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To the Journal editor:
Like many Americans, I was devastated by the loss of nearly three thousand lives at the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. I was 17 that day and it felt like the world was ending. In many ways, it did. Our culture, security measures, our opinions on Islam and our very notion of who we were as a nation changed forever. Twenty-five years and two wars later, New York has a proud Muslim mayor and Abdul El-Sayed is a strong front runner for Senate in Michgan. As 42 year old me pondered the meaning of this amid increasingly hateful rhetoric, I found my answer.
It means we won.
Bin Laden and his theocratic militants attacked claiming that America was “the Great Satan.” Such an extential threat to Muslims everywhere that we must be destroyed for their safety. Mamdani and El-Sayed’s campaigns prove that was never the case. It proves that even in the face of a sensless act of war, we didn’t become the devils Al-Qaeda told the world we are. We didn’t give in to hatred. They didn’t destroy liberty and justice for all. In a war of ideas where there was no second place, America stood tall, even taller than the Twin Towers destroyed that day.
Now, as a younger generation accepts and embraces Muslim leaders and their new ideas, I don’t see a nation who has forgotten 9/11. I see an nation who learned hard lessons from it and is finally beginning to heal a scar the size of the World Trade Center. And that to me is well worth remembering for all time.