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Posted on 09/11/2026 10:33:40 AM PDT by Heartlander
A quarter-century removed from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, several things are now obvious that were not at all obvious to American elites in 2001 (although they should have been). Perhaps the most obvious, as I wrote earlier this week, is that the attacks inaugurated a religious war that we have lost, or at least are in the process of losing. The West failed to recognize the religious nature of the conflict because it was committed to a secular liberal account of the world that dismissed the role of religion and religious claims in shaping cultures and societies.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali said something similar in an excellent piece on 9/11 for Tablet: “When confronted by an adversary for whom the public order was explicitly theological, and for whom the separation of sacred and political authority was itself an offense against God, the West did the only thing its own intellectual settlement allowed: It translated theology into categories it found more manageable.”
Specifically, it indulged the delusion that the difference between the Muslim world and the West could be chalked up to material causes like lack of economic opportunity, U.S. support for Israel, and so on. Instead of grappling with the very real differences between the Muslim world and the West, our leaders acted as if those differences were superficial, and their response to 9/11 was the opposite of what it should have been.
Instead of simply punishing regimes that gave succor to groups like Al-Qaida, they launched regime change wars followed by long and ultimately failed occupations with the impossible goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Instead of shutting down immigration from Muslim-majority countries, they increased Muslim immigration to prove that America wasn’t racist and was multicultural. Instead of recognizing that not all cultures and religions are compatible with American society, they doubled down on multiculturalism and a conception of America as an idea, rather than a people with a shared culture, shaped by Christian civilization moral norms.
At the heart of all this was a belief on the part of our leaders that America was nothing more than a set of propositions about how society should be governed. It was free markets, rule of law, and individual freedom, nothing more. No wonder President George W. Bush thought we could transplant American democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. In his view, there was nothing special or unique about the American people as such. They were interchangeable with Iraqis and Afghans. So long as they were allowed to vote, and women were allowed to go to school, and we helped them economically, all would be well.
But this ignored the realities not just of the Muslim world but also of the West. We got Islam wrong after 9/11, yes. But even more we got the Christian West wrong. We thought the West was nothing more than process neutralism, that what defined us was being neutral about religion. That was a mistake. The tolerance and neutrality we took for granted, it turned out, was a unique feature of the Christianity that created western civilization. It simply didn’t exist in the Islamic world.
Our leaders thought that by importing huge numbers of Muslims to the West, and exporting Western forms of governance to the Muslim world, they could prove their claims about secular liberalism and multiculturalism. Twenty-five years later, they have proven the opposite. It doesn’t work to import Muslims to the West. They do not assimilate. It doesn’t work to export Western political institutions to the Muslim world. They do not work there.
If the quarter-century since 9/11 should teach us anything, it should be that the multiculturalism we have embraced in the West for the past 40 years has been a grave mistake, perhaps even a fatal one. We have to go back to understanding America not as a blank slate, not as an mish-mash of all the world’s cultures and religions, but as a specifically Christian nation that orders itself around Christian moral claims — not Islamic ones, not Hindu ones, but Christian ones.
It’s unclear if Americans are ready to admit this, because it would mean repudiating a secular liberal ideology that has been ascendant in our country for a long time. The Muslim world, it turns out, is not the way it is because of material inequalities or U.S. foreign policy. It is the way it is because of culture and religion. That’s true of the West too. And we need to start acting like it.
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Bingo! this essay nails it.
Christianity and the worship of the truth is at the heart of Western civilization.
I also 100% agree with the criticisms against Bush for not fighting hard enough against Afghanistan, making it instead into a war on a vague enemy named "terror" that "won't have a treaty signing moment like on the Missouri" and "we'll be fighting it all our lives", blah blah blah.
Since we can't go back to the past, one thing we can do is change the narrative of what we did in Afghanistan. Instead of calling it a "failed occupation", what we should do is trumpet loudly that life in Afghanistan sucks really bad and we killed 200K of them, over 66 times as many as they killed on Sep 11. And we should tell the middle east over and over and over that if someone again does something like a Sep 11 attack we'll kill many times more.
There is a short on youtube where a woman interviews people asking 2 questions: what is your religion? What is your favorite book?
The answers are something like:
Muslim: koran
Christian: some secular book
Mormon: some secular book
Muslim: koran
Hindu: some secular book
Muslim: koran
Brother Dave Hunt (RIP) a Faithful Follower of the Lord Jesus Christ ✝️, noted some 25 years ago that MORE people in England attended Mosques than Christian Churches. Brother Dave Hunt said so, in his video regarding Islam vs. Israel 🇮🇱. Date of the video release? August, 2001. Seriously. Month of August, 2001 I ordered a copy and it arrived 3rd week of August or so. We showed it at church to 1,400 people in one night after September 11, 2001. Other churches filled buses and brought people. There were buses 🚌🚌🚌 all over the Parking Lot. True story. Now regarding Jolly Olde England: My take: a vacuum was created and Satan filled that void and IS filling that void with Islam. NOW we see what has happened to England AND Europe in many places. The Godless Reprobate Left, the Leftist Democrats have rejected the Biblical Jesus Christ and His Words in the Bible. Satan is currently filling that void with Sodom and Gomorrah LGBTQ+ and Islam. We are watching it happen in real time... When the actual Word of God is neglected, ignored, dismissed, not preached ... That Old Serpent Called the Devil and Satan fills the void. This also explains the Gaia Worship Crowd of Global Warming. Lacking true Faith and a zeal for the Gospel, they have substituted a worthless pursuit. One that will mean absolutely nothing when The Lord Jesus Christ destroys the face of the Earth with Fire 🔥🔥🔥. As noted in the New Testament at least 2-3 times. I do what little I can but our world is only on a path to Darkness. Very few actually read a Bible these days and even fewer believe what it says.
True.
Islam is prevailing.
I have never seen such detachment.
I meet plenty of people who just shrug 🤷
Several in their 20’s but some in their 60’s
Prideful looks and they generally are people
that see absolutely nothing wrong with the
agendas of Democrats including LGBTQ+.
Absolutely no understanding of AND absolutely
NO interest of anything to do with the Bible.
Some are openly hostile to it AND Christianity.
Sigh
I DO meet a few exceptions here and there
Fortunately
Ridding the world of Islam is not genocide, it is self preservation.
Islam is evil. Period. There was a time when Pope's would launch Crusades against this Demonic foe. Now we have an American Pope who panders to the enemy!
As I have often said, the alternative to Christianity is not secular hedonism. It is Islam.
In other words, you can't fight something with nothing.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I don’t remember who said it, but; “The west better stop acting like the Constitution, western civilization and christianity is a suicide pact by empathy”.
By 9/11 the Episcopalians, a large segment of Lutherans, a portion of the Methodists, even the Southern Baptsits were in the proecess of self-immolation. The Christian churches bent the knee at precisely the time a new Crusade was required in the USA. Traditional American Churchdom has not recovered. Nor will it ever.
It may bring World War III
or World War IV
Seems inevitable
(For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.)
Ephesians 6:12
Actually Literally True.
Much more than people realize.
✝️✝️✝️
Mohammed comes home and finds his wife packing up to leave.
“Why are you going?”
“Because people say you are a pedophile!”
“That’s a big word for a nine year old!”
D’oh!
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