Speeches

Berita Harian Article

September 11: One Year After       [Bahasa]       [Chinese]

Franklin L. Lavin - U.S. Ambassador to Singapore

September 10, 2002

On September 10, 2001, I presented my credentials to President Nathan, and officially took up my post as U.S. ambassador to Singapore. Little more than a day later, as the world watched in horror, terrorists murdered 3,000 persons in the U.S. In the days that followed, I and other Americans in Singapore were deeply moved by the spontaneous outpouring of sympathy and support from Singaporeans of all faiths and ethnicities.

This support was just one sign of the terrorists’ failure: They had hoped to tear down not only office buildings, but also the very foundations of ethnic and religious tolerance in the United States and around the world.

After these brutal attacks, there was some initial confusion in parts of the U.S. and in parts of the Muslim world as to what the attacks meant. Do Muslims hate America? Does Islam preach this type of senseless slaughter? Should the U.S. respond in kind? Muslim religious and political leaders from around the world quickly put these concerns to rest with universal condemnation of these crimes. For their part, President Bush and other U.S. leaders made an immediate public point of reaching out to Muslim Americans. For every contemptible act of prejudice, a hundred ordinary Americans expressed support in words and deed to Muslims who were their neighbors or colleagues, or who were complete strangers. Similarly, Muslim charities in the U.S. pitched in to help the survivors and their families. Instead of intolerance toward America’s fastest growing religious group, the Koran and books on Islam appeared on bestseller lists as Americans strove to deepen their knowledge of the faith. The September 11 attacks ironically generated greater feelings of intercommunal solidarity in the United States.

In sum, Muslim and U.S. Government leadership acted quickly and responsibly in a spirit of respect and brotherhood. In fact, there was and is only one element trying to turn the world’s war on terrorism into a war on Muslims: the terrorists themselves. The al Qaeda terrorists responsible for September 11 are the ones who assert their acts are done in the name of Islam -- a contention the United States and Muslim leaders roundly reject.

The effort to cloak crimes in the garb of religion is a ploy by the terrorists. By using religious and ethnic ties, terrorists try to create an "us against them" mentality among Muslims. Within the Muslim world, Al Qaeda and its apologists have used this religious trickery in an effort to make barbarity acceptable, to convert innocent people into terrorists, and to cow the rest of the community into silence.

We saw some of this pattern when debate began over the war in Afghanistan. It was natural to expect there to be a level of sympathy among Muslims for a Muslim government. But the terrorists tried to exploit this natural sympathy and encourage Muslims to support the Taliban regime. It soon became quite clear, however, that ordinary Afghans had no love for the Taliban, which had forced millions of Afghanis into exile, kicked women out of school, and destroyed the livelihood of many through economic mismanagement and corruption. The real enemies of Afghan Muslims were not the United States, but the Taliban regime.

Whatever one thinks about whether military action is appropriate in Iraq, it also is a mistake to twist that situation into "yet another U.S. war against Muslims." From Afghanistan, Kuwait and Somalia to Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.S. has used its military repeatedly over the last decade to aid Muslims – just watch the footage of Afghans celebrating in the streets of Kabul from 2001 or Kuwaitis cheering U.S. Marines liberating them from Saddam in 1991.

Singapore, like the U.S., is a multi-cultural nation. In both our countries, harmony between persons of different faiths and ethnicities is a requirement for social stability and economic prosperity. I have been impressed at how hard Singaporeans work at building links between different communities. These efforts have paid dividends over the last year, as Singaporeans coped with the reality that fellow citizens with links to al Qaeda had calmly discussed the best way to bomb an MRT station. Just as with the World Trade Center attacks, many of the victims would have been Muslims. Just as in the United States, Singaporeans have been able to understand that the terrorists were defaming Islam, not upholding it.

One year after September 11, as we remember the thousands of victims murdered that day, we should rejoice in the fact that the terrorists have failed utterly in their plot to pit religion against religion, and neighbor against neighbor. We should continue to openly discuss those disagreements that may arise over important policy issues, at the same time as we reject the effort of terrorists to divide us, and to pervert religion into a weapon.

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