On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed a devastating act of terrorism that forever altered the course of history. That morning, members of the extremist group al-Qaida hijacked four commercial planes, using them as weapons in coordinated suicide attacks on American soil.
Two of the planes were flown into New York City’s Twin Towers, leading to their eventual collapse, while a third struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane, United Flight 93, was heroically brought down by passengers in a Pennsylvania field, preventing it from reaching its intended target. The attacks killed around 3,000 people and injured over 6000 , marking the single deadliest assault on American soil. The attacks prompted the U.S. to launch an international campaign, the so-called “War on Terror”-which led to military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and a long-term engagement in counterterrorism efforts worldwide.
The War on Terror introduced new challenges, largely because it wasn’t fought against a traditional enemy. The conflict became one of ideology, fought against decentralized, often invisible, networks of extremists. This asymmetry made victories difficult to define. While terrorist groups like al-Qaida and later ISIS were dismantled in parts, they retained the ability to inspire and carry out smaller, more sporadic acts of violence. Terrorist ideologies, born out of complex socio-political conditions, proved hard to eradicate through military means alone.
At the heart of this radicalization were ideological movements like Wahhabism, a fundamentalist strain of Islam that has been linked to extremist groups. Saudi Arabia, long a U.S. ally, revealed it played a significant role in the global spread of this ideology. In a shocking admission, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman acknowledged that the export of Wahhabism was initially encouraged by Western nations during the Cold War. The West saw it as a strategic counterweight to Soviet influence in Muslim countries.
However, the consequence was the rise of groups that would later turn against their Western backers. The West’s complicity in fostering radical groups extends further, with European and American governments backing fundamentalists at the expense of secular, nationalist leaders in the Middle East. Leaders like Egypt’s Nasser and Iran’s Mossadeq or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who represented secular governance, were undermined, while Islamist groups gained power and influence.
As a result, these fundamentalist forces now threaten not only the Middle East but also the very nations that once supported them. The liberal West must take significant responsibility for the rise of “Islamic terror,” as it played a crucial role in fostering and nurturing the very ideology that has now become a global threat. A significant number of terrorists associated with al-Qaeda and ISIS are Western converts to Islam, many of whom have gone on to commit some of the most heinous acts of violence.
As Western societies grapple with this legacy, it becomes clear that the fight against terrorism will have to be fought within the liberal west where radical Islam has been allowed to spread and protected under the fundamental rights of free speech and religious freedom. Lately Germany, which has around 5.5 million Muslims has decided to crackdown on radicalism. Winning the war on terror will require confronting not just foreign threats, but also addressing the ideologies that have taken root within Western borders themselves.