Nine years later, the 9/11 attacks get politicized

The ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks promises to be the most politically charged one yet, thanks to controversies in New York and Florida.

Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people and shocked the world. Even during the politically charged years of the Bush war presidency, September 11 remained a solemn, apolitical occasion, but this year for the first time the anniversary will be politicized and tinged with American anxiety about Muslims. Angry demonstrations are planned at the site of the so-called Ground Zero mosque, and a pastor is reserving the right to make a bonfire of Qur’ans in Florida.

“The biggest argument in America this summer has been over the Ground Zero mosque that isn’t at Ground Zero, and isn’t a mosque,” writes Sun Media’s L. Ian MacDonald, pointing out that what’s actually being proposed is a Muslim community centre a full two blocks from Ground Zero. Despairing also at pastor Terry Jones's plans to incinerate the Muslim holy book, says “intelligence, judgment, discernment and taste all seem to have gone missing in America.”

Even Daniel Pipes, a hardline pro-Israel conservative who’s spent years raising the alarm about Islamists, is unsettled by the current discourse. “The energetic push-back of recent months finds me partially elated,” he writes in the National Post, “Those who reject Islamism and all its works now constitute a majority and are on the march.” But he’s wary of the “increasing anti-Islamic tone” of the anti-terror movement. “Muslims alone can offer an antidote to Islamism” asserts Pipes. “As I often note, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution.”

“There’s no shortage of priests, politicians and pundits spouting hate against Muslims,” writes the Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui. But the Ground Zero mosque and Qur’an burning plot “have helped awaken Americans to the alarming degree of ‘anti-Muslim frenzy’” and while this is disturbing, it's prompted mainstream voices to spread the word “that Islamophobia, just like anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism, erodes the foundations of a secular democracy.”

As the New York Times reflects back on the attacks this week, it ran this collection of graffiti murals that appeared in the country’s poorest neighbourhoods after 9/11. In nine years, they’ve rarely been defaced.