This Saturday, the world commemorates the September 11 savage strike on World Trade Centre twin skyscrapers. The attacks reshaped how the world perceives security and underlined terrorism as a savage ideology that is stewed in raw extremism, worse than anything mankind has ever known.
In the countdown to the day, Christian extremists in the United States vowed to burn the Quran to express vexation with the Al Qaeda terror groups who executed the attacks.
The Christian anger is understandable, but it need not provoke Muslims. However, it is a demonstration of the kind of phobia international terrorism has fanned in the ordinary citizen’s mind.
This needs not be the situation. Terrorism transcends religion, international borders, race, colour or creed.
It was therefore ill-advised for American Christians to attempt to burn the Quran to protest Muslims’ plan to build a cultural centre near Ground Zero, the site of the Twin Towers.
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It gratifies that the Muslims avoided a major confrontation when they relocated to a different site.
This year’s commemoration is significant in the sense that it coincides with Idd-ul-Fitr, an important occasion in the Islamic calendar when Muslims break their month-long fast.
There is no better time than today to reflect on how the world has changed since the end of the Cold War, itself an outcome of atrocious geopolitics that pitted capitalist against communist ideologies.
As the world attention focuses on 9/11, it should be remembered that crime proceeds from the pervasive sense of exclusion.
