Every September 11, families gather at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville to remember 2,977 innocent souls. Their names deserve to be read. Their relatives deserve sympathy, and the crime that took their lives must never be excused.
But remembrance becomes incomplete when it ends there. The United States answered the attack with a military campaign that crossed borders and outlived presidents. Though Muslims were not responsible for 9/11, their families abroad and at home have carried the heaviest consequences of the response for twenty-five years.
One Attack Became Permission for Endless War
The invasion of Afghanistan began less than a month after 9/11. What was presented as a mission against terrorist groups soon became a wider project of occupation and political reconstruction.
The government of Iraq did not carry out the September 11 attacks. Even the 9/11 Commission found no evidence of a collaborative operational relationship between Iraq and terrorist groups. Even so, fear helped the then US administration sell an invasion built around weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Eventually, the “War on Terror” reached Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya and the Philippines through airstrikes, raids and proxy forces. It had no fixed battlefield or clear definition of victory. That made it convenient to expand and almost impossible to end.
The Dead Are Counted in Millions
Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that post-9/11 wars caused at least 4.5 to 4.7 million deaths. Only part of that total came directly from bombs, bullets, and battlefield violence.
Researchers estimate that 3.6 to 3.8 million people died indirectly. War destroyed hospitals, water systems, farms, and local economies. Children died from malnutrition, patients lost treatment, while families faced disease after sanitation systems collapsed.
Although these figures include people of different faiths, the principal battlegrounds were Muslim-majority countries. Therefore, Muslims bore a vastly disproportionate share of the devastation.
Thirty-Eight Million Muslims Were Driven From Home
An estimated 38 million people were displaced by post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
Some crossed borders and became refugees. Others moved repeatedly as front lines changed. Resultantly, children grew up in camps, and families lost their homes, farmland and livelihoods.
Additionally, Western governments later treated this displacement as a separate migration problem. Many refugees arriving at foreign borders were escaping wars, armed groups, and institutional collapse created or intensified by military intervention.
The Same Language Is Being Used in Gaza
The War on Terror never truly disappeared. Its language now helps Israel defend its genocide in Gaza.
As a result of a Carte blanche to Israel, Palestinians are reduced to “human shields,” homes become “terrorist infrastructure,” and children killed in airstrikes become “collateral damage.” Such terms make civilian deaths appear unavoidable before independent investigators can establish what happened.
Unfortunately, Washington supplies the required backing behind that language. From October 2023 to September 2025, the United States spent $21.7 billion on military assistance to Israel. Moreover, it spent another $9.65 to $12.07 billion on related operations across the wider Middle East.
Though the weapons and leaders have changed since 2001, the permission remains familiar: declare an unlimited fight against terrorism, remove civilians from the centre of the story, and dismiss accountability as support for the enemy.
Muslim Life in the World Came Under Suspicion
The War on Terror also created an internal enemy. Religious practice, immigration history, and political speech became reasons to watch Muslims who had committed no crime.
Under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, more than 80,000 men from predominantly Muslim countries had to register with immigration authorities in the United States. Unfortunately, more than 13,000 faced deportation proceedings after complying. The programme produced no terrorism-related convictions.
Moreover, the New York Police Department mapped Muslim neighbourhoods, monitored student groups and sent informants into mosques. Its surveillance reached every mosque within 100 miles of New York. Worshippers began wondering whether newcomers had come to pray or record them.
That suspicion has not disappeared. CAIR received 8,683 civil-rights complaints in 2025 alone, its highest annual number since recording began in 1996. These were complaints rather than court-proven hate crimes, but their scale remains significant.
A 2026 Pew Research Center study found that 59 percent of American Muslims believe Muslims face extensive discrimination. The same percentage said television and films portray them unfairly. Only 34 percent recalled receiving support because of their religion during the previous year.
In a nutshell, remembering September 11 should mean refusing to repeat its horror: the deliberate destruction of innocent life. Those innocent souls killed that day were not a license to invade unrelated countries, torture prisoners, surveil mosques, or punish Muslim families across generations. Twenty-five years later, the War on Terror must be judged not by the fear that launched it, but by the millions of lives it took apart.
