Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has described the attack on Muslims in the wake of 9/11 as the “computer-age equivalent of Nazis daubing yellow Stars of David on the doors of Jewish homes”.
Saying that one of the biggest failures after the bombings in the US was the damage done to global relations between the “so-called Judeo-Christian and Muslim worlds”, he wrote: “In our anger and dismay we failed to recognise our common humanity.”
Writing on the Washington Post’s On Faith online section under the headline, “Our post-9/11 failures”, to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Tutu said everyone united to condemn the perpetrators after the attacks.
But this moment was lost when the attackers were labelled “Muslim terrorists and evil personified was given a Muslim face”.
“We were told these Muslim terrorists were aided and abetted by Muslim countries.
“Clearly, this logic went, Muslims were not to be trusted… Adherents of the Muslim faith were harassed and humiliated across the world.
“When we (looked) at the terrorists we did not see ourselves, we did not consider how our actions… may have contributed to the crime. No. We saw ‘others’ and we demonised them,” wrote Tutu.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama paid tribute yesterday to 9/11 victims at an hour-long ceremony in a rural Pennsylvania field where one of four planes commandeered by al-Qaeda crashed exactly 10 years ago.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, laid a wreath of flowers at the site where heroic passengers downed a hijacked jet during the September 11 attacks. The ceremony was part of an annual commemorative tribute, and which this year has garnered national and world attention on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
The president and first lady met relatives of those killed during the crash before they were to fly back to Washington and the Pentagon to commemorate those killed when another hijacked jet slammed into the US military headquarters.
Earlier, Obama took part in a moving ceremony at New York’s Ground Zero, where a new 9/11 memorial was unveiled on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center twin towers.
Up to 2 000 families and friends of those who died on the doomed flight took part in the observances in Shanksville, where their lost loved ones were mourned – but also hailed as American heroes. - Pretoria News