The Truth About 9/11 Our Elite Won't Discuss

In his column on 9/11 in World magazine A.S. Ibrahim argues that the great tragedy of that day was the direct result of Muslim theology. Western journalists, politicians, and the Western elite in general have ascribed the attack on the two towers as coming from the lunatic fringe of an otherwise peaceful religion. They argue that Muslim violence is an aberration of Islamic teaching not connected to the core teaching itself. Ibrahim denies this and says these commentators are completely missing the truth about Islam.

Ibrahim begins with an interesting anecdote: “On the night before he killed nearly 3,000 people, Muslim terrorist Mohamed Atta wrote a letter to himself—a religious devotional message declaring the core of his mission against the infidels. Atta reminded himself to recite Quranic verses before killing non-Muslims, to remember that “paradise” awaited for him, and to greet death as a bridegroom greets a wedding night. Aboard the planes, other Muslim hijackers carried similar instructions, including calls to remember Allah constantly, to trust that he would grant victory, and to face the coming hours as an act of worship rather than an act of war.”

Ibrahim enjoins us to sit on that word: worship. Atta was not motivated by poverty, third world rage, or mental illness. He was motivated by religion. He was simply fulfilling the commands of fourteen centuries of theological teaching. Islamic texts instructed Atta to fight polytheists wherever they are found, besieging and ambushing them, until they yield, and to especially target Jews and Christians to fight them until they are humiliated and subjugated.

Islamic jurists have seen these texts, not as metaphorical, but as commands to be obeyed. When a Muslim warrior fights his enemies it is Allah himself who helps him bring about their death. These are not obscure texts. They are in the most authoritative collections in Islam, taught in seminaries, cited in commentaries, memorized by children. 

On the basis of texts like these and similar others Islam has divided the world into two parts—the domain of Islam and the domain of war. Global jihad is the responsibility of every Muslim.

Why specifically was America targeted? In Osama bin Laden’s own words America was an object of special hatred. American intellectuals don’t see America as the inheritor of the Christian culture of the West but bin Laden sure did. America represented as a nation the Christian heritage and was thus worthy of special hostility. 

Ibrahim observes: “When Muslims read these sources literally—not metaphorically, not devotionally softened—the result has a name: Muslim terrorism, as exemplified in al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. These groups aren’t a fringe misreading or misrepresentation of men detached from their own scripture, but a faithful, textually coherent reading, carried by 14 centuries of jurisprudence behind it.”

Western intellectuals are deluding themselves if they think Islam is anything else but what it is. When Christians take their faith seriously they preach the gospel, minister to the weak, provide aid to the poor, and spread the love of Christ. When Muslims take their faith seriously they kill the enemies of Allah.

Weighing in along the same lines is one of my favorite contemporary writers—Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is the Somali woman who escaped that country, fled to Holland where she became a member of the Dutch parliament, then became well known as one of the New Atheists declaring that God did not exist. Then, to the astonishment of everyone, she became a Christian.

In a recent article in The Free Press she blasts Western elites for their cowardice in confronting Islam. It is entitled, “The Lie about Islam, Europe, and the Dangers we Face.”

She argues that Western elites believe that Islam in general is a religion of peace and that it’s only the extremes on the fringes who pose a threat to civilization. But, like Ibrahim, she says that view is terribly wrong. Islam has a creedal architecture and scripture that goes back fourteen hundred years. It has nearly 2 billion adherents to draw from. They have mosques, Quran schools, satellite channels, and university Islamic societies that exist in every European city. This is not a tiny fringe but a gigantic movement hostile in every way to Western values. Values our elite take for granted.

The amount of money the Islamists have access to is enormous. She reports: “The Islamist infrastructure has been resourced, for 50 years, by well over an estimated $75 billion to $100 billion of Gulf state and private funding. It builds mosques by the thousand. It funds television channels, publishing houses, university chairs, and international NGOs.”

European Muslims are, “a confident, literate, professionally successful movement. It has been telling [the] generation, in perfectly clear terms and with perfectly authentic textual citations, that Islam must conquer the world, that Jews are the most hostile of humanity to the believers and must be exterminated, that women are subordinate by divine decree, that apostasy is treason against the community.”

And she reports that millions upon millions have fled Islamic oppression in the past few decades. “Christians, Yezidis, Baha’is, ex-Muslims, secularists, feminists, gay men and women, and religious minorities of every description are leaving the Muslim-majority world and they are coming to Europe and the rest of the West. They come because Europe, whatever else it is, is not governed by the doctrinal architecture they are fleeing.”

Ayaan gives a lengthy description of other Islamist depredations in her article. But like Ibrahim she provides conclusive evidence that Western policy makers do not understand what Islam is and therefore their prescriptions go dreadfully wrong and will be completely ineffective.

Why do Western elites get Islam so wrong? Because they simply do not understand the role and power of religion. It began with Christianity. Many elites in the West stopped taking their own religion seriously two centuries ago. They rejected Christian doctrine and the Christian church. They failed to give God credit for His blessings in their lives. They do not understand how anyone can be religious So they cannot understand Muslims who are devout. All the while they fail to see that they have a new religion—sort of a Marxist/Paganism—that they take very seriously without even knowing it’s a religion. As Paul predicted in Romans 1:22, they have become fools indeed. And their blindness prevents them from seeing the gigantic danger Islam poses. It’s right in front of their nose and they can’t see it.

Our only hope is to take seriously once again the faith that built our culture—the Christian faith. Only a return to Christ can stand up to the enemies at our gates. We need to pray for revival and promote revival. It’s our only hope.



More: Why I am Now a Christian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s journey to Christ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=039-0HjWzso

A.S. Ibrahim’s column in World magazine: https://wng.org/opinions/a-specific-theology-not-a-random-grievance-1789077835?mkt_tok=NzEwLVFSUi0yMDkAAAGkLq6Uvc1uhZA5N_gB0kNJhduFLmHSdUNGbphr7Tz3gkmIinbZEJD2WNi3An1n_G3F3E-qF37xNZAAPFYlpCoDgjTqaVsYfvvUn6Je0elZ-2IbIw

Ayaan Hirsi Ali; https://www.thefp.com/p/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-lie-about-islam

Islam’s plan to conquer America: https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/25/we-want-islam-for-this-country-muslims-in-texas-lay-out-vision-for-islamic-america-1/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=we-want-islam-for-this-country-muslims-in-texas-lay-out-vision-for-islamic-america-1&utm_term=2026-09-26