Opinion

I covered religion after the 9/11 attacks. I never imagined the hate would outlast the war.

(RNS) — Since 9/11, violence in America has come from within. Hate crimes against Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Latinos, Black Americans and LGBTQ+ Americans are soaring. RNS CEO/Publisher Deborah Caldwell looks back on how we got here.

Tribute in Light, two vertical columns of light representing the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, shine against the lower Manhattan skyline. (Photo by David Z/Pixabay/Creative Commons)

Deborah Caldwell
September 8, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — I had just dropped my two little boys, ages 6 and 3, at school when news came over the car radio: First one plane, then a second, had hit the World Trade Center. I drove to a lookout on a mountain above my New Jersey town, where I could see the burning towers 14 miles east, one degree above the horizon: the width of my fingernail at arm’s length.

Within hours, fighter jets scrambled over my house, and bridges and tunnels into the city closed. For the rest of that week, I worked on a 56K home dial-up I didn’t disconnect for 150 hours. My sons were unfazed, their little worlds still knee hockey in the basement and stories at bedtime. That Friday, instead of their usual after-dinner treat, I drove them up the mountain.

At the lookout, candles burned on a giant stone semi-circle that looked like an altar, letters and posters taped to the rocks: grief (“Why?”), rage (“This will never happen again!”) and hope (“Let there be peace on earth”). The boys asked: “Why are the candles burning? What happened in New York, Mommy?”

I told them “bad guys” had knocked down the buildings and that we were safe. I wasn’t sure the second part was true.

I remember these details because I published an account of that vigil and my sons’ reactions only weeks after Sept. 11. Re-reading it now, at the 25th anniversary, I can see I spent the years after that night trying to answer their questions — and bearing witness to what came after. What I didn’t realize then was how many Americans would be treated as enemies in the years that followed.

In 2001, I was an editor at Beliefnet, a Web 1.0 website about religion, politics and spirituality. In the weeks after the attacks, we published everything we could to provide context and a wider perspective on Islam: “Forgive the Terrorists” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “What I Would Say to Osama bin Laden” by Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh, and official Muslim condemnations of the attacks. For his part, President George W. Bush stood in a Washington mosque and declared “Islam is peace.”

None of it quelled the anti-Muslim bigotry.

Attendees react during a vigil, the day after a shooting, outside of the Islamic Center of San Diego, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention described the Prophet Muhammad as a “demon-possessed pedophile.” The convention’s leadership continued to support what he said. Just after 9/11, commentator Ann Coulter proposed invading Muslim countries and converting them to Christianity. Nine months later on the “Today” show she suggested Muslims take up a hobby other than slaughtering infidels. Evangelist Franklin Graham described Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.”

The nation’s leaders accounted for what caused the attacks. Congress created an independent commission and studied our preparedness and the immediate response. Today, there is a national memorial and museum, and every September, somber national observances.

Over the next two decades, though, violent attacks from within grew more frequent and widespread. The targets began with American Muslims, but eventually grew to include Sikhs, Jews, Latinos, LGBTQ+ people and, as always, Black Americans.

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh, Oct. 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

In 2012 a self-described white supremacist in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killed six worshippers at a Sikh gurdwara, whose adherents are often mistaken for Muslims. In 2015 another self-described white supremacist sat through Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and then shot and killed nine people. Three years later, a gunman killed 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. He had posted that a Jewish refugee agency was bringing Central American invaders into the country. As recently as late August, a teenager was charged with murder for coordinating with two other teenagers who in May shot a security guard and two other people outside a San Diego mosque, then killed themselves. Their manifesto included hatred for Muslims, Jews, Black people and the LGBTQ+ community.


There have been prosecutions, and hearings. Around the country, churches, mosques, temples and synagogues hired guards. The communities that were targeted built memorials, mostly with their own money. In Oak Creek, the congregation preserved a bullet hole on the prayer hall door frame and placed an inscription below that reads “We Are One, 8–5–12.” In Charleston, the $25 million Emanuel Nine Memorial, paid for largely by private donors, is expected to open in October. In Pittsburgh, Tree of Life has raised more than $50 million from donations, state and federal grants, and foundations but had to scale it back by 40% partly because of cost.

The country reckoned with the 9/11 attacks. It built the memorial and the museum and set aside a day to mourn. But America has not yet treated the hate crimes that followed as one continuous story that requires a national response.

Mourners place flowers and pictures in the name cut-out of Kyung Hee (Casey) Cho at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Sept. 11, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Chronicling these incidents is journalism’s job, and journalists do it, story after story. RNS and many others have reported on the fact that in 2025, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) logged 8,683 anti-Muslim complaints, the most in the 30 years of recordkeeping.

And the Anti-Defamation League counted 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the third-worst year since tracking began in 1979. In New York City, anti-Jewish crimes account for more than half of all confirmed hate crimes through August of 2026.

And hate crimes against Black Americans have been the most common for as long as the FBI has kept count. In 2024, anti-Black incidents made up more than half of all racial and ethnic hate crimes.

Preliminary FBI data put anti-Latino hate crimes at 1,014 in 2025, a record that moved them into the top three most-targeted groups for the first time in 34 years of tracking. ICE agents have arrested people in church parking lots, at preschool pickup and, once, while a pastor preached. In Latino and Haitian immigrant parishes, people stopped coming.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the country is still holding vigils. For Muslims and Sikhs. For Black churchgoers, for Jews and for Latino and Haitian immigrants. Americans know how to grieve together. We proved that for 9/11. We valorized the victims of the 9/11 attacks — but we have not yet done the same for these victims of decades of hate crimes.

What I gave my boys 25 years ago was a candlelit night on the mountain and a promise that they were safe. It turned out to be true for them. They weren’t seen as the “enemy.” The hatred came for other people’s children.


A single, extinguished votive candle atop a New Jersey lookout near New York City. (RNS photo/Deborah Caldwell)

Last month, I visited the lookout where I watched the towers burn that morning. The small plaque that commemorated 9/11 for several years is no longer there. The view of lower Manhattan is now blocked by trees that, like my sons, have grown taller. I walked the entire stone semi-circle, and at the spot where I’d stood the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, there was a single votive candle, extinguished.

Deborah Caldwell. (Courtesy photo)

Deborah Caldwell is the Publisher and CEO of Religion News Service.

  

Port of NY and NJ Memorializes 9/11 With the Permanence of Sunlight

The newly-added inscription and inlay may be seen in the center and at the end of the "wedge of light" on the Oculus' floor (PANYNJ)

Published Sep 11, 2026 5:42 PM by The Maritime Executive

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has taken a new step to build remembrance of the 9/11 attack into its infrastructure, creating a permanent reminder for all generations. Inscribed into the floor of the Oculus - the transportation hub designed as a memorial for 9/11 - are the azimuth and altitude of the sun at 1028 hours on September 11, 2001, the moment that the North Tower collapsed. 

The inscription and accompanying inlays amplify and explain the Oculus' defining feature. When architect Daniel Libeskind was commissioned to design the monolithic main hall of the building, he oriented its entire shape and orientation so that a "wedge of light" sweeps the hall with sunlight from 0846 to 1028 hours each day. 

The newly-installed floor inlay includes a line subtly inscribed in the marble across the west and east ends of the space. The line follows the path of the sun throughout the time of the attack on that fateful morning. It is inscribed with the words "Azimuth 128.45 to North - Altitude 41.33 to the Sun -  At 10:28 AM on September 11, 2001.”

"Permanently weaving that wedge of light into the literal foundation of the Oculus is a fitting tribute to the memory of those first moments of the attacks and to the master design vision that our redeveloped campus is built around," said Port Authority Chairman Kevin O’Toole. "Future generations will be able to follow the path of the wedge of light across the campus using these markings to connect with how the events of that day and those terrible moments in time are with us still, woven into the campus itself."

The use of the sun's position as a marker of time and space will be intimately familiar to mariners as the underlying principle of the noon sight. It is also part of a long architectural lineage of using the sun to mark important moments in time: Stonehenge is the best-known example of a monumental sundial, built to indicate the seasons, but there are many more. At the Selinente ruins in Sicily, the Temple of Apollo - the Greek god of the sun - is aligned with the sun's position at the spring solstice. Similar sites from entirely different cultures exist in present-day Egypt, Malta and Jordan, and have outlasted the civilizations that built them. By structuring a monument-scale 9/11 memorial to mark a moment with ageless sunlight, the design sits within a practice measured in millenia. 

 

Remembering 9/11: Lt. Michael Day and the Lower Manhattan Boatlift

 

Published Sep 11, 2026 2:31 PM by U.S. Coast Guard News

On September 11, 2001, Lieutenant Michael Day was working at Coast Guard Activities New York preparing to leave for a meeting at Tower One of the World Trade Center when the command center alert came in. A plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Then another hit.

“We were unable to get any reports from lower Manhattan since all the communications systems failed. It was chaotic. People from multiple agencies were responding to the scene without any unity of purpose,” he said. “There wasn’t a pre-planned response; there was no CONOP for how to respond to two planes crashing into the Towers.”

Not having a specific response plan for this situation, Day grabbed the closest thing he could think of to help – the OPSAIL 2000 plan.

“I knew it had a lot of ambulance staging areas. We had a lot of evacuation points identified. Although it wasn’t necessarily a full-scale evacuation plan, it had information,” he said.

As Day rushed out the door to head to the waterfront, Andrew McGovern, pilot of the 100-foot pilot boat NEW YORK, showed up for the meeting. They grabbed a bunch of extra lifejackets, the OPSAIL plan, a Coast Guard Ensign and headed for the pilot boat.

“I remember listening to the radio because by this time we were underway on the boat and it was just… chaos. Every channel you clicked to people were screaming, ‘Help, people are here… I’ve got someone hurt here’,” he said.

With a front row seat to the collapsing buildings, frightened people and distressing devastation, Day only momentarily worried about his own safety. With thousands of citizens needing help, he didn’t have time to stop and think about what was happening.

Despite poor radio communication and unreliable cellular reception, Day began dispatching Coast Guardsmen with handheld radios to the piers to help coordinate a more organized evacuation effort. Meanwhile, he hoisted the Coast Guard Ensign on the pilot boat and began broadcasting to all available boats willing to help with the evacuation to assemble off the tip of Governors Island and await further assignment.

New Yorkers rushed to the Lower Manhattan water front to try to escape the collapse of the World Trade Center towers September 11. They were later evacuated by ferries and tugboats from all over New York harbor. (USCG photo by Chief Brandon Brewer)

The process of transporting the crowds of people from Manhattan to safety, one boat load at a time, continued into the evening. With the pilot boat docked in lower Manhattan, still flying the Coast Guard Ensign, first responders began asking them for help.

Establishing communications with the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, he was able to start getting some supplies brought over to the pier… first water, then ice and meals. Soon, more specific items like tools, equipment and fuel began to arrive.

“We were quickly overrun with relief supplies,” he said. “It was just such a ‘can do’ effort. Everyone wanted to help.”

In what he called, “hands-on VTS,” Day and a Chief Boatswain’s Mate managed the hundreds of vessels bringing supplies to the pier.

“We set up three different staging areas because the supplies were coming in so fast and furious that we were running out of room, and we couldn’t distribute them fast enough,” he added.

The pure scope of the event and lack of communication with his superiors meant making decisions wasn’t always easy for Day, nor were his actions always by the book, but he looks at the response as great example of initiative and teamwork. Getting more than one hundred boats and dozens of response crews to work together cohesively is not an easy task. But for Day, it just sort of happened under what he describes as a “common purpose.”

A Coast Guard rescue team from Sandy Hook, NJ, races to the scene of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. (USCG photo by PA2 Tom Sperduto)

Day also learned valuable leadership lessons.

“One is the value of partnering and partnerships, and building your bridges before you need them,” he said. “Two, making your people feel empowered. I really felt when I worked for Admiral Bennis that I was totally empowered to do the right thing. And three, to have faith in your people and the power of the concept of unity of purpose.”

After four days of responding with only about three hours of sleep total, Day finally had some time to reflect on what had happened.

“And it’s when I had quiet time, you know, a little bit alone to myself that it really, really struck home,” he said. “I think being in the Coast Guard we kind of shut things off at times of stress; it’s like a defense mechanism.”

This article originally appeared in Coast Guard Compass and may be found in archived form here. TME reprints it each year on Sept. 11 in honor of the heroes of the Lower Manhattan Boatlift and the victims of the attacks. 

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

25 Years Later, Mariners Remember the Tragedy and Heroism of 9/11

The devastation of the World Trade Center site from Jersey City (Wally Gobetz / CC BY NC ND 2.0)

Published Sep 10, 2026 9:39 PM by The Maritime Executive

25 years after 9/11, the nation has not forgotten the shock and tragedy of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon - nor the heroism of the response that followed. In Manhattan, 2,700 people were killed that day, and countless more suffered lasting injuries from exposure to toxic smoke and dust. But in one of American maritime's finest moments, hundreds of good Samaritan vessels and their crews rushed into harm's way to evacuate survivors from the waterfront and carry them to safety, at considerable personal risk. 

After the towers began to collapse, the city moved to evacuate everyone located south of Canal Street - more than a million people. For those north of the disaster zone, evacuation on foot was possible, either north into Midtown (as instructed by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) or over the bridges into Brooklyn.

But hundreds of thousands were left on the south side of the site, and when the towers collapsed, they were hemmed in by thick dust and smoke. There were no ordinary ways out. The subways were shut down, and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the tunnels over to the New Jersey side were closed for safety reasons. That left only the option of a boat and ferry evacuation to move throngs of people away from the danger of falling debris, toxic smoke and the possibility of any further attacks in Lower Manhattan.

Acting under the direction of then-Lt. Mike Day, a handful of on-scene U.S. Coast Guard personnel coordinated an all-hands, all-vessels boatlift to get the survivors off the waterfront. About 160,000 people got away from the danger zone aboard NY Waterway ferries, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Another 250-300,000 people boarded harbor cruise boats, tugs, and anything else that could be mobilized to the scene. Coast Guard officers helped organize the boarding area and direct traffic, while civilian mariners worked fast to pull people to safety.  In the rush to escape, some of the survivors jumped into the water and had to be pulled aboard. 

Tug crewmember Herbert Jones recalled that day in an interview with local outlet WAVY. He saw the first plane coming down the river before it hit the North Tower, then the second hit the South Tower. His tug moved in to assist the survivors. "There was boats everywhere, it was unbelievable. I learned something about New York that day. They might fight among each other, but when it comes to a day like that they all came together," he said. 

The operation continued into the evening, and volunteer boats brought relief supplies over with them on the return trip. “We set up three different staging areas because the supplies were coming in so fast and furious that we were running out of room, and we couldn’t distribute them fast enough,” Adm. Day recalled in an earlier interview. 

The heroic event was memorialized in a powerful short film, Boatlift, based on interviews with mariners who had joined the effort. Drawing on records, news footage, photos and survivors' recollections, an independent production team assembled a 12-minute documentary of the events of that day (with narration by Tom Hanks). Released in ____, it remains a powerful tribute and a clear portrayal of the largest marine evacuation in history. 

This year, to mark the 25th anniversary, the family-oriented Great American Pure Flix - a Christian digital content channel - has released a dramatic re-envisioning of that day's heroic rescue operation. The newly-released "Boatlift 9/11" places a mother-daughter tugboat crew at the center of the action, with a twist, bringing a less-known maritime story back to the attention of the broader public.