COLUMN: September 11, Twenty-Five Years Later — What We Never Talk About

Before we talk about the nineteen, let’s talk about the two billion

You spoke Arabic this morning without even realizing it

It’s been twenty-five years today. Before we talk about the nineteen men who hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001, let’s talk about your breakfast. You got up from a mattress—a word of Arabic origin. You drank coffee, an Arabic word, which comes from Yemen. You may have added sugar to it, spread syrup on your toast: Arabic, Arabic. You walked past a store—Arabic. You ate an orange or some spinach—Arabic, Arabic. If you had a drink last night, the word comes from al-kuhl, and it was distilled in an alembic, also Arabic. And if you did some math this morning, you used a number, from sifr, probably with the help of an algorithm.

We live in a house built partly with their bricks, and we no longer know how to read the label.

Zero: The Whole Truth

We must be precise, even when that precision upsets our own side. It is often claimed that the Arabs invented zero. That’s not accurate. Zero as a number in its own right originated in India around the 7th century, with Brahmagupta. What the Arab-Muslim world accomplished was understanding it, systematizing it, and then passing it on to the West—to the point that we still call our numerals “Arabic numerals,” even though they are of Indian origin.

But let’s consider what this means. While Europe was going through its darkest centuries, a civilization was curious enough to seek out Indian, Greek, and Persian knowledge, translate it, enrich it, and then pass it on to us. Without this work, Aristotle would have been lost. It was Averroes, in Córdoba, who commented on his works and saved them for the Latin West. Medieval European universities were built upon this legacy.

They did not invent the number zero. They did better than that: they preserved it and then offered it to the world.

Al-Khwarizmi, or the man who lives in your phone

Around the year 820, in Baghdad, at the House of Wisdom, a mathematician wrote a book whose title contained the word al-jabr. This word became “algebra.” His name was al-Khwarizmi, Latinized as Algoritmi: algorithm. This man died twelve centuries ago, and his name appears in your phone thousands of times a day.

That’s not all. Around 1021, Ibn al-Haytham wrote his Treatise on Optics: he refuted the Greek theory of vision, described the camera obscura, and, most importantly, established a revolutionary idea—that a hypothesis must be verified by experiment before it can be accepted. Historians of science consider him one of the fathers of the experimental method. Ibn Sina wrote the Canon of Medicine, which served as a textbook in European universities for five centuries. Al-Zahrawi designed surgical instruments whose descendants are still found in our operating rooms today. Al-Razi distinguished smallpox from measles.

Paper itself reached us through this route, first introduced in Samarkand in the 8th century, then spread to Baghdad and Europe. Without paper, there would have been no Gutenberg. Without Gutenberg, there would have been no Reformation, no Enlightenment, and no us.

The method we use to challenge them is one we have, in part, inherited from them.

Rice, Cotton, and Citrus Fruits

On our plates, the story is the same. Rice, sugarcane, cotton, citrus fruits, spinach, and artichokes: their spread to the West followed the routes of the medieval Muslim world, from India to Persia, the Mediterranean, and Spain. Historians still debate the scale of the phenomenon—some speak of a true Arab agricultural revolution, while others take a much more nuanced view—but the journey of these plants is well documented.

When people tell me that they brought us nothing, I reply: Start by stepping away from your plate, your vocabulary, and your phone. Then we’ll talk.

A civilization that nourished ours for eight centuries cannot be reduced to nineteen men.

Now let’s talk about the nineteen

Two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven names

On September 11, 2001, four planes. Two thousand seven hundred fifty-three dead at the World Trade Center, including three hundred forty-three firefighters and sixty police officers who were heading up as others were heading down. One hundred eighty-four at the Pentagon. Forty in Shanksville, in a field in Pennsylvania, because ordinary passengers chose to storm the cockpit rather than let the plane reach Washington. A total of two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven dead, six thousand two hundred ninety-one injured.

The youngest victim was two years old. The oldest was eighty-five. Ninety nationalities were represented among the victims: sixty-seven British, forty-one Indian, twenty-eight South Korean, twenty-four Canadian, twenty-four Japanese, and four French. About two hundred people jumped to their deaths rather than burn to death. And twenty-five years later, only slightly more than half of the World Trade Center victims have been formally identified. Four more bodies were identified in August 2025. Families are still waiting for a name on an official document.

Ninety countries in two towers. They didn’t strike America—they struck the world that worked there.

The Cloud That Still Kills

The toll did not stop that day. The World Trade Center Health Program now covers more than sixty-nine types of cancer among those who breathed in the dust from the collapses. More than seventeen billion dollars have been paid out in compensation, across one hundred ninety thousand cases, with seven hundred new claims filed each month. The programs are funded through 2090. Some experts fear that the final death toll will far exceed that of the day itself.

Twenty-five years later, the towers are still killing people, one illness at a time.

What Is Never Said

Eighty-two percent of the victims are Muslim

Here is the figure that our newscasts almost never report, and which should silence both sides at once. A study by the Foundation for Political Innovation chronicled forty years of Islamist terrorism: thirty-three thousand seven hundred sixty-nine attacks, one hundred sixty-seven thousand ninety-six deaths. Eighty-two percent of the victims are Muslim, with the high estimate exceeding ninety-one percent. The president of Niger cited the same proportion before the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, adding that terrorism betrays Islam and is its greatest enemy.

Since 2001, the number of victims of Islamist terrorism has increased twentyfold, and the number of affected countries has risen from fifty-four to seventy-six. The hardest-hit regions remain Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Somalia. Tens of thousands of deaths—not here, but there.

An extremist’s primary enemy is never the West. It is the Muslim next door who does not pray as he should.

The Math No One Is Doing

Let’s now examine the other side of the coin, without sugarcoating it. The world has approximately two billion Muslims, or one-quarter of humanity. Let’s take the lowest figures ever recorded—those from the most conservative research institutes, the ones my opponents are quick to cite. Pew Research Center, 2015: favorable opinion of the Islamic State—1 percent in Lebanon, 3 percent in Jordan, 6 percent in the Palestinian territories. Fikra Forum, one year earlier: 3 percent in Egypt, 5 percent in Saudi Arabia.

These proportions are minuscule, and that in itself is reassuring. But let’s do the math: three percent of two billion is sixty million people—more than the entire population of Canada, based on the most conservative estimate available. When people tell me this is a tiny minority, I agree: that’s exactly what it is. A tiny minority of two billion people constitutes a nation. Statistics say “minority”; arithmetic says “country.” This is what people fail to grasp: a percentage isn’t something you experience; an absolute number is.

A clarification is needed before we get too worked up: a Muslim is not an Islamist. A Muslim is a believer. An Islamist advocates a political agenda aimed at making religious law the law of the state. These are two distinct realities, and I do not confuse them.

The Objections, and Why They Don’t Hold Up

“In Europe, seventeen attacks out of three hundred twenty-one”

The objection is accurate, and I do not dispute it: according to the Global Terrorism Database, between 2000 and 2013, out of 321 attacks committed in Western Europe, 17 were carried out by Muslim extremists—fewer than those attributed to the far left and anarchist movements.

Let’s examine, however, how this argument is constructed: the region and the dates have been chosen. This scope excludes the rest of the world. It excludes September 11 and its 2,970 deaths. It excludes Iraq and Afghanistan, where improvised explosive devices caused a major portion of the coalition’s casualties—and this reality must be acknowledged: a roadside bomb targeting a regular army is not a battle; it is an ambush. It excludes the Sahel, where entire villages are wiped out. Finally, it counts a device placed in an empty mailbox exactly like the one at the Bataclan.

Seventeen attacks out of three hundred twenty-one—and those seventeen accounted for the vast majority of the deaths. The number of attacks measures activity. The number of coffins measures a threat.

“You’re scaring the public with big numbers.”

It’s the opposite. I took the lowest figures from the most conservative sources and multiplied them correctly. It’s basic arithmetic. If the result seems extreme, the criticism is directed at the multiplication, not at the person performing it.

It’s not the person who states an uncomfortable fact who’s the problem. It’s the fact itself.

“You’re Islamophobic”

So let’s be clear. Whether you’re Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Buddhist is none of my business. As long as you keep your faith to yourself and don’t try to impose it on me, we have no disagreement, and we can have coffee together whenever you like—coffee, yet another word I owe you.

But we took the cassocks out of our bedrooms in the 1960s, and it cost us dearly. We didn’t do it to replace them with an imam, a rabbi, a televangelist, or anyone else who would make decisions for us. No priest, no Sharia, no divine law in our legal codes. For anyone and everyone, without exception, starting with our own people. This isn’t Islamophobia: it’s secularism, and it applies to everyone or it applies to no one.

We didn’t cast off one cassock only to kneel before another.

The principle is simple

What I ask for, and what I refuse

My stance can be summed up in a few words. Your background, your skin color, your god, and what you eat are none of my business. If you want to live your life, raise your children, and pay your rent like everyone else, there’s room for you here. But if you hate me so much that you want to destroy my family and my life, then we have a problem—you and I—and I won’t keep quiet about it just to spare anyone’s feelings.

That’s the only rule that has ever worked between human beings.

Twenty-five years old, and anger well directed

The real trap of September 11 wasn’t in the planes. It was in making us hate a quarter of humanity for the actions of nineteen men. They wanted to create two camps: them and us. Every time we lump two billion people in the same category as those nineteen, we’re finishing their job for them—for free.

There are names to remember today. The 2,977 from New York, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville. The firefighters who rushed to the scene. And the other 160,000 who have since fallen in the markets of Baghdad, the mosques of Kabul, and the schools of Nigeria—the 82 percent we never talk about.

Twenty-five years later, the only fitting response to that morning is to aim true. Not too broad. Not too soft. Just right.

Signed: Maxime Marquette, columnist September 11, 2026

Columnist’s Transparency Box

Editorial Stance

I am not a journalist, but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analyzing the geopolitical, economic, and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work consists of dissecting political strategies, understanding global economic trends, contextualizing the decisions of international actors, and offering analytical perspectives on the transformations that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim to possess the dispassionate objectivity of traditional journalism, which is limited to factual reporting. I strive for analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation, and a deep understanding of the complex issues that affect us all.

Methodology and Sources

This text respects the fundamental distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. Factual information is published only if it is supported by a verifiable source, and the sources used are listed under “Sources.”

The percentages of sympathy toward jihadist organizations are derived from opinion polls and measure stated opinions, not intentions to act. Multiplying these figures by the global Muslim population is an explicit arithmetic operation, acknowledged as such, and not an estimate of the number of dangerous individuals.

Nature of the Analysis

This text defends a central distinction: that between Muslims—followers of a religion with two billion adherents—and Islamists—advocates of a political agenda aimed at making religious law the law of the state. This distinction is at the heart of the argument, not merely a stylistic precaution.

Regarding the history of science, the author is not a historian. The contribution of the medieval Arab-Muslim world is described by distinguishing between invention, transmission, and improvement: the number zero is of Indian origin and was transmitted by Arabic-speaking mathematicians, not invented by them. The extent of the agricultural expansion known as the “Arab agricultural revolution” is the subject of a historiographical debate discussed in the text.

No political party, religious organization, or interest group commissioned, paid for, proofread, or approved this text.

COLUMN: September 11, Twenty-Five Years Later — What We Never Talk About