9/11 and Future Jihad

When* the second jet slammed into the north World Trade Center Tower in Manhattan, I immediately told students standing next to me, "It's a jihad Ghazwa ... they have chosen the Yarmuk option." The eyes of a few students around me opened wide. That Tuesday morning the world was changing at a record rapid pace - and yet in a sense it was moving in slow mo­tion for most Americans. During that agonizing half hour from 8:45 A.M. to 9:15 A.M., my students, my colleagues, and I belonged to two different worlds. In the corner of the campus where I was teaching on that day of infamy, I felt very much alone: What I had known, researched, and watched building year after year was finally here, ravaging my new homeland. I was as shocked as anyone, but unlike many I was not surprised. What had come to pass was something I had studied and tried to warn others about for more than two decades. It made me more determined to impact the future of what I knew was coming from that point on.