September 11

Martyn Percy (Editorial, Modern Believing, Volume 43:1, January 2002)

'The world has changed' is now a well-worn cliché following the dramatic and tragic events of September 11th. What were you doing that day? As with Kennedy's assassination, can you remember where you were when the news came through? I was at a Faith and Order Advisory Group meeting, discussing theological approaches to ecumenism. We were locked in deep debate, and had no idea what was going on. But I came home early for my youngest son's birthday tea - he was 5 that day. Yet there was little appetite for celebration. Even at 5pm GMT, it was apparent that thousands had lost their lives, and that the terrorism would most likely trigger further tragedy. And so it has.

The pages of this journal have, in the past, taken a rather prurient interest in fundamentalism. We have covered Waco, looked at new ethnic churches and their identity, and taken the (usual) pot shots at simplistic faiths that are aggressively preached, and will brook no rivals. This is understandable for a journal with such august liberal credentials, although as I have argued before, there is an urgent task in moving beyond interest to dialogue. It is easy to exclude those who are on the periphery of their faith as extremists or terrorists, but as we also surely know, such people do not always occupy such positions by choice. They have been placed there by other conflicts beyond their control, and other types of exclusion that we may have ignored - arguably for far too long. To be sure, terrorism is evil in its calculating extermination of innocent lives; but it is also a demand to be heard. Invariably, terrorism is the messenger, not the message. We need a wisdom to hear, however hard that may be.

Whatever the long-term outcomes of the assaults on the Taliban yield, I cannot forget the chilling tone of the last will and testament of Mohammed Atta, which was published shortly after his suicide. It was he, you will remember, who steered American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8.43am. But his will was written in April 1996, and it is clear from the text that the die was already cast for the events of September 11th 2001. But what happened in 1996 to make Atta begin to plot his murderous behaviour? Could it be the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon that month by Israeli forces? Or perhaps the Quana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilians in a UN base, half of whom were young children, again at the hands of Israeli artillery? Probably. Do we remember these events? Probably not.

We would do well to remember that this is not, in spite of what politicians want to tell us, 'a war of good against evil', or 'of civilisation against terrorism'. It is not as simple as that. It was, is, and will continue to be, a war about contested land and sacred space, and a more complex dispute over the values that control our societies. Atta's accomplices did what they did for the children of Palestine, Iraq (as much as they did it for infamy and revenge), and those other places where 'civilisation' has been seen to act oppressively, or been deaf to Arab causes.

Arguably, the most fitting memorial to the thousands of dead in New York is not only the rooting out of terrorism, but also a new kind of building. Not a physical one to replace the twin towers, but rather the building of a dynamic political, ethnic and religious consensus that robs this kind of terrorism of its root causes. That can only be done if there is some new hope for addressing the Middle East that takes account of the plight of Palestinians and the oppression of those other peoples who are held to be inimical to the interests of western civilisation. And we can start by building bridges here, even amidst our own communities, encouraging not only inter-religious dialogue, but also greater understanding and mutual support. As all the great liberal prophets of the twentieth century knew - Gandhi, Luther King, Tutu, Mandela, to name but a few - it is not enough to win the war against your oppressor. Beyond that horizon lies the Christian imperative for reconciliation. This is the extra mile that Jesus asks us to walk. Yes, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.

Modern Believing, MCU, October Vol. 43, No.1, January 2002