Today, we shall see that the cause of 9/11 is Islam. It is the Islamic religion and specifically, Islamic ideology.
Introduction
The World Trade Center once towered over much of the surrounding New York. It stood as a symbol of the heights achievable by men of reason and self-esteem. It symbolized the achievements of a culture valuing freedom and reason.
Much like the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center was a symbol of Western values. A symbol of the American Dream rooted in every individual’s right to:
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Declaration of Independence
The American dream is:
Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.
James Adams, 1931.
Islam Attacks
We shall now look at two of the Islamic attacks on the West and evil attempts to justify them.
February 26, 1993
One terrorist attack on these values came on February 26, 1993. An Islamic militant, Ramzi Yousef, cowardly attacked Western values. He killed six people and injured a further 1,042 people.
During the 1998 trial, Yousef condemned the United States for its victory over Japan in 1945 and its economic embargo against a rights-violating Cuba.
You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism.
Ramzi Yousef, Wikipedia.
Yousef dropped context and pretended that military defense of a nation is equivalent to terrorism. On what grounds? Because both involve the loss of innocent lives!
Terrorism is the initiation of force via threats of violence in order to instill terror upon a people or its government.
Is that what America did when it fought a war against Germany? No, it did not initiate the war. It responded to the violence inflicted on it by Germany. A war of self-defence is not terrorism; it is a morally necessary response to terrorism. It is immoral to equate a war of self-defense with terrorism.
The equivocations continue:
You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings.
You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals, as with the so-called Agent Orange. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, in every single war you went to. You went to war more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.
Ramzi Yousef, Wikipedia
The nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were an act of heroism. What was the alternative to the atomic bombing of those two cities? A bloody invasion of Japan that would have cost over a million American lives. The war would have destroyed much of Japan. Millions of Japanese would have died.
The Japanese government came to be grateful for the bombings. The minister of the navy described the atomic bombings as a “gift from heaven”. He believed they had saved the Japanese from their own foolishness. According to Emperor Hirohito’s chief advisor, peace had been “assisted by the atomic bomb”.
We must not judge the morality of a nation by the number of times it goes to war. The reason for going to war matters. Is it fighting a war of self-defense? Is it a selfless war, sacrificing soldiers’ lives for nothing? A nation may go to war for self-defense as many times as necessary.
We can question why America fought the Korean and Vietnam wars. Were some of the motivations for the war altruistic? Arguably. We can condemn America for the ineffective way it fought these wars. We can condemn America for attacking Iraq for altruistic reasons, when Iran was clearly the proper target.
But we should not condemn America for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was a direct threat to America and its people. It was a moral necessity as soon as Japan threatened America’s values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
He continued:
And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have a so-called economic embargo, which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which, other than Iraq, you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years.
….The Government in its summation and opening statement, said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist, and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it is against the United States government and against Israel because you are more than terrorists; you are the ones who invented terrorism and use it every day. You are liars, butchers, and hypocrites. [29]
Ramzi Yousef, Wikipedia
Yousef condemns America for acts of violence, terrorism and inventing terrorism.
Islam engaged in religious terrorism long before the United States existed. Islamic states fought savage wars against each other for hundreds of years before the US existed. It engaged in savagery, which Western culture is fundamentally opposed to but which Islam praises.
The Quran contains at least 109 verses describing war with nonbelievers.
Countless verses call for graphic violence, including the murder of nonbelievers. Here are some of them:
As for those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.
Quran 3:56
That seems a clear condemnation of the so-called “crime” of non-belief.
The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter, they shall have a grievous chastisement
Quran 5:33
And then there is this:
(Remember) when your Lord inspired the angels… I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore, strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
Quran 8:12
The Quran is older than America and modern Western culture. So, in what sense did the West invent terrorism? Looks like the Quran was doing quite well before the West came along.
During the trial of Yousef, Judge Duffy did not morally condemn Islam for its death worship. She apologized for Islam and the faith. She did not condemn the sacrifice collection of such cults and religions. Duffy condemned the ego, the very Western values that had made the twin towers possible!
Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was against you or your cause. You did not care, just so long as you left dead bodies and people hurt.
Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is a god of death. Your God is not Allah …
You weren’t seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you do, you do not do for Allah; you do it only to satisfy your twisted sense of ego.
You would have others believe that you are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for which you stand convicted here were sneak attacks which sought to kill and maim totally innocent people.
You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah, but the evil yourself have become. And I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective. [29]
Judge Duffy, Wikipedia
But we have seen that according to the Quran itself, Yousef was acting entirely consistently with the Quran.
The Quran has countless verses like the ones we have already seen. Not one of them says that a true Muslim shall spare a heretic imprisonment or a violent death! Yousef was acting in accordance with the Quran, as Islam demands. Let us look at another quote:
Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home). Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward.
Quran 4:95
According to his verse, murderous Muslims are morally superior to those who do not fight nonbelievers! Judge Duffy, you were wrong; Yousef was a champion of Islam.