20 Years After 9/11 The Wind Of Change Blows Still

On 20 January 1991, the US rock band The Scorpions released their song, "Wind of Change". Following the dismal and depressing 1980s, when many of us thought that a nuclear war was a certainty, it was a powerful song. It was an anthem for the time and for a generation. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and just as the countries of eastern Europe had fallen to Soviet totalitarianism, so communism fell in those countries in a domino effect as the people demanded freedom, until even the Soviet regime in Russia fell. All across the world oppressive regimes were falling one by one, and there truly was a wind of change. US President George H Bush would declare there was a "new world order" (which conspiracy theories would later feed into), and that nuclear weapons would be "weapons of last resort" (which worried me greatly, as I had been given to understand that was always the case).

Even the Balkan Wars, started through the fall and partition of the communist state of Yugoslavia, could not keep going.  In defiance of Croatian neo-fascists, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo carried out a beauty contest, in which all the contestants unfurled a banner as a message to the world; "Don't Let Them Kill Us". The fascists fell, war criminals were prosecuted, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the other Balkan states became modern, democratic states.

The wind of change was indeed blowing everywhere, and you really could "feel it in the air".  As we entered a new millennium, the world was full of hope for a new era; an age of peace, of global justice, of tolerance, and understanding.

Then on 11 September 2001, it all came crashing down.  Crashing down along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Crashing down with one wall of the Pentagon.  Crashing down with United Flight 93, rammed into the ground near Stoyston, Pennsylvania, as US citizens on board decided to fight back against the hijackers.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 left me stunned for several days.  I recall my boss asking me to get on the internet to see what was happening, and telling him I couldn't as none of the news sites were coming up (due to too many people trying to access them), and me chillingly saying, "They're all dead".

As the news started to trickle out over the next few days, it was still not clear how many people had been killed, with some sources claiming as many as 10,000 may have lost their lives.  This would later eventually be scaled down to 2,977.  I sat down and wrote a letter to The Scotsman newspaper, in which I stated that I wondered if it had all been a bad dream, or memories of a movie that I watched, refusing to believe that it was real.  But no, this was all too real.  An Islamist extremist group, Al Qaeda, had carried out the attacks on the orders of their leader, Osama Bin Laden.

What was to follow in the wake of the 9/11 attacks were curtails on civil liberties, many of which people in their fear actually supported.  The Patriot Act in the USA passed almost without opposition.  Places once freely open suddenly had security barriers.  I well remember that ScotRail only a few years earlier had done away with ticket barriers and fencing in their stations.  Suddenly there were new ticket barriers and even more fencing than ever before.  In a knee-jerk reaction, litter bins were removed from stations to prevent bombs being planted in them; even at Falls of Cruachan Halt, population, zero.

Seeking retribution, the USA first targeted Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden were believed to be based, then more controversially and without a shred of evidence, Iraq was targeted, with claims of the Ba'ath regime under Saddam Hussein holding weapons of mass destruction, and Al Qaeda training camps; despite the fact that Al Qaeda despised Saddam Hussein and had tried to assassinate him on no fewer than three occasions.  As US President George W Bush decided to attack Iraq, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to go in with the USA, thereby making the war in Iraq being his everlasting legacy, instead of the political reforms he introduced.

Among the public attitudes also changed.  There was open hatred of Muslims.  But not only Muslims, but anyone perceived to be a Muslim, including turban-wearing Sikhs, and even anyone who happened to be Asian.  An Asian shopkeeper near my work was the victim of a racist attack fuelled by the frenzy stirred up by governments and the media.  His shop was trashed and he was beaten up by thugs calling him "Osama".  This poor man is in fact of Goan descent, and as such is actually a Christian.

As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued, the public by and large accepted some terrible acts, including 'rendition', which was no more than a pseudonym for torture, and also men captured flown to Guantanamo Bay, the US base in Cuba, where they were held without charge, without trial, and without legal representation, completely against international law, as well as the very basis of justice upon which western civilisation is built.  Stories started to leak out of Guantanamo Bay, including those of inmates being tortured, and their copies of the Qur'an being torn up, flushed down toilets, or burned.  The Qur'an is absolutely sacred to Muslims, and all these acts did was to fuel further Islamist outrage throughout the world.

In 2005, the G5 Summit took place at Gleneagles, Scotland.  Fearing terrorist attacks, hundreds of police officers were drafted to north of the border, including from London's Metropolitan Police.  But instead of attacking Edinburgh or Glasgow, the terrorists waited until London had let her guard down, and on 7 July that year, the English capital was rocked by suicide bombings on a bus and on tube trains.

All through these and other terrorist attacks, the tit-for-tat hatred continued.  Every terrorist attack was met with retribution from the USA and the UK in Afghanistan and Iraq, with some reportedly having Bible verses inscribed on their guns, and Islamist sympathisers would carry out further attacks in the west. 

In turn, a backlash to the hatred of Muslims would also prove counterproductive, as many ended up finding themselves scared to speak out against wrongdoings, in case they were considered 'racist' or 'Islamophobic'.  This was particularly true in Rotherham, England, where civil services were aware of a paedophile ring, but did not report the men involved, as most of them were Muslims.

Twenty years on from 9/11, I am saddened to a great deal that the hopes for the future were dashed, and the world was changed not the better, but very much for the worse.

I stated in my 2001 letter to The Scotsman that the 9/11 attacks, and no other terrorist attack, would ever make me hate Muslims, because, "The moment we start hating, the terrorists have won.  Division is what they seek, and giving ourselves open to hate is handing victory to them on a plate."  Twenty years later I stand by that.  I have no great love for Islam, and actually find it to be a repressive ideology.  But then, I could say equally as much for Christianity, or many other faiths.  Likewise, I deeply dislike the term, "Islamophobia".  In a quote often misattributed to Christopher Hitchens, journalist Andrew Cummings once described Islamophobia as "a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons".  I'm no right-winger, but I think that Cummings pretty much hit the nail on the head.  I do not hate the bloke who runs my local grocers because he's a Muslim; I hate him because he's an uppity, arrogant dick.  His parents, also Muslim, are in fact lovely people, and how he could ever have sprung from their loins is beyond me.

I intensely dislike Islam because of the fanaticism it invokes, because of it's oppression of women, because of it's hatred of LGBT+ people, and because it suppresses freedom of speech and expression.  I equally dislike fundamentalist Christianity for exactly the same reasons.  I write this at a time when the state of Texas has instituted Christian-based anti-abortion laws which the Taliban may be envious of, and that US President Joe Biden appears to be powerless to stop that, or won't stop it, in what is constitutionally a secular country is absolutely despicable.

Despite Europe being the tinderkeg of the world for 2000 years up to 1945, only for that title to move to the Middle East, I am not for one moment saying get rid of religion and you get rid of war and atrocities.  That is far too simplistic, and if it were not religion, then the tyrants of this world would have found, and would easily find, other excuses; Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein only paid lip-service to their respective faiths for populist reasons.

But at the same time, if the past 20 years since 9/11 are to mean anything, then we must be free to criticise the more fundamentalist interpretations of religion, and other ideologies.  If the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban proves anything, it is that the 'War on Terror' has already been lost.

Criticising religion, be that Islam, Christianity, or whatever, is not hatred.  And equally, tacit respect of and accommodation of religions is not capitulating.  I don't always agree with journalist Maajid Nawaz, but I do like his tenet, "No idea is above scrutiny.  No people are beneath dignity."

If we want a "world closing in, where we could be as close as brothers", then that can only come about through mutual respect and mutual understanding.  But that must come from all sides.  The west accommodating fundamentalist Islamism does not do that.  Neither do tit-for-tat atrocities on both sides.

The Berlin Wall and Soviet communism did not fall through force.  They started with one young woman demanding to pass through the Brandenburg Gate one night in 1989.  She set off a domino effect which saw what was effectively an entire empire fall.

And that is why 20 years after 9/11 I am not without hope for the future, and that future does indeed belong to today's children and young people, and the generations yet to come.  If we keep them in mind, and keep talking, then you can truly...

"Take me, to the magic of the moment
on a glory night,
where the children of tomorrow dream away,
in the wind of change."