Reflections on September 11.
Twenty-five years after September 11, George W. Bush has returned to one of the most memorable statements of his presidency.
“Islam is peace.”
Six days after nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered, President Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington. His purpose was understandable and, in an important respect, admirable. American Muslims were American citizens. They were not collectively responsible for the crimes of nineteen terrorists. Muslim women should not have been harassed in supermarkets. Mosques should not have been vandalized. Innocent people should not have been attacked because of their ancestry or religion.
Bush was absolutely right about that. But he went further.According to his recent recollection, Bush deliberately sought to establish that Islam itself was “a religion of peace, not a religion of war,” and that the September 11 terrorists had simply “subverted their religion.”[1]
That assertion is considerably more difficult to defend.
The problem is not George W. Bush's motives. The problem is the Western habit of confusing what we desperately want another civilization to believe with what that civilization's own foundational texts actually teach. Further, it belies our own blindness and disbelief that, indeed, not every culture wants the house, two cars, a tv, 2.5 kids and a picket fence…
Bush's statement represented a characteristically American optimism: deep down, everyone wants essentially the same things. Every religion teaches basically the same morality. Every civilization is ultimately committed to religious pluralism, individual liberty and peaceful coexistence. Differences are mostly cuisine, clothing, holidays and architecture.
But civilizations are not interchangeable.
Religions are not interchangeable.
And cultures do not necessarily value the same things.
Reality remains reality even when reality is diplomatically inconvenient.
A Comfortable Western Myth
Modern Western liberalism has developed an extraordinary difficulty saying something that almost every civilization before ours regarded as obvious:
Cultures can be morally and philosophically different.
They can disagree about God, man, government, women, sexuality, law, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, punishment, war, family and the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority.
Those disagreements matter.
To say this is not to say that every individual belonging to a culture thinks alike. Obviously not. There are approximately two billion Muslims living across dozens of countries and thousands of distinct communities. An Indonesian accountant, a Saudi jurist, an Albanian shopkeeper and an American Muslim physician cannot simply be collapsed into one psychological category.
But neither can Islam be defined merely by interviewing whichever Muslim happens to live next door.
Christianity cannot be understood without Christ, Scripture and Christian tradition. Judaism cannot be understood without Torah and rabbinic tradition.
Likewise, serious examination of Islam requires confronting the Qur'an, the Hadith, the traditional biography of Muhammad, Islamic jurisprudence and fourteen centuries of Islamic civilization.
And once we do that, the bumper-sticker proposition that Islam is simply “a religion of peace” becomes very difficult to sustain.
Islam certainly contains teachings concerning peace, charity, mercy, prayer and justice. The Qur'an famously states, “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion.”[2]
That verse exists.
So do others.
And intellectual honesty requires reading all of them.
Read the Qur'an Rather Than the Press Release
Consider Qur'an 9:29.
In the Sahih International translation, believers are commanded:
“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day…”
The verse specifically identifies people who have received Scripture and continues that fighting is to continue until they pay the jizyah “while they are humbled.”[3]
That is not something invented by Osama bin Laden.
It is in the Qur'an.
Consider Qur'an 8:39:
“Fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah.”[4]
Translations differ significantly over fitnah. Some render it “persecution,” while others associate it with unbelief, polytheism or religious disorder. That dispute matters. But the verse indisputably places warfare within the Qur'anic theological narrative, and the surrounding passage discusses battle and war booty.[5]
Then there is Qur'an 3:110:
“You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind.”
Why?
Because the Muslim community “enjoin[s] what is right and forbid[s] what is wrong and believe[s] in Allah.” The same passage says that belief would be better for the People of the Book and describes most of them as disobedient.[6]
Or consider Qur'an 5:51, which warns believers against taking Jews and Christians as awliya—a notoriously debated Arabic term translated variously as allies, guardians, patrons or friends.[7]
None of this means that every Muslim interprets these passages identically.
That would be absurd.
But it is equally absurd to pretend that the martial and supremacist strands of classical Islamic thought materialized mysteriously in the twentieth century.
They are rooted in texts considerably older than al-Qaeda.
Then Read the Hadith
The problem becomes more pronounced when we leave the Qur'an and enter the canonical Hadith literature.
Sahih al-Bukhari, among the most authoritative collections in Sunni Islam, attributes this statement to Muhammad:
“I have been ordered … to fight against the people until they testify…”
The passage continues by connecting protection of life and property with the profession of Islamic faith, prayer and zakat.[8] A closely related tradition appears in Sahih Muslim, again stating that Muhammad was commanded to fight people until they professed the oneness of Allah and accepted Muhammad's prophetic mission.[9]
These texts do not establish that every Muslim has an individual obligation to attack non-Muslims. Classical Islamic jurisprudence developed elaborate distinctions concerning legitimate authority, truces, treaties, defensive and offensive jihad, protected peoples and circumstances of war.
But that qualification actually strengthens the central point.
Islam developed a jurisprudence of religious warfare because religious warfare occupied a genuine place within classical Islamic political theology. Saying this is no more anti-Muslim than saying that medieval Christianity developed doctrines concerning crusade is anti-Christian.
History exists.
The question is whether we are mature enough to discuss it.
Muhammad Was Not Merely a Spiritual Teacher
Here lies one of the deepest differences between Christianity and Islam. Jesus Christ founded no temporal kingdom. He commanded Peter to put away his sword. He told Pilate:
“My kingdom is not of this world.”
Christ was crucified. Muhammad's historical career was radically different.
According to the traditional Islamic narrative, Muhammad became not merely prophet but political ruler, military commander and legislator. The early sira literature depicts raids, battles, treaties, political consolidation and the eventual domination of Arabia.
The foundational biography traditionally associated with Ibn Ishaq—preserved principally through Ibn Hisham and other later transmitters—is the earliest surviving traditional biography of Muhammad and one of the principal sources for the conventional account of his life.[10]
The contrast matters enormously.
Christianity's founder conquers through martyrdom.
Islam's founder, according to Islam's own traditional sources, exercised political sovereignty and commanded armies. Consequently, the relationship between religion and political power developed differently in the two civilizations.
This does not make every Christian peaceful.
History makes nonsense of such a claim.
Nor does it make every Muslim violent.
It means that the normative theological models are different.
That is precisely the distinction modern Western discourse is seemingly terrified to make.
Fourteen Centuries Are Not an Accident
Now consider history.
Islam emerged in seventh-century Arabia.
Within approximately a century, Muslim armies had conquered enormous territories previously belonging to the Christian Roman and Persian worlds: Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Mesopotamia and eventually most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Jerusalem fell to Muslim forces in the seventh century.
Christian North Africa—once the civilization of Augustine—was transformed.
Spain was invaded in 711.
Muslim armies entered Gaul before being defeated near Tours/Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel.
Constantinople endured repeated Muslim sieges before finally falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Ottoman expansion pushed deep into southeastern and central Europe.
Vienna was besieged in 1529 and again in 1683.
The Mediterranean witnessed centuries of warfare, piracy, slavery, raiding and counter-raiding involving Muslim and Christian powers. The Crusades did not suddenly begin because eleventh-century Europeans woke one morning with an inexplicable desire to ride 2,000 miles east. Whatever moral judgments one makes about particular Crusades, they occurred within an already centuries-old geopolitical struggle involving Islamic expansion into formerly Christian territories.
This does not reduce fourteen centuries of Christian-Muslim relations to fourteen centuries of uninterrupted war. There were treaties. Trade flourished. Diplomacy occurred.
Christian and Muslim rulers sometimes allied against other Christians or Muslims. Jewish and Christian communities lived for centuries under Islamic governments. Intellectual exchange took place. Individual friendships obviously existed.
History is complicated.
But complicated history is not the same thing as imaginary history.
There has nevertheless been a persistent civilizational competition between Islam and Christendom stretching from the seventh century through the Reconquista, Crusades, Ottoman expansion and into the modern era.
Calling that entire history an unfortunate misunderstanding perpetrated by extremists requires believing in one of history's longest coincidences.
The Forgotten Question: What Is Man?
There is an even deeper issue. The most important difference between civilizations is not military. It is anthropological.
What is a human being?
The Judeo-Christian answer begins in Genesis:
“God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.”
Imago Dei.
The doctrine that man is created in the image and likeness of God became foundational to Christian/Western anthropology. Human dignity is not conferred by the state. It does not depend upon wealth, ethnicity, intelligence, usefulness or political membership.
It belongs to man because of what man is.
Classical Islam does not possess the Christian doctrine of the Imago Dei in the same theological sense.
Indeed, Islamic theology emphasizes the radical transcendence and incomparability of Allah. Man is fundamentally Allah's creature and servant. The Qur'an's theological anthropology is not the Genesis-to-Incarnation anthropology of Christianity in which humanity is created in God's image and human nature itself is assumed by the Second Person of the Trinity.
Islam rejects the Trinity.
It rejects the Incarnation.
It rejects the divine Sonship of Christ.
It therefore necessarily rejects the theological structure from which the Christian understanding of man ultimately proceeds.
That difference is not cosmetic.
It reaches down into civilization's foundations.
Equality Before God Is Not the Same as Equality of Religions
This is where the Western mind repeatedly makes its category error.
Christian/Western pluralism says:
You may be Christian.
You may be Muslim.
You may be Jewish.
You may be atheist.
The government possesses no authority to make you convert.
Classical Islamic civilization historically developed a different arrangement.
Christians and Jews could often remain Christians and Jews.
But remaining non-Muslim did not necessarily mean enjoying equal political status.
The dhimmi system provided recognized protection to certain non-Muslim communities while simultaneously institutionalizing their subordinate status. The jizya was not an invention of medieval European propagandists; Qur'an 9:29 itself identifies it in connection with the People of the Book.[11]
That distinction is crucial.
Tolerance is not equality.
A ruler can tolerate your religion while denying that your religion possesses equal standing. Indeed, this helps explain how “no compulsion in religion” can coexist historically with Islamic political supremacy. Conversion need not always be forced at swordpoint for a civilization to establish the supremacy of one religion over another. That is a considerably more sophisticated historical reality than either “Islam is peace” or “all Muslims are violent.”
Both slogans are intellectually useless—but the reality is you won’t find vibrant Catholicism in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan. In fact, you won’t find it ANYWHERE other than in Israel. Are there a couple parishes in Jordan? Syria? UAE? Bahrain? Yes. Are they under severe threat? Also, yes.
THAT is reality.
The West Assumes Everyone Secretly Wants Liberalism
This brings us back to Bush. His instinct was profoundly Western. He believed religious liberty was a universal aspiration because Americans regard religious liberty as a universal good.
But what if everyone does not begin with our premises?
—What if a civilization believes revealed law should govern political society?
—What if another believes religion and political sovereignty cannot be cleanly separated?
—What if another culture understands blasphemy not as protected speech but as a punishable offense?
—What if apostasy is understood not merely as changing one's private opinion but as rebellion against the religious community?
You cannot solve these differences by announcing that everyone really believes in American constitutionalism deep down.
They don't.
That does not make every person raised in such a civilization an enemy.
It means ideas have consequences.
Peaceful Muslims and the Problem of Modernity
Here we need an important distinction. Millions of Muslims live peacefully in Western societies. That fact cannot simply be wished away by critics of Islam any more than Islamic warfare can be wished away by its defenders.
So what explains it?
Many Muslims interpret their religion through modern, reformist, national, cultural or highly individualized frameworks. Many accept democracy, religious liberty and peaceful coexistence. Some interpret jihad overwhelmingly in defensive or spiritual terms. Others accept secular constitutional government as the political framework within which different religions can flourish.
They are not secretly terrorists. They are our neighbors, physicians, soldiers, shopkeepers, engineers and fellow citizens. But this creates a serious theological question that Western politicians almost never ask:
Which interpretation of Islam is compatible with Western constitutional civilization, and which is not?
That is the real question. The answer cannot simply be “Islam is peace.” Nor can it be “Muslims cannot live here.”
The first is historically unserious.
The second is empirically false.
The meaningful distinction concerns doctrines.
A Muslim who accepts that Christians may publicly proclaim Christ as God, that Muslims may convert to Christianity without civil punishment, that Jews possess equal citizenship and dignity, that religious minorities may build houses of worship, that government cannot impose Islamic law upon unbelievers, and that political disputes are settled constitutionally rather than through religious violence can obviously coexist peacefully within Western society.
But notice what Western coexistence requires:
Western constitutional principles MUST govern the public square.
The West cannot simultaneously maintain religious equality and adopt the classical political hierarchy in which Islam enjoys legally superior status.
One principle must prevail. And, in the West, it is the Judeo/Catholic concept involving rendering unto Caeser what is Caeser’s and rendering unto God what is God’s—i.e., the separation of Church and State.
Protect Muslims. Debate Islam.
And this is where Bush was simultaneously right and wrong.
He was right when he said that Muslim Americans should not be attacked.
Absolutely.
If a woman wearing hijab is assaulted because someone blames her for September 11, prosecute the assailant.
If a mosque is vandalized, arrest the vandal.
If a Muslim child is threatened because of his religion, protect him.
That is not political correctness.
That is civilization.
Christian morality demands that innocent people not be punished for crimes they did not commit. American constitutionalism demands equal protection of citizens. Basic justice demands individual rather than tribal guilt.
But none of those propositions requires us to lie about Islam.
Protecting Muslims does not require pretending Qur'an 9:29 does not exist. Religious liberty does not require pretending Sahih al-Bukhari contains no martial traditions. Civility does not require rewriting Muhammad's biography.
And tolerance does not require pretending fourteen centuries of conflict between Islamic and Christian civilizations were caused by unfortunate communication problems. It also doesn’t require turning a blind eye to the preaching of the destruction of the west and development of radicalization against the very concepts that offer such protections.
We should be capable of holding two thoughts simultaneously:
A Muslim is a human being entitled to dignity, justice and protection.
And:
Islam is a system of theological claims that can and should be examined, criticized and compared with Western and Christian civilization.
If we cannot maintain both propositions, we are not practicing tolerance.
We are practicing intellectual surrender. But, we must remember that the Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. And, as a sovereign nation, we are not obligated to import and welcome ALL cultures.
All Cultures Are Not the Same
Perhaps the greatest conceit of the modern West is believing that refusing to judge cultures makes us sophisticated.
It does not.
It merely makes us incapable of defending our own.
A civilization that believes human beings are created in the image of God is not identical to one that does not share that theological anthropology. A civilization formed by Catholicism and somewhat enhanced by Enlightenment Ideals is not identical to one formed by Islam.
A legal tradition protecting conversion from one religion to another is not identical to a tradition that historically punished apostasy.
A constitutional order granting Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists equal citizenship is not identical to a religious political order distinguishing believers from protected but subordinate communities.
These are not differences in food.
They are differences in first principles.
And first principles eventually become institutions.
Institutions become laws.
Laws shape civilizations.
And, it is this latter point that bears watching.
Bush's Beautiful World
George W. Bush was attempting something honorable in September 2001. The country was wounded. Americans were furious. He feared that innocent Muslim citizens would become targets of collective vengeance. Frankly, he misjudged his own countrymen and sold them short.
The President of the United States therefore stood before the country and said, in effect:
Do not blame your Muslim neighbor for what terrorists did.
That was presidential leadership.
He should have stopped there.
Instead, Bush transformed a statement about American justice toward Muslims into a theological declaration about Islam itself.
Twenty-five years later, he still defends it. Perhaps because the alternative is uncomfortable. The alternative requires admitting that civilizations really do disagree about fundamental things. And that is what makes them different civilizations. History cannot always be squeezed into the categories of twenty-first-century American pluralism.
Religions make contradictory claims and some doctrines really are incompatible with others.
That peace sometimes depends not upon pretending differences do not exist, but upon establishing political institutions strong enough to contain those differences.
And most disturbing of all, it requires admitting that the Western experiment rests upon assumptions that are neither self-evident nor universally shared.
There is nothing hateful about acknowledging this.
Quite the opposite.
Genuine coexistence begins with truth.
A Christian should not need a Muslim to pretend Christianity and Islam teach the same things. A Muslim should not need a Christian to pretend Islam and Christianity teach the same things.
They don't.
Christianity says Jesus Christ is God incarnate.
Islam says He is not.
Christianity proclaims the Trinity.
Islam rejects it.
Christianity understands man through creation in God's image and ultimately through the Incarnation.
Islam possesses a fundamentally different theological anthropology.
Classical Islam developed doctrines concerning jihad, Islamic sovereignty, jizya and the political status of non-Muslims. These facts remain facts regardless of whether acknowledging them makes a presidential speech more difficult.
George W. Bush wanted a world in which the September 11 attacks could be neatly separated from every difficult question concerning Islamic theology and history.
One can understand why.
It would be a much easier world.
But a civilization cannot be defended according to the world we wish existed. It must be defended in the world that actually exists. And the beginning of that defense is recovering the courage to say something our ancestors would have regarded as perfectly obvious:
All cultures are not the same.
All religions do not teach the same things.
All civilizations do not value the same things.
And, we can judge whether one civilization is superior to another.
Peace does not require pretending otherwise.
It requires being honest enough to know, and act on, the differences.
Endnotes
Ashley J. DiMella, “Bush revives ‘Islam is peace’ message with fresh focus on post-9/11 mosque visit,” Fox News, September 10, 2026. Bush recalled both his concern about harassment of Muslim Americans and his declaration that Islam was a religion of peace.
Qur'an 2:256, Sahih International and Pickthall translations. The verse states that there is “no compulsion in religion.” Its interpretation and relationship to later martial passages have generated an extensive exegetical literature.
Qur'an 9:29, Sahih International. The passage commands fighting certain People of the Book until payment of jizyah.
Qur'an 8:39, Sahih International.
Qur'an 8:39–41. English translations differ materially concerning fitnah. The following verses explicitly discuss battle and the distribution of war booty.
Qur'an 3:110–113. Importantly, the passage itself also qualifies its criticism by saying the People of the Book “are not all the same,” another reason isolated verses should not be presented without context.
Qur'an 5:51. Translations of awliya vary among “allies,” “guardians,” “friends” and related concepts, illustrating the importance of not constructing arguments upon a disputed English rendering alone.
Sahih al-Bukhari 25, Book of Belief. The tradition attributes to Muhammad the statement that he had been commanded to fight people until they profess Islamic faith, establish prayer and give zakat.
Sahih Muslim 21b contains a closely related tradition concerning fighting until profession of belief.
Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, principally preserved through Ibn Hisham and other later sources, is the earliest surviving traditional biography of Muhammad. Alfred Guillaume's English translation remains a standard reference point for English-speaking readers.
Qur'an 9:29. The historical institution of jizya developed through Islamic jurisprudence far beyond the language of the Qur'anic verse itself, so particular rules varied across periods and jurisdictions.
