25 Years After 9/11, Have We Finally Realized What We’re Fighting?
8th September 2026
I was born two years before Sept. 11, 2001. I belong to the first generation of Americans for whom the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are not a personal memory. Because I do not remember the morning itself, the television images, or the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that settled over the country, I know Sept. 11 as history.
But the history myself and those of my generation inherited did not end on that day. In some respects, it had only begun.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the face of Islamic violence looks like a truck driven into a crowded street, a knife attack on a train, and a church attacked and burned. It has meant the consequential transformation of our nation through migration, parallel communities, Sharia courts, and the growing political influence of Islamist movements. Globally, it has meant the rise of the ISIS caliphate, the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and the massacre of innocent people worldwide.