What Must Be Said on September 11

“Friday, September 11 will be the 25th anniversary of the jihad attacks that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, and the far left’s propaganda arm, the establishment media, is already hard at work repeating the lesson that leftists want us to take away from this grim milestone: It was all our fault. And now, “Islamophobia” is worse than ever, underscoring the left’s second big takeaway from 9/11: Muslims were the real victims.” (Robert Spencer)

What Must Be Said on September 11

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Sep 7, 2026:

What should be at the very center of the observances on that day — that is, the ideology of Islam, the fons et origo of the terrorist attacks in which more than 3,000 people were murdered — will almost everywhere be passed over in silence.

ADVERTISEMENT

Other voices have been added to the chorus of critics anticipating what will not be said that day. Among them is Todd Bensman, who has gone through the 576-page report of the 9/11 Commission, and helpfully selected key paragraphs that explain just what motivated the Muslim terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. Let us hope that before remarking on that attack as part of the ceremonies marking its 25th anniversary, the Great and Good among our politicians, and members of the media, will read those paragraphs, and consider carefully where the source of those murderous attacks is to be found.

More on those paragraphs from the 9/11 Commission’s report can be found here: “On 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks, Many Will Excise the Most Relevant Truth From National Memory: Islamist Ideology Still Motivates Mass Murder,” by Todd Bensman, Daily Signal, September 2, 2026:

As America prepares to memorialize the 25^th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, expect a bright, glaring omission in the upcoming speeches, editorials, and televised survivor retrospectives about this history, important to tell for its warning that national vigilance remains necessary even now.

Left on the cutting room floors will be the all-important, basic “why,” exactly, al-Qaeda hijackers carried out these attacks. The too-offensive-for-public-discourse “why” part of 9/11 can be readily found in, for instance, the recovered United Airlines Flight 93 cockpit recordings, which reveal one hijacker’s motivation at an authentic moment of truth. Nine times over that nosediving flight’s final six seconds before it disintegrated with all 40 victims into a Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field, the hijacker repeatedly chanted: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar … !” Allah is great.

Expect schoolteachers, media pundits, and elected leaders speechifying at the New York memorial (think New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani) to pretzel-twist themselves around ever saying aloud that a religious motive rooted in Islamist ideology drove the 9/11 hijackers to that mass murder—and still does. Removing even passing references to Islamism as 9/11’s guiding motivation from the coming national discourse short-circuits civic duty to remind Americans that this problem lives on 25 years later as a national security threat.

ADVERTISEMENT

Muslims are far more numerous, politically powerful, and dangerous today than they were twenty-five years ago in America. They have managed to convince large numbers of Americans that any criticism of Islam or of Muslims should be anathematized as “Islamophobia.” They have managed as well to capture the college campuses, where pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests have been so sickeningly popular. Who would have thought, on September 12, 2001, that 25 years later, Muslims would be celebrated and their critics reviled?

Todd Bensman has compiled a florilegium of paragraphs excerpted from the 9/11 Commission’s report. Send his most useful compilation to those whom you believe will be memorializing, orally or in writing, the 25th anniversary of the attack, in the hope that some of them will learn enough to properly describe what motivated it. As everyone who frequents this website knows, that attack by 19 Muslims was prompted by only one thing — the ideology of Islam.