9/11: The greatest terrorist attack suffered by the West and the taboo of Islamism

It was a Tuesday. I had started eating and was watching the news on the Antena 3 channel, presented by the journalist Matías Prats.

The history of the Spanish woman murdered in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001
The remote New York City subway tunnel that still bears the dust of the 9/11 attacks

A Tuesday in September 2001

The presenter announced: "It appears a small plane has just crashed into the famous Twin Towers in New York." The program cut to a live feed with Ricardo Ortega, the outlet's U.S. correspondent, who confirmed the report about the small plane (which was the prevailing assumption at the time, just minutes after the collision).

The news broadcast began showing live footage of the massive fire in the North Tower. The gaping hole in the building indicated that this was not the result of a collision with a mere light aircraft. At that point, it was unclear whether it was an accident or a terrorist act. Just then—like millions of people around the world—I watched the massive explosion at the South Tower unfold live. That could not have been an accident.

I couldn't bring myself to finish my meal that day. Matías Prats’s news broadcast went on for hours. Later that afternoon, some friends and I met for a drink at a café on Oporto Street that we used to frequent (it no longer exists). The place was called "Madison," and it was filled with photos of New York. When we arrived, a candle had been placed in front of the photograph of the Twin Towers. We still couldn't believe what we had just witnessed. After decades of witnessing the horror of ETA’s crimes, for the first time, we had seen a terrorist attack unfold live—broadcast in real time.

The largest terrorist attack suffered by the West

The attacks of September 11, 2001, against the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington—not to mention United Airlines Flight 93 (whose hijackers failed to reach their target, the U.S. Capitol, after passengers revolted and the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania)—killed 2,996 people and injured more than 25,000. Among those killed in the Twin Towers was a Spanish woman, Silvia de San Pío, who was seven and a half months pregnant. Her husband, John Thomas Resta, and their unborn son, Dylan, were killed alongside her.

That terrorist attack—the largest ever suffered by the West—triggered the so-called War on Terror, aimed at capturing the perpetrators of this colossal crime: the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was eliminated during a U.S. special operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.

Twenty-five years have passed since those brutal attacks. It is hard to imagine, because I remember what happened as if it were yesterday. I was 25 years old then; today, I am 50. I often meet young people who are already over 20, and whenever I see them, I think the same thing: they didn't even live through that afternoon of horror on September 11, 2001—how can one explain something like that to them? The challenge now is no longer recounting what happened—in all its depth—to those who didn't experience it, but rather preventing those who witnessed it from eventually forgetting. And on this point, I believe we are failing.

Terrorism disguised by political correctness

After 9/11, many politicians, journalists, and academics insisted on the need not to criminalize all Muslims simply because the perpetrators of that terrorist attack were radical Islamists. Certainly, generalizing is unfair, and innocent people should not suffer reprisals for crimes they did not commit.

That warning against "Islamophobia" persisted even as Islamism continued to kill in the West for years, resulting in highly lethal attacks. Regardless of the root of the problem—and coinciding with the rise of leftist governments in several countries—political correctness began to object to any mention of Islamism when discussing terrorism of that nature. Instead of combating it, some sought to turn a blind eye to its ideological nature, effectively turning any reference to it into a taboo.

Going a step further, the warning against "Islamophobia" has often morphed into a drive to censor any criticism of Islam, even going so far as to label those who warn against the progressive Islamization of certain Western countries and its consequences (for instance, regarding women or religious freedom) as "far-right."

From voices against 'Islamophobia' to a wave of antisemitism

Displaying a blatant double standard, some who years ago railed against "Islamophobia" are today fueling the greatest wave of antisemitism the West has seen since the Holocaust—a wave of hatred driven by Islamism and the far left against the Middle East's only true democracy, Israel, following a terrorist attack that—proportionally—was as severe as, or worse than, 9/11, given that it claimed a higher percentage of the country's citizens than the attacks suffered by the US in 2001.

Many who label any criticism of Islam as "far-right" have no qualms today about demonizing an entire country—Israel—in the wake of the largest antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust: the one on October 7, 2023. Some extend this hate campaign to the entire Jewish community—a campaign fueled by Islamism, the far left, and the antisemitic far right.

That double standard is evident in how certain wars are characterized. Russia faces very few accusations of genocide for its systematic attacks on civilians in Ukraine—attacks that are part of a terror strategy expressly aimed at killing civilians in their homes as part of the Russian invasion. In contrast, Israel has been facing a wave of false accusations of "genocide" for defending itself in a war initiated by Hamas from Gaza—a war in which the Israeli military has had to engage in difficult urban combat to free 251 people abducted by Hamas.

The alliance between the far left and Islamism

A large part of the West not only seems to have largely forgotten 9/11, but a considerable portion of its population has also allowed the perpetrator of that colossal crime—Islamist terrorism—to impose its narrative and prejudices upon them. The Western far-left has allied itself with Islamism to shocking extremes, an alliance rooted in a shared hatred of the West, the Judeo-Christian roots of our civilization, and liberal democracy. It is an alliance that is violating the very heart of our civilization.

Proof of this is that on January 1, 2026, Zohran Mamdani, a far-left Islamist, became mayor of New York following an election campaign steeped in demagoguery. A mayor who wasted no time in displaying his antisemitism upon taking office, sparking growing anxiety and fear within the city's large Jewish community. Let us recall that 119 Jews were killed in the attacks on the Twin Towers, despite antisemites of various stripes flooding the internet with falsehoods to deny it.

The consequences of that forgetfulness are also evident in the country from which the 9/11 killers originated. Today, Afghanistan is once again in the hands of the Taliban—a sect of Islamist fanatics—following the botched withdrawal ordered by then-US President Joe Biden in 2021. The very same Left that constantly rails against Israel falls silent when the topic turns to Afghanistan, a country where women and girls endure levels of discrimination that are nothing short of criminal. Because this discrimination is imposed by Islamic fanatics, that Left looks the other way.

Not even the 2,996 deaths and more than 25,000 injuries were enough to prevent an absurd phenomenon 25 years later: the pathological hatred some Westerners harbor toward their own civilization—a civilization that affords them high levels of freedom, well-being, and prosperity, standing in stark contrast to the reality faced by the vast majority of the Islamic world, where the 9/11 perpetrators originated a quarter-century ago. I shudder to think what some people would say today had such an act been committed by Christian or Jewish extremists.

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Photos: U.S. National Archives.