More significance of 9/11

The people who instigated the attacks of 9/11 naively thought they could bring down a civilization, Western Civilization. Instead, the attacks showed the resilience and strength of this Civilization, to survive and carry on. In fact, I am impressed how robustly this Civilization has come roaring back from that disaster, with its cosmopolitism and internationalism. Many thought globalization was domed because this event conceivably could have ended it and spread isolationism throughout the world. The terrorists were hoping for that. The terrorist failed. I believe the fact that Western Civilization has shown such resilience and strength since the attacks signifies and confirms its preeminence in this world.

Another significant development of 9/11 is that it started the Islamic Reformation. Islam has never gone through a reformation in the way Christianity has. I find it interesting that Islam is five hundred years younger than Christianity and that its reformation is starting almost five hundred years after Christianity's.

What was done in the name of Islam on 9/11 by its Islamic perpetrators, and to a further extent by the bombings in London, Madrid and Bali, has provoked an awakening and a reflecting in the Islamic world, on what it is to be Islamic/Muslim. Because of this terrorist act done in their name, Muslims around the world have been looking inwardly and questioning their faith on mass. For the first time in history the Koran is being interpreted, something that in the past was vigorously discourage. The Bible, on the other hand, has been interpreted and debated for centuries. I think it is great that this kind of discourse has begun in Islam.

I think that the discourse started by of 9/11 among Muslims is really the only way of starting the process of democratization in the Islamic world and not through regime change or by military means. It has provoked politicking and independent thinking and self-expression among Muslim lay-people and scholars alike, something that has rarely occurred. This is an excellent start on the road to democracy. This is the way it started in Christianity, through its Reformation, which led to the Enlightenment, which paved the way for Democracy.

Perhaps the Islamic Reformation started before, but 9/11 blew it wide open. The antagonism Islam has endured from some sectors of the Christian world recently, like the Danish cartoon episode and the Pope's comments, has fueled and spurred on this Reformation.

Martin Luther was responsible for staring the Reformation in Christianity in the 16th century. The New York Times had an opinion piece entitled "Looking for Islam's Luther. That essay is what encouraged me to write what I am writing here. It also got me thinking of a falsehood, about the Reformation started by Luther. If anything, the Reformation he started, as we know it, was the result of an unattended consequence. It originally started off as a fundamentalist movement. We generally think of a reformation as an event that tends to liberalize and open things up. But Luther was a traditionalist and his idea of reformation was a way to push the Catholic Church back in time, to its original principles and traditional roots. Luther also thought the Church had become too liberal and wayward. Luther's Reformation was intended to clean up the Roman Catholic Church and put it back on the straight and narrow, not open it up to change and modernization as is what eventually occurred.

Luther was a fundamentalist and so were the perpetrators of 9/11. However, as we see from history, though Luther unleashed a reformation that was intended to restore traditional values in the Church, it had the opposite effect. This reformation did have some desired effects, in that it stopped some of the Church's capricious and corrupt behaviors. But it also had the undesired effect of splintering the Church and ushering in the Enlightenment, which started the development of Democracy. So instead of tightening things up, Luther’s Reformation cause a social upheaval. I think the Islamic/Muslim world is facing a similar prospect from the salvo that was launched on 9/11, which was hoped would push the world back to a more traditional, non-modern time, by its perpetrators. The idea backfired, as it did in Luther's time, The Islamic world is now in a social upheaval and is engaged in soul searching. And more often than not, when such things start things never remain quite the same and things usually change mutually for the better.