[September 11, 2026] On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airliners, killing 2,977 people. Many will say we should never forget. But what should we never forget? Is it the 200 Americans who chose to leap to their deaths rather than be burned alive? Or the firefighters and police who rushed to the scene and died? Who?
We should never forget that fifteen of the hijackers were Saudi. The rest came from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon. They were al-Qaeda operatives acting on a popular program of jihad against the United States.
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had already made their hatred against America known years earlier. The 1996 declaration and the 1998 fatwa calling for the killing of Americans, both civilian and military, were part of an overall ideology of Islam’s conquest. We should never forget that we knew about this before 9/11 and did nothing.
Call the motive what it is: Islamic ideology. It is not “extremism” in some theoretical way. It is a specific reading of the Quran that treats armed jihad as an obligation, divides the world into believers and infidels, and freely licenses the mass killing of civilians. We should never ignore it, and we should never forget that this is what makes them kill.
That reading has its origins in modern thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and in networks that grew out of the Afghan war, the Muslim Brotherhood’s militant fringe, and Gulf funding of hardline preaching. It is not the only reading of Islam. It is the one that produced 9/11, Bali, Madrid, London, Paris, San Bernardino, and a long trail of attacks. Never forget either those lost around the world to radical Islam.
The polite reaction after every massacre declares, “this has nothing to do with Islam.” That is wrong. It refuses to look at what the perpetrators said. They quoted scripture and sought Islam’s approval. They recruited in mosques, charities, and online circles that treated apostates and Westerners as legitimate targets. Pretending the ideology is a brand-new heresy with no connection to Islamic history or law is an ignorance of catastrophic proportions.
The onus is on every Muslim. It is on the doctrine that produced the killers they must reject, on the donors and preachers who fed it, and on political and religious leaders who still treat that doctrine as unmentionable. Saudi Arabia spent years exporting a harsh Wahhabi curriculum before 9/11; that record is well documented.
A small number of Muslims have produced reformers who argue the problem lies within the tradition itself, not just “poverty” or “foreign policy.” They are often isolated for saying so. Yet, even few of them admit the religious ideology itself is the problem.
America was not attacked for its freedom in some vague sense. Men attacked it because they believed they were obeying Allah.
Twenty-five years later, the appropriate response remains the same: name the ideology and its leaders, starve its networks, and stop mistaking courtesy for truth. The victims of September 11 are owed that much. Never forget.
————
Please read my books:
Twenty-five years later too many still refuse to name what hit America on September 11. Those nineteen hijackers were not poor or lost. They followed a teaching that made killing Americans a duty to God. Fifteen came from Saudi Arabia, which had spent years spreading that same hard line. Bin Laden and his crowd put their war on paper long before the planes took off, and we ignored it. After every massacre the same voices insist this has nothing to do with Islam. That claim is a lie that insults the people who died and protects the next set of killers. Firemen climbed those stairs while the buildings came down around them. Workers jumped rather than burn alive. They earned more than soft words and empty slogans. Call the ideology what it is, starve the networks that feed it, and stop acting like honesty is hate. Never forget means we stop pretending. Thank you, Gen. Satterfield for once again, honoring those who died on this day that we were attacked for being good Christians.
Winston, thank you. You put the truth in words most people still will not use. Those hijackers were not striking at some vague idea of freedom. They were following a doctrine that told them killing Americans was holy work. Fifteen of them came out of Saudi Arabia, which spent years spreading that same hard teaching. The firemen who climbed those stairs and the workers who jumped deserve more than another polite lie. Name the ideology, cut off what feeds it, and never pretend again. And, pray for the lost souls on that day. 🙏
INDEED, NEVER FORGET