As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, we pause to remember the nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered in a single morning. They were mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends, colleagues, travelers, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, office workers, military personnel, and ordinary citizens beginning what they believed would be an ordinary day.
They boarded planes. They entered elevators. They poured coffee. They said goodbye to loved ones, never imagining that the morning would become a defining national trauma. In New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, the illusion of safety was shattered. The names of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks remain etched into the conscience of the nation, as well as into the memorials built to ensure that they are never reduced to a number.
We remember the passengers who resisted their hijackers aboard United Flight 93. We remember the first responders who entered the World Trade Center when everyone else was trying to escape. We remember the men and women who climbed stairwells through smoke and fire, knowing that they might not return. We remember those who called home from offices above the impact zone, those who prayed, those who helped strangers, and those who died in acts of courage that still humble us a quarter-century later.
For many Americans, the story of 9/11 remains frozen in images of burning towers, falling debris, dust-covered survivors, and a skyline forever changed. Yet the story did not end when the smoke cleared. It did not end when the debris pile was removed, when the names were read, or when the country went back to work.
For thousands of Americans, 9/11 has continued in hospitals, doctors’ offices, chemotherapy units, funeral homes, and family dining rooms. The toxic dust and debris released by the destruction of the World Trade Center became a second, slower assault on the people who worked, lived, attended school, or participated in rescue and recovery efforts near Ground Zero. Its damage was not always immediate. It emerged over time, often after years in which people believed they had escaped the physical consequences of that terrible day.
Today, the World Trade Center Health Program serves more than 145,000 responders and survivors. More than 57,000 program members have received certification for a cancer linked to their 9/11 exposure, including many diagnosed only years after the attacks. Cancer is now one of the most significant and persistent components of the post-9/11 health crisis.
This continuing tragedy is a painful reminder that warfare does not always end when the battlefield becomes quiet. Some injuries are visible at once. Others take root silently and reveal themselves only years later. The long progression of 9/11-related cancers should remind us that the consequences of an ideological attack can extend far beyond the moment of violence.
The lesson is not simply that America must remember a past atrocity. It is that the ideology behind that atrocity remains active, adaptive, and dangerous. Militant Islamism no longer depends solely on spectacular, centrally directed attacks. It operates through terrorist organizations abroad, online propaganda, self-radicalized individuals, religious intimidation, antisemitic incitement, and efforts to erode confidence in the liberal values that its adherents reject.
The terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks were not motivated by a misunderstanding, a trade dispute, or a grievance that could have been resolved through good-faith negotiation. They were animated by radical Islamism, an ideology that treats the democratic West, religious freedom, free expression, pluralism, and equality under the law as enemies to be defeated.
It is essential to speak carefully. Islam is a global faith practiced by millions of peaceful Americans and billions of people around the world. Muslim Americans serve in the armed forces, work in hospitals and schools, own businesses, participate in public life, and contribute meaningfully to the United States. They should never be blamed for the crimes committed by terrorists or extremists who claim religious justification for violence.
But clarity is not bigotry. Radical Islamism is not simply private religious belief. It is a political ideology that seeks religious supremacy over civic law, suppresses dissent, rejects equal treatment for women and religious minorities, and too often excuses or celebrates violence against those who disagree. It is an ideology that must be confronted, not ignored or softened by euphemism.
The threat is neither hypothetical nor confined to history. Across Europe, jihadist terrorism remains a major security concern. Europol reported that jihadist activity accounted for the largest share of terrorist attacks and terrorism-related arrests in the European Union in 2025. Many contemporary plots involve lone actors, often young people radicalized online, who require less direction, fewer resources, and less time to prepare an act of violence. That makes the threat harder to detect and easier to underestimate.
The United Kingdom has confronted the same reality. British authorities have identified Islamist terrorism as the country’s leading domestic terrorist threat, and it represents the majority of the Security Service’s counterterrorism caseload. London’s painful experience, from the July 7 bombings in 2005 to later attacks at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge, should remind us that a free society cannot afford to treat ideological extremism as merely another cultural preference.
Brussels offers a similarly sobering lesson. The 2016 bombings at Brussels Airport and the Maelbeek metro station showed that terrorist networks can grow where authorities fail to identify radicalization, isolate extremists, and insist upon a common civic loyalty. The issue is not ethnicity. It is ideology, organization, recruitment, and the willingness of a society to recognize when groups or individuals reject its constitutional order.
This is why the distinction between a peaceful religious faith and militant political Islam is so important. Islam is practiced peacefully by millions of Americans. Radical Islamism, however, is a supremacist political project. It rejects the legitimacy of democratic law when that law conflicts with its own religious vision. It targets religious minorities, threatens dissidents, glorifies violence, demonizes Jews, and seeks to make ordinary citizens afraid to speak honestly about the challenge it presents.
A society that no longer believes in its own civic culture cannot credibly ask newcomers to adopt it. A country reluctant to defend free speech, religious liberty, women’s equality, or the rule of law will find it difficult to distinguish genuine tolerance from surrender. The question is not whether people may bring their faith, traditions, and family heritage to America. Of course they may. The question is whether every citizen accepts that constitutional law, individual liberty, and equal protection are superior to any political or religious doctrine that seeks to override them.
Immigration policy belongs within that discussion, but it is not the whole discussion. America should welcome those who seek freedom and opportunity while maintaining lawful borders, meaningful screening, and a serious expectation of assimilation. The country must be able to identify individuals connected to terrorist organizations, violent extremist networks, or foreign ideologies that reject the Constitution. But a sound national-security policy must also confront radicalization among those already inside the country, whether it begins in an overseas network, on a phone screen, in a prison, or within a local circle that discourages dissent and elevates sectarian loyalty above American citizenship.
Dearborn, Michigan, requires careful language because it is home to a large and varied Arab American and Muslim American population that includes patriotic citizens, veterans, entrepreneurs, professionals, public servants, and families. No entire community should be stereotyped. But no community should be beyond honest scrutiny either. Americans must be free to ask whether antisemitism is being tolerated, whether Islamist political movements are gaining influence, whether women and dissidents feel safe speaking openly, and whether civic leaders are willing to condemn extremism without qualification.
Hamtramck illustrates a related problem. For years, it was celebrated as a model of diversity, immigration, and minority political representation. Yet the 2023 city policy barring Pride flags and other identity-group flags from municipal property exposed the limits of diversity when it is not joined to a shared commitment to liberty. The policy did not prohibit residents or businesses from displaying Pride flags, but it signaled to many LGBTQ+ residents that their public recognition could be withdrawn by a changing political majority. That is not an argument against any faith or community. It is an argument for a civic standard that protects every individual from the coercive preferences of a local majority.
Diversity is not an end in itself. The American promise is not merely that different groups may live beside one another. It is that every individual may live under the same constitutional protections, speak freely, worship freely, dissent freely, and remain equal before the law. Where those principles weaken, the most organized and ideologically confident factions will fill the vacuum.
The answer is not ethnic nationalism and it is not collective suspicion. It is civic confidence and undivided allegiance to the constitutional order.
Theodore Roosevelt warned that “there is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.” Yet his larger point is often omitted. He immediately made clear that he was not condemning naturalized citizens, noting that some of the finest Americans he had known were born abroad. “Americanism,” he said, “is a matter of the spirit and of the soul.” The test was not birthplace, ethnicity, or religion, but whether one’s allegiance was “purely to the United States.”
This remains a sound standard. Americans may honor their ancestry, cherish family traditions, practice their faith, and preserve the cultural heritage that enriches our country. But none of those attachments can supersede allegiance to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the liberties that make America a common home for people of every background.
September 11 was an attack not simply on buildings or individuals, but on an idea. The attackers targeted American power, economic strength, military readiness, religious freedom, and the open society itself. They sought to frighten the West into retreat, division, and self-doubt.
We honor those who died by refusing to forget what was attacked, who attacked it, and why. We honor the first responders and survivors still suffering from cancers and chronic illnesses by recognizing that some national wounds remain open long after the cameras move on.
America must remain compassionate without becoming naive. It must be open without becoming defenseless. It must be tolerant without becoming indifferent to intolerance. It must welcome those who seek freedom while insisting that freedom cannot survive if a society loses the courage to defend it.
That is the obligation we owe to those murdered on September 11, to the families still grieving, to the first responders whose battle continues, and to the next generation that deserves to inherit a free, confident, and united America.
Eli M. Gold is the President of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based think-and-do tank focusing on foreign policy and defense matters. To learn more about the Gold Institute, visit www.Goldiis.org.
