9/11 and the long shadow of Islamophobia

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Islamophobia is part of our political scene today, and Muslims are its victims. In some ways, the country has changed a lot since 9-11. In other ways, sadly, it has not.

0:43It's Wednesday, September 9th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, as we approach 25 years since the September 11th attacks, we're learning just how much officials knew at the time about contaminated air that was sickening New Yorkers. And clearly from the documents that we've seen, they had concerns. And what they did with those concerns is really bothersome. Also, a historian says terrorist attacks in 1998 and 2000 should have been warning signs. But the government failed to connect the dots. I think it's worth wondering whether we're now repeating some of those mistakes.

1:26It's not clear the government is reacting fast enough or adjusting to the new threats, let alone other issues like pandemics and climate change. That's coming up in about 15 minutes. By the way, we'll have lots more on Friday's episode, marking 25 years since 9-11. So click that follow button in your podcast player now. We're going to hear from some of you who shared your memories of that day and how it changed your lives. But first, one painful legacy of that day is anti-Muslim bigotry, something that flared up after the attacks in 2001, egged on by many leaders in government and media at the time, but which was not left in the past.

2:10Look no further than the Islamophobic remarks Rudy Giuliani made last week on the right-wing outlet Newsmax. Giuliani was mayor of New York in 2001, and he does not want New York's current mayor, Zoran Mamdani, to attend the 9-11 commemoration on Friday because Mamdani is Muslim. They have every desire to take us over. This is not, they want to be just another religion. Well, Mamdani told WCBS in New York he will attend. What I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th. And a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.

2:56We wanted to hear from another Muslim New Yorker, Mustafa Bayoumi. He's an English professor at Brooklyn College, author of a number of books, including This Muslim American Life, Dispatches from the War on Terror. Here's his conversation with Robin Young. There's a concerted campaign to turn what should be a somber, reflective moment into a political football. And that political football is about making life really difficult, not just for Mayor Zohran Namdani, but making life increasingly difficult for Muslim Americans around this country. And I think that that really illustrates something that's at the core of what Islamophobia is all about today, which is to say that it's not just a kind of irrational hatred.

3:48Islamophobia is part of our political scene today, and Muslims are its victims. 25 years ago, many people didn't even really know what Islam was in any way. All they knew was that Muslim terrorists had done this incredibly evil thing. Are you saying there's a difference between that shock and not understanding and then 25 years later in Islamophobia? There is a continuity, though, between 25 years ago and today. And that continuity is that life has been increasingly difficult for Muslim Americans all the way through. And the other part of that continuity is that from what began as shock, quickly turned into politics and it became instrumentalized into our political scene.

4:43There was a concerted effort. There was a real honest desire, I think, from a lot of ordinary Americans to understand this thing that was suddenly in front of them and this thing we would call Islam. You know, for example, in the days following, you know, in the weeks following 9-11, Oprah Winfrey even had a show called Islam 101, you know. But, you know, the problem, too, is that we focus on, we have to understand the Quran, which was like, it instantly became a bestseller following 9-11 as well. But in fact, instead of doing that, what we really should be looking at, I think, are the historical reasons, the contexts for political violence in our whole world.

5:24And that we still have precious little discussion over. Yeah. Well, we're going to put that aside for this discussion because I want to talk more about what's happening now, which is you talk about words like Giuliani's fanning the flames, the embers that have been there. And they have been, as we heard from family members of 9-11 victims. They gathered at City Hall yesterday to present a petition calling on Mayor Mondani not to come Friday. Here's Sherry Sparaccio. Her husband killed on 9-11. She was surrounded by others holding pictures of their lost loved ones. I believe this is on Fox News.

5:59Let's listen. I want to make clear that our petition is not about Mayor Mondani's religion or where he came from. It is strictly about the policies that he has today. And what they are talking about, Professor, and it's in their petition, they cite Ramzi Qasem, Mayor Mondani's chief counsel. Qasim has represented in the past a brother-in-law of a 9-11 hijacker. And last week, Mondani signed an executive order recognizing the 25th anniversary of 9-11, and he asked for the ceremonial signing pen to be handed to Ramzi Qasim. Wall Street Journal opinion writer Matthew Hennessy said Mondani in that action mocked the loss his city suffered on 9-11.

6:44What do you make of that, your thoughts? Oh, this is just foolishness, if you ask me. Ramzi Qasim is actually performing all of the promise of the Constitution by providing defense to people in a judicial setting. He's highly regarded by the whole legal community. And to tar his reputation and his name like this is just ridiculous. But was that the appropriate choice for this day? Ramzi Qasim has a position within the mayor's cabinet. He's legal advisor, so I don't see why there's a problem here. To your noting that this has been going on for a long time and we've almost forgotten that President Trump issued executive orders in his first term restricting travel from Muslim-majority countries, that was overturned.

7:35But in 2016, he said, I think Islam hates us. These are phrases that, if you're not Muslim, may have gone by, but I'm assuming if you are, they're adding up. Absolutely. I mean, first of all, to take President Trump's comment when he was candidate Trump, Islam hates us. Who is the us in that? As if Muslim Americans do not belong within the United States. Muslim Americans have been in the United States since before the United States was the United States. There's a documented history of people who were enslaved from Africa who came over to this land who are Muslim. But, you know, Muslim Americans have been dealing with a lot of things over the last 25 years, from vigilante violence to government repression to spies and informants in our midst, more violence against us, and now a concerted effort by very conservative members of the government in an anti-Sharia law caucus.

8:32This whole thing about the idea that Sharia law is going to take over the United States, that's just also fear-mongering. and these are the kind of daily realities that Muslim Americans have been dealing with for the last 25 years. So I think I know, but what do you think Mayor Mondani should do regarding the 9-11 ceremony? Of course he should attend. He's the mayor of New York City and as the mayor he should be there. Mustafa Beyumi, English professor at Brooklyn College. Professor Mustafa, thank you so much for speaking with us today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Can I just ask, as a Muslim, this week you're in New York.

9:09You know, I have Muslim friends in New York who lost friends on 9-11. I mean, how are you approaching this week? You know, for us and for me, it is about remembering the past in all of its complexity and all of its fullness, which includes all the things that have happened from that day forward. But it also means thinking about making the future brighter. And I think that there is a way that we can all do that if we really want to. Thank you so much. Thank you.

9:52Coming up next, another lingering problem 25 years later is the public health toll of air poisoned by dust and debris in the aftermath of 9-11. After the break, what newly released documents show about the impact and what leaders knew at the time? That's in just a minute.

10:19In the months after 9-11, authorities repeatedly assured New Yorkers that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. It's taken nearly 25 years for New York City officials to admit that was not true. More than 9 ,000 people have died since then of illnesses related to the debris in the air, according to the 9-11 Victim Compensation Fund. This week, New York Mayor Zaran Mamdani made public more than 170 ,000 pages of documents related to air quality and said the government needs to be transparent. People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.

11:01It's part of a settlement between New York City and 9-11 Health Watch, an advocacy organization that sued the city to force the publication of the documents. Ben Shavat is the group's executive director. Here's what he told Indira Lakshmanan. There was this overwhelming feeling, and I don't fault the administration in the chaos for making mistakes. They said, come back to New York. The air was saved. And clearly from the documents that we've seen, they had concerns. You know, there's a famous line by Michael Kinsley, a scandal in Washington is when someone tells the truth. We're clearly seeing indications that they were aware that there were problems.

11:41I think what happened here is the politicians didn't want to admit that maybe they should have slowed down. Maybe they should have brought kids back to go to school at Stuyvesant and the High School of Finance and other places. Maybe they should have brought my mother, who was there on 9-11, evacuated over the seawall. Maybe they should not have brought them all back. Maybe they should have expressed some caution. And I'm not a responder. I talk to a lot of responders. Most of them have said, well, I would have done what I did, but it would have been nice if they had been honest with me, if they had told us the truth and given me that choice.

12:15Right. So millions of pages of documents are expected to be released over the coming months. 170 ,000 pages are now available. What stands out to you from what you've seen so far? We have that memo about Asbestos existing in a building in lower Manhattan as late as, I think, July. I mean, it's self-evident from what we've seen today. They were aware of these problems, they were aware of the toxic chemicals, and they didn't say anything. They actually said the opposite. And had they actually admitted it, maybe Congressman Maloney, Mr. Nadler, the New York delegation, wouldn't have had to struggle for years to overcome the Bush administration's and the Congress's attitude that there wasn't a problem.

12:59So tragically, we now know that almost three times the number of people have died of illnesses related to toxic chemicals from 9-11, then died in the crashes on the day itself. Is this a problem that's going to continue for decades to come, like the lasting health effects in a place like Hiroshima or Chernobyl? Tragically, I think we are going to be seeing it. We see it every day. And tragically, it is cancers. That is predominantly what is happening now with the latency period. We're seeing more and more every day. And it's not just the cancers of people who live in New York. On 9-11, people came from all over the country to respond, and then they went home.

13:43We have to be able to reach those people and make sure they have the connection and understand that maybe there is a connection to their condition and their experience at 9-11. So, Ben, what happens next? Do you have certain things that you want the government to do in terms of treating or monitoring people who are exposed to the toxic dust? We're still fighting. We just fought for full funding of the health program just this year. Had this information been out, maybe we wouldn't have had to spend that much time fighting for that. One of the things that I think didn't get enough attention in our negotiation, in our settlement, is Mayor Mindani is going to use his social media skills to help promote the program, to help promote a new youth research cohort, which is finally, after 25 years, going to be looking at and gathering data on the health impact of those who were in school, those who were living there.

14:38The city is going to, and it's going to take some time, is going to help people get the records they need in order to participate in the program. So it's not just about the records. I think we're going to get a much more active city government. And we're going to be meeting with the Corporation Council every month for the next year to help work on these projects with the mayor. Ben Shavad is executive director of 9-11 Health Watch, an advocacy organization that sued to force the publication of reams of government documents related to the health effects in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Ben, thank you so much for your time.

15:16Thank you.

15:21One more conversation for you coming up on today's show. Indira talks with Princeton historian Julian Zelizer about the events leading up to September 11. It's a story of missed warning signs, and it tells us something about the future of disaster preparedness, not just for terror attacks, but all threats from pandemics to climate change. Stick around.

15:49As we pause this week to reflect on 25 years since the September 11th attacks, we want to look back at the many warnings about the nation's vulnerability to terrorism in the years leading up to that horrific day. The bipartisan 9-11 commission that investigated the attacks concluded that all the warning signs were there And some of the attackers were even being tracked by intelligence agencies, but the government failed to connect the dots. In the decades since, has the government learned from its mistakes? Princeton historian Julian Zelizer just published a piece asking those questions, and he joins us now.

16:24Julian, welcome back. Thanks for having me. So in the years before that fateful day, there were several terrorist attacks that built up to 9-11. I'm thinking of 1998 when al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. What action did the U.S. government take to bolster the nation's security after those attacks? Well, there is a military response with something called Operation Infinite Reach under President Clinton, which includes missile strikes. There are law enforcement operations through the FBI to look into agents working in the area. There's embassy security reform.

17:04And finally, Congress sets up a bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism to look at some of the vulnerabilities in the American infrastructure. Well, there was also this White House Commission on Aviation Safety in 2000. Were those recommendations ever implemented? Some of them were, although in retrospect, not enough. There was a new pre-screening system for passengers that was put into place, new methods to detect explosives, and also new mechanisms to check screener performance and background checks. But there were many other recommendations that the commission either put forward or never even addressed that, in retrospect, were key during 9-11.

17:47And then, Julian, those of us who covered it remember less than a year before 9-11, Al-Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat attacked and tore a massive hole in the USS Cole while it was refueling at port in Yemen. 17 U.S. sailors were killed. What lessons should the government have taken from that attack that might have prevented September 11th? Well, there's been a lot of criticism ranging from the failure to strongly retaliate against Al-Qaeda for what had happened, to continued resistance to ending the walls that separated different intelligence gathering operations within the United States, to simply not really processing where this was all going, to focusing on the bombings and a couple years earlier the embassy attacks and not doing enough for the domestic infrastructure.

18:38infrastructure of the United States, which was also very vulnerable. Well, we learned from the 9-11 Commission that the left hand of the U.S. government did not know what the right hand was doing. The CIA was tracking suspected terrorists outside the U.S., but not coordinating with the FBI to track them inside this country. The FBI learned a suspect was training to fly planes, but didn't want to learn how to land them. But that was never flagged up the chain. I remember way back in 1995, the U.S. learned Al-Qaeda was planning to bomb U.S.-bound aircraft in a scheme called the Bojinka plot. Meanwhile, U.S.

19:12intelligence agencies were full of Russian speakers a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but had very few Arabic speakers. So hindsight is 20-20, of course, but from your perspective as a historian, what went wrong? Look, some of it is the fact that government institutions are often slow to change. They're big, they're large, they're rooted in history, and it often takes time to adjust to new realities. added to that is the gridlock of Washington, which makes progress very difficult. Some of it was a bias of not taking the threats from the region as seriously as they had other areas like the Soviets during the Cold War.

19:50And finally, there were reforms in the 70s which intentionally separated the FBI and the CIA in response to revelations of how government officials had abused the power. So there was a resistance to going all in on centralization, given the history and the record of the U.S. government abusing that authority. Fascinating. So in some ways, perhaps an overcorrection, an effort to fix an earlier problem of centralization that ended up leaving all these holes. Do you think the government has learned the lessons of September 11th, 25 years later? Well, I mean, I think slowly they did learn a lot of the lessons of 9-11 and we changed our counterterrorism programs.

20:32We changed the organization of government. But I think it's worth wondering whether we're now repeating some of those mistakes. There are new kinds of national security threats from cybersecurity to social media radicalization to even financing organizations through crypto. that it's not clear the government is reacting fast enough or adjusting to the new threats that the country faces, let alone other issues like pandemics and climate change. So I think there's a case to be made that that slowness is right in front of us again. What do you think the government should be doing to protect against future pandemics or climate change crises?

21:13Well, look, I think if it had the stomach, a big bipartisan commission that would put out reports very soon to lay out what we need to do would be essential rather than piecemeal trying to figure this all out on the spot. That's Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. Julian, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

21:36That's it for the show today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Wilder Fleming, Jill Ryan, and Jenna Griffiths. our editors were michaela rodriguez and michael scotto technical direction from matt reed and nick dusalt our theme music is by mike moschetto max liedman and me chris bentley our digital producers are allison hagan and grace griffin and here and now's executive producer is alan price thanks for listening we'll be back with you tomorrow and we'll have that special episode on the 25th anniversary of 9-11 on friday so click the follow button in your podcast player now

22:16Thank you.