Spotlight:The True Breadth of the 9/11 Attacks

Smoke billowsout of broken windows. A man jumps out of the burning building and soon hitsthe ground, his body unrecognizable. Pandemonium is widespread and children cryas their mothers pull them away from the falling buildings and cloud of smoke.

When all is doneand the smoke settles, sirens and coughing are the only sounds that pierce thehorrible silence. This was the scene of the infamous 9/11 attack against theUnited States by Al Qaeda and  we willnow remember the 10 year anniversary of the attacks.

The lives lostthat day are truly tragic however, far too often the true breadth of theattacks is incorrectly calculated. Along with the 2,996 people that immediatelydied from the attacks, tens of thousands of people all over the countrysuffered from the loss of family and friends.

But that isn’tthe full story. Forgotten in the numbers of are tens of thousands killed inAfghanistan (from Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and NATO attacks). Forgotten are theChechnyas that were brutalized by Russia after the attacks. Forgotten are theChinese Muslims in Northwest China that dealt with a brutal crackdown to quelldeclarations for religious freedoms. Forgotten are those that we call“collateral damage” in our efforts to kill Al Qaeda leadership.

Along with thetrauma of the 9/11 families and firefighters comes the trauma of discriminatedMuslims across the country. Children are bullied in school and doctors leavethe country as hate crimes abound.

Incalculable isthe discrimination faced by Europe’s growing Muslim population with bans onreligious food traditions in Greece, religious buildings in Denmark, andreligious dress in France.

The attacks hada much larger effect than we usually assume and we must remember all thosesuffering from the attacks. As we remember the families crying at ceremonies wemust remember that there are Muslim families crying with them.

As we rememberthe buildings ablaze we must remember the buildings burning as Russia used theattacks as an excuse to suppress its religious minority. As we remember thescreams of the families we must also bear in mind the cries of the mothersholding their dead children in their hands from attacks in Afghanistan and manyother places in the region.

The emotions wefeel from the attacks are truly powerful and my heart goes out to the familieswho lost family and friends to the attacks, but it also goes out to the membersof burnt and vandalized mosques in the U.S. and Europe. It goes out to thevictims of European xenophobia and discrimination. It goes out to those barelyable to survive from constant fighting around the world.

The attacksaffected far more than just the 3,000 people that were killed. Literallyhundreds of thousands of people suffered from the attacks and we must neverforget to include them in our numbers. 

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