What will we do after September 11^th? How will we respond to September 11^th? This is what the Americans asked themselves and, over the past year, people all over the world have been drawn into the puzzle. It has been like a whirlwind that pulls everyone into its vortex.

Yet there are probably people across the world, like in Afghanistan, who would look up and say “Why? What happened on September 11^th?” Such people probably have no concept of New York, let alone the World Trade Center. The problems, which fill their heads and hearts and lives, are within a radius of a few feet. They have no food!

For the ones who have been reflecting throughout the year, they have done so on screens, over airwaves and in newsprint. The camera has panned global events and chosen its focus, the crumbling of the two towers, killing and injuring who knows how many people. This was the focus for many months and well deserving it was of attention because it was a devastating and fearsome attack.

The response of the people has been from varying angles mostly conveyed through the warped kaleidoscope of the media. Most started from the perspective of the victims and their families which were immediately related to the known facts. As the months went on, the focus was on the perpetrators and their motives. There was talk of getting them when we knew that they were already dead.

Then the story grew several heads and by this year we have September 11^th being invoked to justify everything from invading Iraq to company bankruptcies. No one yet has been put on trial for conspiring to organize the attacks, and yet a country has had its government installed wholesale on the back of it, and we claim to live by the rule of law. Speculation has given rise to the trading of cyber conspiracies and still, with most of the ground zero site cleared, we don’t have the definitive facts and we are still wondering how we are to respond to September 11^th.

By virtue of the fact that the attackers were Muslim, it is to Muslims that everyone has looked to come up with some answers. Fair or not, whether we like it or not, our religion has become bound up with that day. And Allah is the best of planners.

Whilst Bush’s answer might have been to dismantle the infrastructure of Islamic institutions, he may have found an answer behind his head that day. Remember that famous photo taken on that infamous day when Bush was informed that the attacks were taking place and he had that look on his face that said, “I am surprised and shocked” or at least a fair imitation of someone trying to look surprised and shocked. In the background, on the class pin board, is a poster that said: “Reading makes a country great.”

Reading does make a country great. Watching TV doesn’t. Watching endless re-runs of the terrible disaster is bad for the spirit. Whether they watch it in horror and dismay or in glee as in some parts of the world, it is bad for the spirit. People were given wall-to-wall impact and emotion across their screens but no meaning.

Emotion in small doses is capable of spurring to action, but it is steady balanced reason that informs an action and makes it good, and the food of reason is reading. 

The US public sat mesmerized in a miasma of emotion whilst their troops got on with the job of pulverizing Afghanistan, a far off country about which they knew nothing, and no one stopped them to look at the facts. Reading and reason would have made them great.

Reading is the answer for Muslims too. We know that very well because it is the original command given to our Prophet (pbuh) when he received the Holy Qur’an. This was our key to the meaning of life. “Read” is the lesson for the Muslims of today who have wandered away from their religion, and it is the answer to the Muslims who are self-satisfied that they alone have all the answers, and that they alone can act according to their own guidance without consultation.

This is our remedy when on one side we have Muslims, mostly young, mostly men driven mad by rage at what has befallen their people in the Muslim world and on the other scholars separated from them, the knowledge hidden from those who can put it into action. 

Remember, “Taliban” means students. The sincere ones amongst them wanted to implement their religion, but what a lop-sided job they made of it. They may have had generosity, hospitality and security on the highway but it came with an unbelievably harsh way of meting out justice. A scholar would have reminded them that Allah loves us to be merciful, and there would have been balance in their acts. The head of the scholar needs to be reunited with the body of the people to create rightly guided action.

What makes anyone capable of committing random acts of violence is a distance from the proposed targets. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury designate, said on the radio that it is only by being distant from a people, thinking in a generalized way about them without context, that makes a person capable of shattering their lives. 

If you were brought close and came to know each other you could never do it. The airman who blithely drops the bomb that kills Iraqi innocents has never looked at the family photos of the one he kills, the little girl with ribbons in her hair sitting on her Daddy’s knee. The one who drove a plane into the WTC did not see the secretary leave her children with a kiss that morning. It is reading, learning that transcends the barrier and helps us to get to know each other and it’s the beginning of solving problems. 

Another speaker on this morning’s radio show was one of the survivors of last year’s attack. He talked about being marooned on the pile of dust and rubble as he had been on one of the upper floors during the disaster. As they were waiting and hoping for rescue, shafts of light came through the roof where normally it would have been several tons of steel masking the sky.

The image of that light was a symbol of hope and rebuilding. What crumbled and killed so many were those huge towers built to the glory of capital. When they crumbled it called to mind the saying that the dust of riba (usury) will one day touch us all. Those towers were built in the name of everyone who wants a piece of the pie, and that includes all of us. We are all cogs in the wheel that turn this economy we have chosen. 

So, as the survivors sat waiting upon the dust of riba, shafts of light came in. They reminded me of when the Prophet (pbuh) sat in the cave contemplating his creator and the angel Jibreel came with the eternal command from Allah: “Iqra!” (Read!)

It is the same message that the Florida schoolchildren had picked up; “Reading makes a country great.” So read, Americans, and learn about this world in depth! You won’t get anything but a screened version from your screens. And read, Muslims, and give your religion its full due – to read and understand it in order to come to common solutions. Reading is the answer to the puzzle and we read in the name of Our Lord who created us.

Sarah Louise Baker is a Muslim British novelist who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She embraced Islam while working in Japan in 1990. Her novel, From Utah to Eternity, on Islamic conversion, was based partly on personal experience. She just finished a book about everyday experiences of wearing the hijab (the Islamic headscarf). You can reach her at baitulankaboot@yahoo.co.uk

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