Did 9/11 Change How Evangelicals See Muslims?

Sep 10, 2021

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This year marks 20 years since 19 men hijacked four planes, driving two of the aircraft into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania, after several of the passengers fought back. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and left 25,000 people injured and were organized by Osama bin Laden, who used his faith as justification for the attacks. Several days after September 11, 2001, President Bush addressed the country:

These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that.

The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.

When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race.

Under the Bush administration, the US initiated the “War on Terror” which carried out a number of military inventions around the world to fight Islamic extremism, which included invading and occupying two majority Muslim nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, all of this political rhetoric and direct action had significant consequences for how the country and church engaged Muslims domestically and internationally.Thomas Kidd is the author of American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton University Press, 2008) and works at Baylor University where is a distinguished professor of history, the James Vardaman endowed professor of history and the associate director of Institute for Studies of Religion. His most recent book is Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.

Kidd joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss how American evangelicals interacted with Muslim before 9/11 and what has changed since.