The Attacks of 9/11: Evidence of a Clash of Religions?

Abstract

President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have repeatedly declared that the coalition war in Afghanistan is not a war against Islam. Islam, however, was a feature of the events of 11 September 2001 and of the events that followed. Should the conflict between the United States and Osama bin Laden and between the coalition forces and the Taliban be seen as an example of a conflict between two religious traditions in the way Professor Samuel Huntington prophesied in his seminal Clash of Civilizations essay? (1) This article aims to unravel some of the religious background to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on what began as a perfect day in September in New York and Washington. (2) It looks too at the religious background to events that have followed on from those attacks. Much of the latter part of the article will be devoted to examining any perceived from the Muslim point of view in an attempt to generate a better understanding of how at least some Muslims view the West in general and America in particular. It will look, again from the Muslim point of view, at how any perception of a clash might be either ameliorated or neutralized. Religious Motivation of the Terrorists should pray, you should fast. You should ask God for guidance, you should ask God for help....Continue to recite the [Koran]. Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters. So read the hand-written instructions to the hijackers who carried out their suicide missions by flying into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. Their task was perceived as a religious one. instructions continued: The time of fun and waste has gone. time of judgment has arrived.... You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting (3) These instructions demonstrate how--for the writer and for the hijackers themselves--the suicide mission was seen as a religious one. first four pages of the hijackers' instructions recalled incidents in Islamic history, particularly incidents of Muhammad triumphing against adversaries. On the fifth and last page, guidance was given about what to do on entering the plane. hijacker was asked to pray, Allah, open all doors for me. Oh Allah who answers prayers and answers those who ask you, I am asking for your help. Allah, I trust in you. Allah, I myself in your hands.... There is no God but Allah, I being a sinner. We are of Allah and to Allah we return. (4) In 1990 Iraq Kuwait and so began the Gulf War. A coalition of Muslim Middle Eastern and American, British, and other nations joined together to drive out Saddam Hussein's army. For some Arab Muslims, bin Laden included, this period was classed as al amza, the crisis. It was a crisis for at least two reasons: first, it involved Muslim Arabs fighting other Muslim Arabs; second, it involved American and other non-Arab forces entering Saudi territory. To understand why this second reason was seen as problematic, one has to understand that for a Muslim the Saudi city of Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, is a holy city. Indeed, it is so holy that non-Muslims are not allowed to enter it. Some of that holiness is seen by some Muslims to spread through the whole country of Saudi Arabia. To have non-Muslim soldiers enter the country, and particularly to do so in order to help one Muslim country fight against another Muslim country, was seen as offensive. America and its allies, in the eyes of some fundamentalist Muslims, represent the very opposite of what Islam stands for. Islam is seen to stand for solidarity among Muslim peoples; it is seen to stand for moral decency, for obedience to Allah and the precepts of Allah found in Islam's holy book, the Koran, and in the sayings and deeds of Muhammad, the sunnah. fundamentalist Muslim saw his holy land of Saudi Arabia invaded by troops whose home country represented, as he saw it, the very opposite of the Muslim way of life. …