There are some dates we remember because history asks us to. Others remain with us because we can still remember exactly where we were when the world changed.

September 11, 2001, is one of those days for me.

I was living in Calgary, Canada, and working my morning shift at Nortel Networks. What began as an ordinary day suddenly became something almost impossible to comprehend. We watched television screens showing smoke pouring from the World Trade Center in New York. Then came the second aircraft. The Pentagon was struck. Another plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

Work almost stopped. People stood around television screens in disbelief. Nobody knew what would happen next.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember that feeling.

The murder of innocent people on September 11 was a heinous crime. Nearly 3,000 people were killed. They were workers, parents, children, firefighters, police officers, travellers and ordinary human beings. Their lives mattered, and their families carried wounds that no political argument can erase.

But remembrance should not mean that we stop asking questions.

After 25 years, we should be able to condemn the attacks without hesitation while still examining the political, military, economic and human consequences that followed.

The established evidence concerning responsibility is substantial. Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers seized four commercial aircraft, and Osama bin Laden later acknowledged responsibility. There has never been credible evidence establishing the popular claim that September 11 was an “inside job.”

That should be stated clearly.

But rejecting conspiracy theories does not require us to pretend that there were no extraordinary failures.

The 9/11 Commission documented weaknesses in intelligence sharing, aviation security, threat assessment and institutional coordination. The United States possessed some of the most sophisticated intelligence and defence systems in the world, yet those systems had been built largely to address older forms of threats. Authorities expected traditional hijackings, not passenger aircraft being turned into suicide weapons.

Institutional failure is not proof of orchestration. But citizens still have every right to ask what warnings were missed, why agencies failed to connect critical information, and what lessons were learned from those failures.

Then Came the Wars

Afghanistan was the first major battlefield.

The Taliban government was removed after the United States and its allies launched operations against al-Qaeda and the regime that had sheltered it. Thousands of soldiers went there believing they were defending their countries from another attack.

Canada was part of that mission. More than 40,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan. One hundred and fifty-eight Canadian Armed Forces members and seven Canadian civilians lost their lives.

Their sacrifice deserves respect.

But respecting soldiers does not place political strategy beyond scrutiny.

Twenty years after the intervention began, the Taliban returned to power in Kabul. Millions of Afghans, especially women and girls, had experienced greater access to education, media and civic life during those years. Yet the final collapse still forces a difficult question: after two decades, thousands of lives and enormous financial costs, what was the lasting outcome?

Iraq raises even harder questions.

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But Iraq did not carry out the September 11 attacks. Later investigations found no evidence that Saddam’s government was responsible for 9/11 or maintained the operational relationship with al-Qaeda that had been suggested in the atmosphere leading up to the war.

The 2003 invasion was also justified heavily around alleged weapons of mass destruction. Those claims proved deeply flawed.

This is where the media deserves serious reflection.

After 9/11, fear became a powerful force in public life. Government briefings, national security language, dramatic television images and constant repetition shaped public opinion.

Networks such as CNN and Fox News did not create the wars, and many journalists did courageous work. But major American news organizations later acknowledged that official claims about Iraq often received greater prominence than sceptical reporting.

When a nation is frightened, journalism becomes even more important.

The duty of the media is not to amplify fear. It is to question power, test evidence and give the public enough information to judge whether war is necessary.

The Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars

The human cost that followed 9/11 is staggering.

Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that hundreds of thousands of people were killed directly in post-9/11 war zones, while millions more died indirectly because of destroyed healthcare systems, displacement, disease, hunger, damaged infrastructure and economic collapse.

Its wider estimate places the direct and indirect death toll at roughly 4.5 to 4.7 million people, with more than 38 million displaced.

Not all those victims were Muslim, and it would be wrong to attribute every death to a single government, army or cause.

But many of the principal war zones, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, were Muslim-majority societies. Muslim populations unquestionably carried an enormous share of the suffering.

This brings me to the hardest moral question.

If the nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered on September 11 mattered — and they absolutely did — why should an Afghan child, an Iraqi mother, a Pakistani villager, a Syrian family or a Yemeni civilian matter less?

Are some human lives worth more because of geography, nationality or religion?

Surely not.

Human dignity cannot depend on a passport.

The answer is not to reduce the tragedy of September 11 because other people later died. The answer is to expand our capacity to mourn.

Every innocent life matters.

The Economic Consequences

The economic consequences also deserve scrutiny.

The post-9/11 wars cost trillions of dollars. Defence contractors, private security companies, intelligence firms and surveillance industries benefited enormously from the new security order.

Profit does not prove conspiracy.

But democratic societies have every right to ask who benefited financially from prolonged war, who carried the cost, and what incentives were created when conflict became an industry.

There was another consequence that many Muslims experienced personally: suspicion.

After September 11, anti-Muslim hatred surged. Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and even Sikhs were sometimes targeted by people who did not understand the difference between religion, ethnicity and nationality.

Airports changed. Security interviews changed. Public attitudes changed. Muslim names could trigger additional scrutiny.

Entire communities often felt expected to prove that they rejected crimes committed by people they had never met.

None of this means terrorism was imaginary.

Al-Qaeda murdered innocent people. ISIS committed horrific atrocities. Extremists claiming Islamic justification have killed Muslims in enormous numbers as well.

Governments have a duty to protect their citizens, and intelligence and counterterrorism measures remain necessary.

But security without restraint can damage the freedoms it claims to protect.

So Where Are We 25 Years Later?

Al-Qaeda’s original leadership was severely degraded. Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Aviation security improved. Intelligence agencies became better coordinated. There has been no repeat in the United States of an attack approaching the scale of September 11.

Those achievements matter.

But so do the failures.

The Taliban again governs Afghanistan.

Iraq endured invasion, occupation, insurgency and sectarian bloodshed. Millions were displaced. Trillions were spent.

Torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and mass surveillance entered the vocabulary of democratic states.

Distrust deepened between Muslim societies and Western governments.

Perhaps the most meaningful way to remember September 11 today is through honest memory.

Remember those trapped inside the towers.

Remember the firefighters climbing upward while others were desperately trying to get down.

Remember the passengers of Flight 93 and the families who waited for loved ones who never came home.

But remember others too.

Remember the Afghan family whose home disappeared in a war they did not start.

Remember the Iraqi child who grew up through invasion and insurgency.

Remember the Pakistani family trapped between militancy and counterterrorism.

Remember the soldier who returned home physically alive but psychologically wounded.

Remember Muslims attacked far from New York because someone decided that their religion made them collectively guilty.

If “We Will Never Forget” is to mean something universal, then we cannot remember only those who look like us, worship like us or carry the same passport.

Peace does not mean surrendering to terrorism.

It means refusing to let terrorists determine how civilisation behaves.

It means stronger cultural diplomacy, education, trade, youth exchanges, responsible journalism and people-to-people engagement.

It means Muslim societies confronting extremism honestly.

It also means Western societies refusing to hold nearly two billion Muslims collectively responsible for criminals who misuse their religion.

Military power can destroy a camp, a building or an army, but it cannot manufacture trust.

On September 11, 2026, I still remember that morning at Nortel Networks in Calgary and the sense that the world had changed before our eyes.

I mourn the innocent people murdered that day.

I also mourn the innocent people consumed by the wars, instability, hatred and mistrust that followed.

After 25 years, perhaps the question we should finally ask is simple:

If every human life is equal, when will our politics, our wars, our institutions and our media begin treating it that way?

Sadat Choudhary
September 11, 2026