It is hard to believe that this happened twenty-five years ago. I was 55 years old, and we were living in Great Falls, Virginia. In some ways it still seems like yesterday.<\/p>\n
I first heard the news that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. The general feeling at the time was that it might have been a small plane, and that it was possibly an accident. Not long afterward, the speculation shifted to pilot error.<\/p>\n
It was only when the second jet struck the other building that everyone realized there was no accident involved. America was under attack.<\/p>\n
I recall that my wife, Mini, had taken our then son-in-law, Vijay, to Washington, DC, so that he could do the tourist bit. I called her and suggested that she return home. By then a plane had struck the Pentagon, and it was becoming clear that these were coordinated terrorist attacks. No one knew what was yet to come.<\/p>\n
I spent that day, and several days thereafter, glued to the television.<\/p>\n
Many thoughts went through my mind. I thought of the thousands of people trapped in the buildings with no hope of escape. I could not imagine how people who had done what they did most days\u2014got up, went to work, sat at their desks, and started another ordinary day\u2014could suddenly find themselves facing death.<\/p>\n
There were pictures of people jumping from the upper floors to escape the flames. It was almost impossible to watch. They were faced with a choice between dying from the flames and smoke or jumping from a great height.<\/p>\n
And then one wondered about the perpetrators and their motivation. What kind of hatred must they have felt to embark on a mission that would end in their own certain death?<\/p>\n
I had heard of the Japanese kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, who flew suicide missions. But the thought of deliberately killing yourself along with thousands of innocent people was difficult to comprehend.<\/p>\n
Another thought that has stayed with me is what happened on Flight 93.<\/p>\n
The passengers learned through phone calls what had happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They must have realized that their plane, too, was going to be used as a weapon.<\/p>\n
They knew that they were probably going to die one way or another. Yet some of them decided to take on the hijackers.<\/p>\n
Their plane eventually crashed into a field in Pennsylvania before it reached its intended destination.<\/p>\n
I have often thought about the difference between the hijackers and the passengers on that plane. Both groups were prepared to face death. But the hijackers were prepared to die in order to kill innocent people. The passengers were prepared to die trying to prevent the hijackers from killing even more people.<\/p>\n
There was also the unforgettable scene of President Bush being briefed on live television by Andrew Card, his chief of staff. Bush was sitting in a classroom in Florida, reading to schoolchildren, when Card came over and whispered to him what was happening.<\/p>\n
I have often wondered what was going through Bush’s mind at that moment. He had been president for only eight months when he was faced with a crisis unlike anything he could have anticipated. The country was frightened and confused, and no one knew what was going to happen next.<\/p>\n
My own exposure to the tensions between Muslims, Arabs, Jews, and Israel goes back much further than 9\/11.<\/p>\n
When I lived in England in the 1960s, I knew many Muslims\u2014people I worked with, lived around, and got to know. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the longstanding animosity toward Israel and Jews was very much in evidence.<\/p>\n
I remember a friend of mine, Ali, who was Palestinian, telling me that his parents had taught him that when he spoke about Jews\u2014Yehudi, as he put it\u2014he should spit.<\/p>\n
That has stayed with me.<\/p>\n
Of course, not everyone was as graphic in expressing their feelings, and I would certainly not suggest that all Muslims or Palestinians felt this way. But there was clearly a deep-seated hostility toward Israel and Jews among some people, and the Six-Day War brought many of those feelings to the surface.<\/p>\n
Bin Laden capitalized on those grievances and fed that hatred. He did not create them, but he used them to justify his extremist ideology and the killing of innocent people.<\/p>\n
I fear that this is still happening today.<\/p>\n
After 9\/11, America came together in a remarkable display of patriotism. American flags were everywhere. People seemed to put aside their political and other differences and rally around the country.<\/p>\n
There was something genuine about that patriotism. Nearly 3,000 innocent people had been killed. They had simply gone to work that morning, as they had done every other morning.<\/p>\n
But at times the reaction also felt like a knee-jerk response, with little or no introspection about what had brought it about. It was convenient to blame a group of terrorists who had killed innocent people in skyscrapers\u2014and of course they were responsible for what they had done. But another question seemed to receive far less attention: why did these people hate America so much that they were prepared to give their own lives to attack it? Asking that question does not in any way justify what they did.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I remember being impressed by the tolerance of the American people, who recognized that millions of Muslims living in the United States were completely innocent of what had happened, and were themselves horrified by 9\/11.<\/p>\n
Of course, there were also ugly incidents.<\/p>\n
I remember an Indian grocery store in Herndon owned by a Sikh family. A notice was placed in the window saying that Sikhs are not Muslims. The fact that they felt it necessary to put up such a notice said a lot about the atmosphere at the time.<\/p>\n
My older brother, George, was living in the UK. He had worn a beard for most of his adult life. He was seriously advised to shave it off, lest he be mistaken for a Muslim.<\/p>\n
These were small things compared with the horror of 9\/11, but they showed how the events had affected the fabric of society.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years later, not much has changed in the tensions that contributed to the events of 9\/11.<\/p>\n
The United States went to war in Afghanistan, which was directly connected to al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s support for Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n
Then came Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9\/11 attacks, but it was viewed as a threat because of the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence on which that belief was based turned out to be seriously flawed.<\/p>\n
The wars that followed resulted in enormous loss of life and displacement. Millions of people were affected, countries were destabilized, and the consequences are still being felt.<\/p>\n
And now, twenty-five years after 9\/11, we are still dealing with conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Muslims, Jews, and Christians\u2014three religions that all trace their traditions back to Abraham\u2014continue to have deep divisions between them. Each has its own history. Each has its own grievances. Each believes that it is fighting for justice.<\/p>\n
All three religions speak of justice, compassion, and the value of human life. Yet we continue to see people using religion to justify violence against people of another religion.<\/p>\n
Muslims against Jews. Jews against Muslims. Christians against Muslims.<\/p>\n
One grievance answering another. One act of violence producing another.<\/p>\n
And I fear that the cycle continues.<\/p>\n
But perhaps there is also a reason for hope.<\/p>\n
I come from Kerala, a state in southern India where millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians have lived together for generations. There have certainly been tensions and occasional religious conflicts, as there have been in most parts of the world. But religious extremism has generally not been a dominant part of life there.<\/p>\n
Kerala also has a fascinating Jewish history. Jews lived on the Malabar Coast many centuries ago, and there is a longstanding tradition that some arrived even before the time of Jesus. They were given refuge from persecution and, for many centuries, lived peacefully among the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities. Most of Kerala’s Jews remained there until the creation of Israel in 1948, after which many emigrated.<\/p>\n
I find this history encouraging. Here was a place where Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Jews could live alongside one another. They had different religions and different beliefs, but they were able to coexist. Perhaps that is what gives me some hope when I think about the events of 9\/11 and everything that has happened since.<\/p>\n
The differences between people are real. Religious beliefs are real. Historical grievances are real. But hatred is not inevitable.<\/p>\n
I think back to Ali telling me what he had been taught about Jews.<\/p>\n
I think about the people trapped in the World Trade Center and the terrible choices they had to make.<\/p>\n
I think about the passengers on Flight 93, who knew they were probably going to die but chose to fight back anyway.<\/p>\n
I think about the Sikh family in Herndon who felt they had to tell the world that they were not Muslims.<\/p>\n
And I think about my brother George being advised to shave his beard.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years later, I wonder whether we have really learned from 9\/11.<\/p>\n
Have we learned that grievances can be understood without turning them into hatred?<\/p>\n
Have we learned that standing up against terrorism does not mean that every member of a particular religion or ethnic group should be viewed with suspicion?<\/p>\n
And perhaps most importantly, have we learned that one group’s suffering does not have to become another group’s justification for causing suffering?<\/p>\n
I don’t know.<\/p>\n
But I do know that I have seen people of different religions live together. I saw it in Kerala. I have seen it elsewhere in my life. Maybe that is why, despite everything that has happened over these past twenty-five years, I still believe that it is possible.<\/p>\n
Maybe the real lesson of 9\/11 is not only to remember the people who died that day. It is also to remember what we do with the hatred that follows.<\/p>\n
If we respond to hatred with more hatred, the cycle has no end. But if we can understand each other without excusing what is wrong, perhaps there is still hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is hard to believe that this happened twenty-five years ago. I was 55 years old, and we were living in Great Falls, Virginia. In some ways it still seems like yesterday. I first heard the news that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. The general feeling at the time was that it might have been a small plane, and that it was possibly an accident. Not long afterward, the speculation shifted to pilot error. It was only when the second jet struck the other building that everyone realized there was no accident involved. America was under attack. I recall that my wife, Mini, had taken our then son-in-law, Vijay, to Washington, DC, so that he could do the tourist bit. I called her and suggested that she return home. By then a plane had struck the Pentagon, and it was becoming clear that these were coordinated terrorist attacks. No one knew what was yet to come. I spent that day, and several days thereafter, glued to the television. Many thoughts went through my mind. I thought of the thousands of people trapped in the buildings with no hope of escape. I could not imagine how people who had done what they did most days\u2014got up, went to work, sat at their desks, and started another ordinary day\u2014could suddenly find themselves facing death. There were pictures of people jumping from the upper floors to escape the flames. It was almost impossible to watch. They were faced with a choice between dying from the flames and smoke or jumping from a great height. And then one wondered about the perpetrators and their motivation. What kind of hatred must they have felt to embark on a mission that would end in their own certain death? I had heard of the Japanese kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, who flew suicide missions. But the thought of deliberately killing yourself along with thousands of innocent people was difficult to comprehend. Another thought that has stayed with me is what happened on Flight 93. The passengers learned through phone calls what had happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They must have realized that their plane, too, was going to be used as a weapon. They knew that they were probably going to die one way or another. Yet some of them decided to take on the hijackers. Their plane eventually crashed into a field in Pennsylvania before it reached its intended destination. I have often thought about the difference between the hijackers and the passengers on that plane. Both groups were prepared to face death. But the hijackers were prepared to die in order to kill innocent people. The passengers were prepared to die trying to prevent the hijackers from killing even more people. There was also the unforgettable scene of President Bush being briefed on live television by Andrew Card, his chief of staff. Bush was sitting in a classroom in Florida, reading to schoolchildren, when Card came over and whispered to him what was happening. I have often wondered what was going through Bush’s mind at that moment. He had been president for only eight months when he was faced with a crisis unlike anything he could have anticipated. The country was frightened and confused, and no one knew what was going to happen next. My own exposure to the tensions between Muslims, Arabs, Jews, and Israel goes back much further than 9\/11. When I lived in England in the 1960s, I knew many Muslims\u2014people I worked with, lived around, and got to know. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the longstanding animosity toward Israel and Jews was very much in evidence. I remember a friend of mine, Ali, who was Palestinian, telling me that his parents had taught him that when he spoke about Jews\u2014Yehudi, as he put it\u2014he should spit. That has stayed with me. Of course, not everyone was as graphic in expressing their feelings, and I would certainly not suggest that all Muslims or Palestinians felt this way. But there was clearly a deep-seated hostility toward Israel and Jews among some people, and the Six-Day War brought many of those feelings to the surface. Bin Laden capitalized on those grievances and fed that hatred. He did not create them, but he used them to justify his extremist ideology and the killing of innocent people. I fear that this is still happening today. After 9\/11, America came together in a remarkable display of patriotism. American flags were everywhere. People seemed to put aside their political and other differences and rally around the country. There was something genuine about that patriotism. Nearly 3,000 innocent people had been killed. They had simply gone to work that morning, as they had done every other morning. But at times the reaction also felt like a knee-jerk response, with little or no introspection about what had brought it about. It was convenient to blame a group of terrorists who had killed innocent people in skyscrapers\u2014and of course they were responsible for what they had done. But another question seemed to receive far less attention: why did these people hate America so much that they were prepared to give their own lives to attack it? Asking that question does not in any way justify what they did. At the same time, I remember being impressed by the tolerance of the American people, who recognized that millions of Muslims living in the United States were completely innocent of what had happened, and were themselves horrified by 9\/11. Of course, there were also ugly incidents. I remember an Indian grocery store in Herndon owned by a Sikh family. A notice was placed in the window saying that Sikhs are not Muslims. The fact that they felt it necessary to put up such a notice said a lot about the atmosphere at the time. My older brother, George, was living in the UK. He had worn a beard for most of his adult life. He was seriously advised to shave it off, lest he be mistaken for a Muslim. These were small things compared with the horror of 9\/11, but they showed how the events had affected the fabric of society. Twenty-five years later, not much has changed in the tensions that contributed to the events of 9\/11. The United States went to war in Afghanistan, which was directly connected to al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s support for Osama bin Laden. Then came Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9\/11 attacks, but it was viewed as a threat because of the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence on which that belief was based turned out to be seriously flawed. The wars that followed resulted in enormous loss of life and displacement. Millions of people were affected, countries were destabilized, and the consequences are still being felt. And now, twenty-five years after 9\/11, we are still dealing with conflict in the Middle East. Muslims, Jews, and Christians\u2014three religions that all trace their traditions back to Abraham\u2014continue to have deep divisions between them. Each has its own history. Each has its own grievances. Each believes that it is fighting for justice. All three religions speak of justice, compassion, and the value of human life. Yet we continue to see people using religion to justify violence against people of another religion. Muslims against Jews. Jews against Muslims. Christians against Muslims. One grievance answering another. One act of violence producing another. And I fear that the cycle continues. But perhaps there is also a reason for hope. I come from Kerala, a state in southern India where millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians have lived together for generations. There have certainly been tensions and occasional religious conflicts, as there have been in most parts of the world. But religious extremism has generally not been a dominant part of life there. Kerala also has a fascinating Jewish history. Jews lived on the Malabar Coast many centuries ago, and there is a longstanding tradition that some arrived even before the time of Jesus. They were given refuge from persecution and, for many centuries, lived peacefully among the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities. Most of Kerala’s Jews remained there until the creation of Israel in 1948, after which many emigrated. I find this history encouraging. Here was a place where Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Jews could live alongside one another. They had different religions and different beliefs, but they were able to coexist. Perhaps that is what gives me some hope when I think about the events of 9\/11 and everything that has happened since. The differences between people are real. Religious beliefs are real. Historical grievances are real. But hatred is not inevitable. I think back to Ali telling me what he had been taught about Jews. I think about the people trapped in the World Trade Center and the terrible choices they had to make. I think about the passengers on Flight 93, who knew they were probably going to die but chose to fight back anyway. I think about the Sikh family in Herndon who felt they had to tell the world that they were not Muslims. And I think about my brother George being advised to shave his beard. Twenty-five years later, I wonder whether we have really learned from 9\/11. Have we learned that grievances can be understood without turning them into hatred? Have we learned that standing up against terrorism does not mean that every member of a particular religion or ethnic group should be viewed with suspicion? And perhaps most importantly, have we learned that one group’s suffering does not have to become another group’s justification for causing suffering? I don’t know. But I do know that I have seen people of different religions live together. I saw it in Kerala. I have seen it elsewhere in my life. Maybe that is why, despite everything that has happened over these past twenty-five years, I still believe that it is possible. Maybe the real lesson of 9\/11 is not only to remember the people who died that day. It is also to remember what we do with the hatred that follows. If we respond to hatred with more hatred, the cycle has no end. But if we can understand each other without excusing what is wrong, perhaps there is still hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-religion-heritage","category-history-notable-figures","category-israel","category-politics-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}