Obviously, the big news of the weekend is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Sunday, a time to remember victims and their families, and to consider the lasting legacies of those heinous attacks. Sadly, the past ten years have brought as much religious divisiveness as religious unity. In the inevitable search for answers, far too many Americans have chosen to mistrust most all Muslims, and have found an enemy in Islam itself.
The BJC's Brent Walker rightly described this fear-based discrimination as a "disgrace (to) the memories of those who perished." As Amy Sullivan points out, that has not always been the dominant response to the attacks:
It’s hard to remember now, but in the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11, a spirit of religious unity reigned. Shocked political foes gathered together at the Washington National Cathedral for a prayer service that included a Muslim imam who read verses from the Koran. Just a few days later, George W. Bush quoted from the Koran himself at the Islamic Center in Washington, and told the country that “Islam is peace.”
Most of the intervening antipathy toward Muslim-Americans, she says, is accompanied by a real lack of education regarding the religions of the world. Is the need for religious awareness and understanding one of the defining cultural lessons of the aftermath to September 11?
For more insightful writing about the religious lessons of September 11, see the Washington Post's On Faith roundtable on the subject: "What have we learned about religion post-9/11?"
