, brutal and malicious god. As the following explained in more detail.
Since the fifteenth anniversary has come and gone of the murderous jihad terror attack of September 11, 2001 was just yesterday, in when those jihadists of al Qaeda struck with all the viciousness and deadly malice the Islamic terror could muster at that time , it’s thus now an appropriate time to make something clear. Which is that the god of Islam likes it when non-Muslims [Kafirs] die . For example in the year 2005 on Palestinian television Imam Suliman Satari said “Annihilate the Infidels… Allah count them and kill them, to the last one and don’t leave even one.” Furthermore Imam Abu Hamza Al-Masri said “What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy when Kafiers get killed. [1]
. The above words of these Imams reflect the example of Islam’s prophet and the teachings of the Quran. “Muhammad now fell upon them [the Jews] slew all the men, nine hundred of them…”[2]
Moreover, the Quran reads “When ye encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads, until ye have made great slaughter among them. Verily if Allah pleased, He could take vengeance on them without your assistance, but He commandeth you to fight His Battles.” 47:4
In short, these Imams and their murderous prophet with their bloody Quran show the world what Islam really is. After all, Jesus did teach “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Matthew 7:20. [KJV]
[1] The disc documentary OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM’s AGAINST THE WEST
[2] THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY: THE WHOLE STORY OF MAN by H.G. Wells
Since this month was the fifteenth anniversary of that murderous jihad affront against humankind and vicious attack against United States which occurred on September 11, 2001. As Americans we should and must remember that for the United States to continue as a great power in the world in spite of the current threats of the Islamic terrorism by jihadist /Muslim terrorists who are operatives of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other jihadists of other similar jihad terror entities. Americans then should have Vigilance, Conviction and, of course, Fortitude. As one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had declared “Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.” and “A conviction that we are right accomplishes half the difficulty of correcting wrong.” Likewise, Mr. Jefferson had also stated “Fortitude…teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them.” So in other words we , as Americans ,should have learned keep moving on strongly with Vigilance, Conviction and Fortitude.
This month being the month of being the fifteenth anniversary of that heinous and murderous Islamic jihad attack against both humankind and America by jihadists who were operatives of al Qaeda. Who were as delusional as men can possibly be. With their strong, yet bling and unquestioning faith in Islam’s “holy book,” the Quran with is false doctrine of a sex-filled paradise with many virgins ,houris in it for the Muslim male who dies as a “martyr” in the jihad for the cause of Islam. This abuses doctrine of the Quran of “killing and being killed” and in the jihad in found for example 9:111. Likewise a doctrine of a paradise with many virgins for the jihadist “martyr>” is found in the Quran in 44:54. 55:56. 78:31.
Second, concerning the subject of those Islamic suicide/homicide – bombers /attackers of 9/11. They are so thoroughly brainwashed and deluded that they actually think of their murderous actions as “martyrdom operations.” This jihad evil and madness is based on the doctrine the Quran of a far-fetched and nonsensical doctrine of a sex- filled paradise with many virgins, hours, in it for the use only by the jihadist/Muslim male who dies as a “martyr” fighting for the cause of Islam. This weird religious/Islamic This bizarre and odd, irrational Quranic doctrine is not open, to the jihadist, to inquiry, questioning. logic or reason. So this blind unreasoning kind of “faith” in the Koran is a reminder that Thomas Jefferson had written. “Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.” Likewise, Benjamin Franklin had printed in POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK something which may apply to this topic. For Mr. Franklin had printed “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
Don’t let them fool you, the many apologists for Islam is will endeavor to set up a smokescreen to hide the reality of the truth about the violence and deadly essence of Islam by making the bogus claim that the al Qaeda operatives mass murderer on 9/11 were not real Muslims and that they were breaking the laws of the Qu ‘ran by their violence and deadly actions.” The apologists for Islam will further make the totally false claim that “Those terrorists on 9/11 were only criminals who hijacked the peaceful religion of Islam for Politics.” Those outrageously false claims are weak attempt of damage control for the image of Islam to the West. For the “holy book” of Islam the Qu ‘ran. For the Qu ‘ran instruct in Sura 9:111. Muslims who are engaging the jihad that “The believer’s fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain ,they kill and are killed “ That’s just what happened on September 11, 2001 the jihadists of al Qaeda “killed and were killed” in those 9/11 jihad attacks against both humankind and America. The Quran also teaches in Sura 9:123 to that jihad –minded Muslims behavior towards non-Muslims “let them find harshness in you…” Those Islamic attacks on 9/11 were indeed very “harsh.” As Sura 2:191 instructs “kill the disbeliever wherever you find them.” That’s a very strange kind of “peaceful religion” if there ever was one. Just to site one more out on many from the Qu ‘ran about the instruction of deadly violence is Sura 47:4. Which instructs “Whenever you encounter unbelievers strike off their heads until you make a great slaughter among them …” Let’s face it, using jet planes a missiles as those jihadist/ Muslims did of September 11, sure made a greater “slaughter among them” then sword can. Wake up West to the actual nature of Islam before it’s too late.
Fifteen years ago many Muslims rejoiced in different countries around the world then they found about the outcome of those al Qaeda jihad attacks in which so many people died . They were so glad and happy about all those people who died in such terrible ways. The reason they felt so happy with joy is because ,as the Bible explains such people have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4:2. {K.J.V.] For them that “hot iron” is Islam
On the day of September 9 some I know a man who works as a security guard at a public place told me a Muslim actually had the nerve to walk over to him and said to him two Muslim “Jokes” about 9/11. As if it was a funny subject. It’s wrong to even try to “joke” about 9/11. Talk about bad “jokes” those two are the very much worst of all. The first was “What is the difference between September 11, 20001 and a cow?” answer “You don’t keep milking a cow after fifteen years.” Not only is that “joke” awful but those Muslims trying to be funny by say that cruel thing do have some gall because they have no room to talk . For they are still are “milking” the topic of the Crusades and the Crusade have been over for well more than seven hundred years. What gall they have! The second “Muslim “joke” about 9/11 is “On September 11, 2001 the people trapped on the upper floors of the WTC had ordered their pizza sent to them plane.” To say that such “humor” is terrible is an understatement. Furthermore, those Muslim who say those “jokes” are really only exposing their own sick, vicious, callous and heartless Islamic mindset.”
Those nineteen al Qaeda operatives with all their Islamic scheming in their malicious and murderous jihad and likewise demonically ambitious. Furthermore, all those Muslim /jihadist of September 11, 2001 all had a very harsh reality check after they died in their deluded jihad Islam murder attack. Foe after those Islamic terrorists died they found themselves no in any kind of paradise whatsoever, with are without virgins, Those Muslim terrorists of al Qaeda found themselves trapped and suffering in the fires of hell. For the Bible teaches that a murderer “shall not inherit the kingdom of God,” Galatians 5:21. Likewise, the Bible further teaches that “murderers …shall have their part in the lake of which burneth with fire and brimstone…” Revelations 21:8. [K.J.V.]
There can be no doubt that Osama bin Laden was grinning on that day of September 11, 2001 when he received news of that murderous affront on humankind and America, being such an evil and vile character that he was. Bin Laden when he found out that his demonic scheme worked all he could do was sit around a grin. That Islamic fiend Bin Laden that no sympathy or empathy all for all the people who died the awful way in America. For he was actually glad about that murderous jihad calamity that occurred that day of 9/11. To such a callousness of that character as Bin Laden the Bible teaches “He who is glad calamity will not go unpunished.” Proverbs 17:5. For that’s just what happened. For as they say “What goes around comes around.” So when his deadly violence came back on him in his compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad he was no longer grinning. For on the day the heroic Navy SEAL’s exterminated him, the report was that he looked confused and scared. Likewise the Bible teaches “For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” Galatians 6;7. Bin Laden sowed violence and death so therefore he reaped violence and death. The very words of Jesus thus are proven be to be true. For Jesus taught the “He who takes up the sword shall perish by the sword.” Matthew 26:52. For Bin laden took up the firearm and he died by the firearm Osama bin Laden is now suffering in the fire of hell. May the name of Osama bin Laden rot in history. As the Bible teaches “The name of the wicked shall rot.” Proverbs 10:7.
Also, the heroes of United 93 banded together to fight the Jihadists and foiled their evil scheme by preventing more death and destruction in Washington D.C. The heroes united in a band or cord against those Islamic evildoers. The above is a reflection of Ecclesiastes 4: 12. This reads “Though one may be over-powered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken..”
Finally, all these jihadists will have a harsh awakening after they die; they will find out that they were lied to about the 72 virgins in a paradise. That is just one of many “cleverly invented stories” of men Second Peter 1:16. Instead of the virgins they will find themselves in hell with no hope.
There shall be no 911 if US not allow all muslims to enter US.