The fall of the Twin Towers gave U.S. imperialism a symbol to legitimize violence against Muslims.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was the scene of a series of coordinated attacks that shocked the world and marked a turning point in contemporary history. Members of the organization Al Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes and used them to carry out an offensive against different points in the country.
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Two aircraft were crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, another hit the Pentagon and the fourth ended up crashing into a rural area of Pennsylvania after passengers tried to regain control of the flight. The attacks became one of the most serious terrorist episodes recorded on U.S. territory.
Beyond the immediate impact, 9/11 profoundly changed international policies, security systems and Washington’s military strategy, while also causing significant changes in the social and cultural sphere. This event began a new era of international conflicts.
Among its most far-reaching consequences was the increase in Islamophobia, a phenomenon that quickly surpassed U.S. borders. Although prejudice and discrimination against Muslim people and communities of Arab origin were already present, the attacks intensified those expressions and gave them a new dimension.
Latin America did not remain on the sidelines either. In a region marked by cultural diversity and migratory processes, anti-Islamic narratives began to become more visible.
A simplistic association took hold strongly in part of the Western imagination: the identification between being Muslim and representing a terrorist threat.
Despite calls from governments and international organizations to differentiate religious beliefs from extremism, right-wing political discourse and media representations contributed to reinforcing the negative perception of Arabs and Muslims.
Film and television productions, video games, news coverage and official statements reproduced on numerous occasions the figure of the so-called “Muslim enemy,” feeding stereotypes that ended up spreading far beyond U.S. territory.
Within that scenario of distrust, Muslim and Arab communities faced different forms of targeting and discrimination. Reinforced airport controls, difficulties in the workplace, expressions of rejection and physical or verbal attacks became part of a reality that affected thousands of people.
Footage shows the 2,977 drones recreating the Twin Towers at full scale over New York Harbor ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11.pic.twitter.com/GXnizad6qS https://t.co/wp3kSsSIIp
— NewsForce (@Newsforce) September 11, 2026
From Fear to Stigma: The Consequences of 9/11 for Muslim Communities
After 9/11, a wave of hostility was unleashed against Muslim communities and against U.S. citizens of Arab descent, who in numerous cases were turned into targets of racist attacks.
The social reaction was not limited to expressions of rejection. During the weeks following the attacks, several mosques were burned or destroyed, while numerous people received death threats and were victims of harassment.
Some were even beaten, assaulted or threatened with weapons simply because they were identified, rightly or wrongly, as Muslim.
The dimension of this phenomenon was reflected in FBI statistics. Between 2000 and 2001, hate crimes directed against Muslims increased by 1,617%, one of the most pronounced increases recorded up to that time in the U.S. in this type of attack.
Far from disappearing with the passage of time, expressions of discrimination persisted even when the country began to distance itself from the initial shock caused by the attacks.
According to the Pew Research Center, prejudice and experiences of discrimination against this community remain part of the U.S. social reality.
Media and political attention on the area generated greater scrutiny toward merchants and families of Arab descent.
In Chile, a country that is home to one of the largest Palestinian communities outside the Arab world, discourses that associated elements of cultural and religious identity with a supposed threat of international scope began to gain presence.
In Mexico, meanwhile, Islamic organizations reported an increase in discriminatory expressions, with special impact on women who wore hijabs.
The media played a central role in reproducing and amplifying these prejudices. During coverage of the attacks and subsequent conflicts, Latin American audiences were repeatedly exposed to images of violence, military operations in the Middle East and Muslim people presented as suspects.
Over time, this repetition contributed to consolidating a representation in which what is Muslim could appear associated with the unknown, dangerous or incompatible with modernity.
That reductionist view had consequences in the sphere of social representation, by relegating to the background the diversity of Islamic communities and their historical presence in Latin America, where they have been part of the social fabric of numerous countries for generations.
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Surely, many people still remember September 11, 2001 — the day images from New York were broadcast around the world and became one of the defining memories of the modern era.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines… pic.twitter.com/2yZWZpKe9J
—
Music Love
(@ThoNg676733) September 7, 2026
The Costs of the U.S. War on Terrorism
After 9/11, the White House began the “war on terrorism” and declared that its military forces would take it to “the darkest corners of the world,” as former President George W. Bush (2001-2009) expressed. Weeks later, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and occupied it for 20 years.
A Brown University study estimated 241,000 deaths as a consequence of the war to overthrow the Taliban movement, which was blamed for the 9/11 attacks. Of those, 71,344 were civilians from Afghanistan or Pakistan.
A couple of years later, Washington disclosed the falsehood that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied to the U.N. Security Council to legitimize an aggression against that country, which had no link to Al Qaeda.
Begun in March 2003, the invasion left tens of thousands dead due to insurgent resistance against the aggressors and acts of sectarian violence. In October 2006, The Lancet magazine estimated 655,000 Iraqis dead as a consequence of the aggression.
The figure is far from the one disseminated by the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the main defenders of that war adventure, which found no weapons of mass destruction nor did it bring “freedom” to the Iraqi people, as the allies claimed.
Although the U.S. withdrew in 2011, it left a country so unstable and ungovernable that years later it intervened again, this time supposedly to help it confront the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which conquered large areas of the north.
Under the narrative of “collaboration,” a new attempt at imperial control was hidden and, moreover, the heroism of thousands of Iraqi fighters and those from nearby countries who prevented Daesh from taking Baghdad and imposing terror throughout the country was made invisible.
According to another Brown University study, the wars led by the U.S. since 2001 directly caused the deaths of approximately 940,000 people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other post-9/11 conflict zones.
Indirect deaths — that is, those caused by the loss of access to food, medical care or war-related diseases — amount to between 3.6 and 3.8 million.
Between direct and indirect deaths, they amount to 4.5-4.7 million. And they continue to increase: the two aggressions against Iran have so far caused more than 3,400 deaths.
Years after the invasions of Kabul and Baghdad, it became known that U.S. and British troops committed numerous human rights violations, such as: indiscriminate attacks that resulted in the death and injury of civilians, secret detentions and transfers of detainees, forced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Over the years, former detainees have denounced multiple abuses in detention centers, such as sleep deprivation, forced nudity, deprivation of adequate water and food, mock executions and threats of rape.
The best-known example of these illegal prisons was Abu Ghraib, in Iraq, where U.S. military personnel used beatings, electric shocks, attack dogs, forced nudity and sexual humiliations, among other aberrant practices.
Another of these prisons that gained sad notoriety was the one installed by the White House and the CIA at the illegal U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
FIRST LOOK “In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service,” the newest exhibition at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11. Opens on September 12. pic.twitter.com/eQg3qkNEnb
— Noel Y. Calingasan • NYC (@nyclovesnyc) September 9, 2026
Fear of Islam as an Electoral Resource
Islamophobia also found space within U.S. political dispute. During Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns, despite the fact that he professes the Christian religion, false versions and arguments of a racist and xenophobic nature circulated that questioned both his beliefs and his place of birth.
These claims sought to feed suspicion around his figure by taking advantage of existing prejudices against the Muslim population.
Rejection of Muslims regained visibility during the 2016 electoral process, in a context in which there was also a spike in hate crimes motivated by Islamophobia.
FBI figures show the dimension of these variations: records went from 481 incidents in 2001 to 155 the following year. More than a decade later, 257 cases were counted in 2015 and 307 in 2016. From then on, reports began to decrease until 2019, the last year included in the aforementioned data.
Various specialists have linked these spikes to the presence of hostile discourses toward Islam within the political scenario. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made Muslims and the Islamic religion one of his recurring targets, even publicly proposing a ban on entry to the country for Muslim people. The proposal took to an institutional level a rhetoric that had used fear and suspicion toward this community as elements of political mobilization.
The perception of discrimination remained widespread among the U.S. Muslim population at the start of the Trump administration. A Pew Research Center report noted at the time that about 75% of Muslim adults considered that there was a high level of discrimination against their community in the U.S.
Trump’s arrival at the White House was also accompanied by concrete measures on immigration matters. Shortly after assuming the presidency, he signed an executive order restricting the entry of citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, a decision that his detractors considered the legal materialization of his earlier proposals against this population.
During the campaign, Trump promoted a total ban on the entry of Muslims to the United States. The measure provoked a prolonged judicial battle and was modified on successive occasions, until the Supreme Court upheld one of its versions in 2018.
The restrictions initially reached citizens and travelers from countries such as Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Libya, all of them Muslim-majority. The regulation also incorporated North Korea and established restrictions for certain Venezuelan citizens; later, in 2020, the list of affected countries was expanded again.
The Glade’s inscription encapsulates its purpose:
This Memorial Glade is dedicated
To those whose actions in our time of need
Led to their injury, sickness, and death
Responders and recovery workers
Survivors and community members
Suffering long after September 11, 2001
From… pic.twitter.com/RzrjrXJvQ3— Francine (@Francin28577060) September 9, 2026
Trump Revives 9/11 Rhetoric to Justify His War on Iran
A few days before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Donald Trump took advantage of a commemorative event held at the Ellipse, next to the White House, to transfer the memory of that tragedy to the current war scenario.
During the ceremony, the president reaffirmed U.S. military strength and assured that his government would use all its power to prevent the country from suffering an aggression of that magnitude again.
The speech was crossed by confrontation with Iran. Trump presented the threat that the Islamic Republic could develop nuclear capabilities as one of the reasons that, from his perspective, justify the current U.S. aggression.
In this way, the reference to the 2001 attacks became linked to the war that Washington is currently waging against Tehran, transferring to the present conflict the national security argument constructed after 9/11.
The use of the date acquires special relevance because the anniversary refers directly to the foreign and military policy that the United States developed after the attacks.
By placing the 2001 tragedy and the current confrontation with Iran within the same discursive framework, Trump recovers the language of external threat and national defense to present the deployment of U.S. force as a necessary response to a supposed danger to the country.
Thus, the commemoration ceases to be limited to the memory of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks and also becomes a scenario from which the White House reaffirms its policy of force.
The association between the trauma of 9/11, the terrorist threat and the conflict with Iran allows Trump’s government to construct a narrative in which military action appears as a continuity of the struggle for U.S. security begun after the 2001 attacks.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: teleSUR
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