It Takes Courage To Not Be Vilified

﷽

There is a reason I generally avoid talking about September 11th. Not because I was afraid to do so but because I was always deeply troubled by the way in which Muslims so hastily accepted the false narrative foisted upon them and the crushing collective guilt which ensued. Looks like 2026 is going to be different.

Every year, Muslims are presented with talking points about how we ought to respond, what we ought to say, and how we ought to explain ourselves. This year was no different. In fact I was presented with Suggested Guidelines for Khaṭībs: Friday Sermon — September 11, 2026 (25th Anniversary of 9/11) by Dr. Yasir Qadhi. It states,

“These guidelines are suggestions for how to meet our community's pastoral needs on this difficult day while staying mindful of the public perception, and misinformation, that some still hold about our faith.”

There are many things about the way in which the narrative of 9/11 has been crafted and the nefarious way in which this unjustified guilt has been dumped on Muslims but nothing is perhaps as disturbing as the way in which “the public” bears not responsibility for its “misinformation” on Islam, as if this is some kind of PR campaign run amok. Muslims have been convinced that they, and they alone, are not only collectively responsible for 9/11 but they’re also culpable for the public’s misinformation about Islam in general and Islam’s role in 9/11. This has been a masterstroke of psychological deception that could only be pulled off with willing Muslim participation and acceptance.

Dr. Qadhi advises to open with “Unqualified Mourning”, a mourning which does not ever seem to include the millions of Iraqis, Afghans, and others, who are without a doubt, equally innocent and unjustifiably murdered along with those who perished in the Twin Towers yet their voices are silenced in favor of “staying mindful of the public perception”.

To prove my point just how 9/11-pilled Muslims, and especially western Muslim religious leaders have been, look to this statement by Dr. Qadhi again:

“It wasn’t just planes that were hijacked that day — our religion was hijacked and misused …”

I agree that Islam was hijacked on September 11th but not by “pilots” of those planes but by the America mainstream media and the military industrial complex who succeeded in vilifying Muslims and Islam, not merely in the minds of non-Muslim Americans, but in the minds of Muslims themselves! Let me explain a bit further.

The underlying assumption is almost always the same: September 11 happened, Muslims and Islam were implicated, and therefore Muslims must once again explain why Islam does not condone terrorism or why “real Muslims” would never commit such acts.

After nearly twenty-five years, we must reject and refute the premise of that entire exercise. A premise and a narrative that insists:

• the Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed due to being hit by a plane even though the latter was never struck.
• one of the hijacker’s passports miraculously survived intact.
• the Pentagon, the most surveilled building in the world, was struck by a plane flying just feet above the ground, a plane that we’ve never seen footage of and whose wreckage is non-existent. It’s as if the plane just disappeared.
• the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania has never been sufficiently explained.
• the United States military had trained for such an attack and yet despite both planes clearly off-course, and even after the first plane struck, there was never any attempt to down or thwart the second plane.

This is but a short list of completely absurd explanations that we are supposed to just accept because “Islam happened”. When Dr. Qadhi attempts to apologize for a crime we didn’t commit by invoking the Qurʾān (“No Soul Bears the Sins of Another”) this only reinforces that Muslims, and Islam, are actually to blame. But my issue here is not with Dr. Qadhi. It’s with the whole entire narrative.

That Muslims have some growing up to do cannot be overstated. We need a more mature understanding of truth, responsibility, and what it means to refuse a narrative that has been imposed upon us.

The Prophet ﷺ as reported in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, described Paradise as being surrounded by things that are difficult and unpleasant, while the Fire is surrounded by things that appeal to human desires.

حُفَّتِ الْجَنَّةُ بِالْمَكَارِهِ، وَحُفَّتِ النَّارُ بِالشَّهَوَاتِ.

The point is not simply that religious life requires sacrifice. It is also that doing what is right will not always feel comfortable, and sometimes truth itself is uncomfortable. And it’s clear that Muslims, especially in America, do not simply have a need to belong (that is completely understandable) but we also have a need to not be made to feel uncomfortable. That need has driven us to accept a narrative which is patently false.

The Defensive Posture

One of the most damaging consequences of September 11th was the way it pushed Muslims into a permanent defensive posture. A story was quickly established in which the attacks were committed not merely by people who happened to be Muslim, but because they were Muslim. Islam itself became the explanation of why 9/11 happened. Muslims responded by accepting that premise and then attempting to distance themselves from its conclusion which such apologetics as “Islam would never permit this” or “a real Muslim would never do this” or “this does not represent Islam”. Those statements may be intended to defend Islam and Muslims but there is a flaw in the argument, namely by accepting the accusation and narrative at face value and then trying to explain it away. For twenty five years, we have been trying to remove a stain that was never ours in the first place.

This is where Muslims need to distinguish two entirely separate questions. The first is whether Islam is a virtuous way of life. The second is whether a particular historical narrative is true. Those are not the same question.

Islam does not need to be proven innocent every time someone claiming to be Muslim commits a crime or even an atrocity. Nor should Muslims make the dishonest claim that Muslims are somehow incapable of evil. Our own tradition tells us otherwise.

The Prophet ﷺ warned about the Khawārij: people whose outward religiosity would be impressive such as how they would recite the Qurʾān and other acts of devotion and yet they’re the very same ones who would commit terrible acts. Muslim history contains both righteousness and wrongdoing because Muslims, like other human beings, remain morally responsible creatures capable of either.

So “a Muslim could never do such a thing” is not a serious argument. A Muslim could commit murder, terrorism, injustice, or any number of other evils. But we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted and consumed by this slandering and have not taken the time to ask a much simpler question: what actually happened on 9/11? And until we insist on asking this question and pushing back, everything just makes us look collectively guilty and weak.

Truth Does Not Depend Upon Muslim Virtue

If a historical account is false, it is not false because Muslims are too good to have done it. It is false because the evidence does not support the account. Likewise, if an accusation against Muslims is true, then Muslims are obligated to acknowledge it. Our commitment must be to truth, not tribal defense:

۞ يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ كُونُوا۟ قَوَّٰمِينَ بِٱلْقِسْطِ شُهَدَآءَ لِلَّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَوِ ٱلْوَٰلِدَيْنِ وَٱلْأَقْرَبِينَ ۚ إِن يَكُنْ غَنِيًّا أَوْ فَقِيرًۭا فَٱللَّهُ أَوْلَىٰ بِهِمَا ۖ فَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ ٱلْهَوَىٰٓ أَن تَعْدِلُوا۟ ۚ وَإِن تَلْوُۥٓا۟ أَوْ تُعْرِضُوا۟ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ خَبِيرًۭا

“O believers! Stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or close relatives. Be they rich or poor, Allah is best to ensure their interests. So do not let your desires cause you to deviate ‘from justice’. If you distort the testimony or refuse to give it, then ‘know that’ Allah is certainly All-Aware of what you do.”

That is the standard the Qurʾān gives us: stand firmly for justice and truth, even when the truth weighs against ourselves. That principle eliminates both cowardice and propaganda. We do not defend Muslims simply because they are Muslims, and we do not condemn Muslims simply because someone tells us to. We ask what is true and we stand for what is true.

For over two decades now, Muslim and non-Muslim alike have questioned the “official” account of September 11th. For the first decade or so many were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Today it is the opposite, with public skepticism, if not outright denial of “official” government narratives, intelligence agencies, military claims, and the political uses of national trauma/colonial ambition than there was in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

My point is not that Muslims need to adopt every alternative theory about 9/11. To do so would replace one form of credulity with another. My point is that Muslims never should have believed that our religious integrity depended upon accepting someone else’s account of events and then apologizing for it. That, in essence, is the trap. Once you accept the premise that you are the defendant, you will spend the rest of your life arguing for a lighter sentence.

The Recurring Need for a Villain

American history should make us particularly cautious about this.

Governments and political institutions have repeatedly mobilized public opinion through enemies, threats, simplified narratives, and fear. In some cases, later historical investigation has substantially revised what the public was originally told.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the escalation of the Vietnam War should alone teach us that governments are capable of presenting false claims as grounds for war. Yet by the time such narratives unravel, the damage has already been done, countless people have died, families have been destroyed, countries have been devastated, all the while the institutions that profited from war have already made their money. An admission decades later does not resurrect the dead.

This is why we as Muslims, a people committed to truth, cannot accept: “The government said it, therefore it happened that way,” any more than we should say, “Someone on the internet challenged it, therefore the opposite must be true.” Truth requires more discipline than either position.

Muslims, in particular, should have learned by now how easily populations can be turned into convenient villains. Different periods of American history have required different threatening outsiders and internal enemies. Indigenous people, Black Americans, immigrants, communists, Latin Americans, and Haitians, with Arabs and Muslims just being recent hires. All of these groups at various times and in different ways, have been conscripted into narratives designed to generate fear and justify political action and violence. For Muslims after September 11th, the role was already written. Tragically, all too often, we agreed to play it.

Refusing the Role

There is something here that Black American history teaches especially clearly.

Black Americans were not merely subjected to discriminatory laws. They were subjected to a narrative about who they were as human beings (or lack thereof!): intellectually inferior, morally suspect, dangerous, uncivilized, sexually threatening, and incapable of governing themselves. Those ideas were then used to justify the brutality imposed upon them. In this light we can see that the Civil Rights Movement was about more than just the right to vote. At a deeper level, Black people refused the role they had been assigned. We refused to continue speaking the lines someone else had written for us.

That refusal, however, carried a great many consequences initially. People were beaten, attacked by police dogs, fired from jobs, jailed, and even murdered. But there comes a point at which preserving your physical comfort, even your life, by cooperating with a lie does greater damage than confronting the lie itself. This is why we saw Black actors gradually refuse degrading roles in entertainment. Black intellectuals rejected theories of racial inferiority. Ordinary people refused to accept humiliation as the natural order of things. They did not wait for the surrounding society to spontaneously become virtuous. They stood up, and standing up required courage. Muslims must learn the same lesson.

The Prophet ﷺ and the Price of Concession

There is a parallel in the life of the Prophet ﷺ. When the Quraysh realized that ridicule and vilification were not sufficient to stop his preaching they attempted another strategy: coercion through bribery. In other words wealth, status, influence, political power and ultimately, social comfort—whatever he wanted, they were prepared to discuss it provided that he abandoned what they found intolerable about his mission: that he was the Messenger of Allāh.

The significance of his refusal goes beyond personal integrity. Had the Prophet ﷺ accepted their terms, he would effectively have denied the very truth he had been commanded to proclaim: there is no god save Allāh and Muḥammad is His Messenger. That is why the famous report of his response captures something essential: even if they could place the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, he would not abandon the mission entrusted to him because it would be the acceptance of a false narrative because he is the Messenger of Allāh.

Muslims must come to learn the difficult but necessary lesson: there are truths that cannot be bartered away, and there are moments when compromise is not moderation but surrender. Standing for truth does not mean defending every Muslim action, believing every theory favorable to Muslims, or imagining Muslims as morally pure. It means refusing to say what we believe is false simply because saying it would make us socially acceptable.

October 7 and the Same Temptation

The war in Gaza has exposed a similar narrative and similar weakness.

Immediately after October 7th, Muslims once again found themselves being asked to condemn, explain, distance, qualify, and apologize. Many Muslims instinctively entered the same defensive posture: Hamas does not represent Islam; Muslims do not believe in killing civilians; Islam prohibits this or that. Those may be legitimate theological observations but they do not answer the underlying question: what actually happened on October 7th? What evidence supports the various claims that were made? Which reports were accurate (if any), which were exaggerated or outright lies (burning babies in ovens, etc.), and which were subsequently rejected by the majority of the world by this point? Instead of defending Islam, we should be asking what did Israeli political and military leadership know beforehand? Why was their military told to stand down in the midst of an alleged attack?

Those are factual questions, and they should be investigated as factual questions. They should not be answered through Muslims apologizing away their religion. Again: never begin by accepting guilt and then trying to negotiate your way toward innocence. Begin, and end, with truth.

Courage Is Not Belligerence

Muslims sometimes misunderstand what courage looks like. Courage does not require becoming obnoxious, aggressive, or reckless. It means remaining upright when there is a cost to remaining upright. The Arabic concept of ṣabr is often inadequately translated as “patience.” It carries a stronger sense of endurance, steadfastness, and grit. A boxer can learn every elegant technique in the sport, but at some point he is going to get hit. The real question is whether he can absorb the blow and remain standing.

Communities are no different. You cannot expect to hold convictions that conflict with the values of the surrounding culture and never experience pressure. Muslims continue, despite many challenges, to be the religious community most resistant to completely privatizing and domesticating religion, to surrendering moral claims to the demands of modern culture. That refusal and courage will make some people uncomfortable. A person who cannot be purchased, intimidated, or socially pressured into abandoning his convictions makes systems of power uncomfortable. This doesn’t mean Muslims should deliberately seek conflict. It means we should stop imagining that social comfort and acceptance is proof that we are behaving correctly and that we belong.

The Cost of Someone Else’s Narrative

Narratives produce consequences. The “official” narrative of September 11th became the justification for wars, surveillance, detention, torture, extraordinary expansions of state power, and the devastation of entire societies. The suffering of the people killed on September 11th was real and tragic, but so was the suffering of Iraqis, Afghans, and countless others whose deaths became secondary in the American imagination. But more importantly, Muslims were not responsible for those fantastical acts: acts where buildings magically fall down, jumbo airplanes hover inches above the ground undetected and vanish on impact.

What Are We Teaching the Next Generation?

Let us ask: what happens when a community repeatedly tells itself and its children, “Yes, they accused us, but please understand that we are actually nice. Yes, they blamed our religion, but let us prove that Islam is peaceful. Yes, they portrayed us as the enemy, but perhaps if we behave carefully enough they will eventually accept us”? What kind of identity, what kind of person does that produce? The subsequent generation will internalize the accusation as fact itself. They will believe that their religious identity is inherently suspicious and that their citizenship requires perpetual explanation. This is an unbearable burden to place upon young Muslims. Perhaps we could have spared ourselves considerable confusion by teaching something simpler: Never accept a false narrative merely because powerful people demand that you accept it.

There Is No Substitute for Courage

History does not show that oppressed communities are eventually treated justly simply because they remain quiet long enough. Nor does revelation teach that truth becomes easy merely because it is true. I’ll repeat the Prophet’s words ﷺ: Paradise is surrounded by things we would rather avoid. Sometimes one of those things is the discomfort of standing apart from the crowd, refusing to repeat something everyone else has agreed to say. Sometimes it means enduring vilification and striving to vindicate yourself rather than participating in your own humiliation.

Muslims must become people of truth again—not people of Muslim public relations, not people who reflexively defend themselves, and not people who believe every claim that happens to flatter us.

If the truth is for us, we stand with it. If it is against us, we stand with it. And if the entire world insists upon a falsehood, we should still have the courage to refuse the role they have written for us.