Reactions to 9-11 |
On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by terrorists under the leadership of Sheikh Osama bin Laden. Nineteen men from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC. A fourth airliner that was intended to destroy the Capitol building in Washington was commandeered by passengers and crashed in a field outside of Pittsburgh. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and caused over $40 billion dollars' worth of economic losses.
This website compiles reactions to the attacks by a variety of political, religious, and intellectual leaders from the United States and elsewhere.
You can read excerpts from President Bush's address to Congress following the attacks, as well as official reactions from the leaders of Britain, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Israel, and others. You can read also the response of religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Osama bin Laden, Cairo's Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, and others. This website also collects the analysis of a sampling of public intellectuals, including Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, and Thomas Sowell, as well as scholars analyzing the place of the attacks within Muslim theology.
View a timeline of events from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the day of the attacks.
Read an hour-by-hour account of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
For more historical information, see a large collection of online resources at the September 11 digital archive.