I’m an observing Muslim woman — British by birth, American by privilege — who witnessed 9/11 in real time from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where I was treating critically ill patients.
That was my introduction to radical Islam — a profound distortion of my faith.
Today, as a doctor who treats 9/11 first responders and survivors as a consulting sleep specialist to the Federal World Trade Center Health Program, I see the long-term impacts of that horrific day up close.
So it outraged me deeply to hear 9/11 vilified by far-left Democratic Twitch mouthpiece Hasan Piker, who has casually declared that “America deserved 9/11.”
And while he’s tried to backtrack on his comments just in time for the 25th anniversary of those heinous attacks, as a Muslim who rejects Islamism I must speak out against his venom.
Witnessing 9/11 launched my 25-year intellectual and global odyssey to understand radical Islam and its impact — on both its terror victims and on those seduced by powerful Islamist ideology.
It’s still difficult to comprehend the true extent of 9/11’s toll.
We all know that 2,977 people were killed in the attacks, including 2,753 at the World Trade Center in New York, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and 40 on Flight 93 in Shanksville, Penn.
It was the greatest loss of life on American soil since Pearl Harbor, an unmistakable act of war.
Yet more than 9,200 people have since died of World Trade Center-related diseases — over three times the number lost in the terror attacks themselves.
They were killed by illnesses related to toxins released in the towers’ destruction — lung disease, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, kidney cancers and melanoma.
Many more deaths may be yet to come: 52,000 people are now certified with WTC-related cancers.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of survivors suffer daily with diseases of the sinuses, severe gastroesophageal reflux, post-traumatic stress disorder, obstructive sleep apnea, depression, anxiety and more.
By last month, more than 154,700 people were enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program.
My patients typically have at least three WTC-related diagnoses by the time they see me.
Yet many first responders and survivors do not come forward, even 25 years later.
I see it as a heartbreaking form of survivor guilt: My patients tell me how reluctant they feel to impose on the federal health program — that “others” are in greater need, are somehow more deserving.
Add them up, and the numbers are astounding: The 145,000 people still living with WTC-related illnesses, the family members who help care for them, the families grieving the 3,000 lost on 9/11 and the 9,200 who have died since — all of them are gravely wounded by the mean-spirited hate of Piker and his echo chamber.
Piker’s vile trivialization also defiles millions of Muslims around the world who reject Islamist ideology.
Since 9/11, I have traveled to Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel and elsewhere on a quest to understand this lethal mindset.
I’ve met with its victims and sometimes with its former perpetrators — former child jihadists struggling to rehabilitate; men, women, boys and girls violated by ISIS, Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Taliban; families left fatherless and brotherless as they lose multiple boys and men to jihad.
I’ve met, too, with Muslim soldiers and Muslim commanders who ferociously fight the armies of terror, defending both their countries and our shared faith from Islamism.
Twenty-five years on from 9/11, American politics is commodified into soundbites.
A supercharged algorithmic tyranny rewards narcissism and contempt, spreading bad ideas — that 9/11 was perversely “deserved,” for example — ever faster.
American Muslims are not immune to these currents; indeed, far-left extremism and Islamism target us specifically.
American-born Muslims enjoy some of the most remarkable advantages any society can offer anywhere in the world: the freedom to practice our faith openly and build our lives in safety.
Yet far too many of us respond to those advantages not with deepening patriotism, but with a sense of embittered, politicized victimhood — a sentiment that’s only grown since Oct. 7, 2023.
Piker reports he is a “cultural” Muslim; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Shia Muslim, took his oath of office on the Quran.
Both, irrespective of observance, wield Muslim identity as a potent mobilizer of political victimhood — and as a perverse badge of honor in the service of an anti-establishment, anti-American rallying cry.
I appeal to them, and to all American Muslims, to turn away from this malignant hatred that’s corroding our societal values.
This nation, the survivors and responders of 9/11 and America’s Muslims all deserve better than an Islamism that seeks to demean that world-shattering day.
Qanta A. Ahmed, MD, is a senior fellow at Independent Women and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. X: @MissDiagnosis
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