#1: Genesis and 9/11

The Evil of Humanity

Thanks be to Allah. In God we trust. These phrases sound similar, calling on a higher power, but there are several more parallels between them. Both were used after the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, by prominent people from both the perpetrators and the victims of that event. Each phrase has been used to unite millions of people, especially during these last eight years. Both phrases refer to the same God, the only difference being the respective viewpoints of Islam and Christianity. There are several thematic similarities between the Muslim extremists allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the stories found in Genesis. Is there truly a difference between Abraham's willingness to kill his only son at the orders of the Lord and flying hijacked planes into buildings filled with innocent people at the direction of Allah? Genesis tells stories of monstrous people, revenge, and evil deeds done in the name of God, all of which are paralleled in accounts of the September 11 attacks.

In the words of William Shakespeare, “In time we hate that which we often fear” (ThinkExist). After the attacks on our country, we were afraid and so we turned to hate. There was no one more despised on September 12, 2001, than the 14 men who carried out the attacks against our nation the day before. Not that the hatred was entirely unjust; the extremist terrorists were despicable. The following excerpt is transcribed from a mid-November tape of Osama Bin Laden speaking to a room of supporters: “We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for...After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it” (Washington). We called them cowards for killing civilians, cowards for not being uniformed. They didn't follow the “rules” of war; they were monsters. Due to their extremist beliefs and actions, we Americans discriminated against Muslims across the country and across the world. We hated to the point of passing the immensely unjust PATRIOT Act, hated to the point of rushing into a war without second thought at the intelligence or motives behind such a war. In our hatred, we turned into the monsters we so despised. We are a predominantly Christian nation; should we be expected to know better? Not exactly. Genesis is filled with stories of terrible people and, almost worse, good people doing terrible things. Jacob recounted to his wife that God told him to deceitfully acquire of Laban's flocks, which was actually his own doing, lying to justify his actions (Genesis 31: 8-12). Potiphar's wife framed Joseph for attempted adultery and got him thrown into prison for what could have been the rest of his life (Genesis 39: 7-20).

Perhaps the most heinous deeds, however, come from the stories of Lot, Abraham's nephew, and his town of Sodom. The first comes from Genesis 19: 4-8, when the angels of the Lord come to stay with Lot before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not only do the men of Sodom want to sleep with the visiting men, but Lot offers up his own daughters instead. It's a rare father today who would offer his daughter to one man, let alone all the men in his town. The story gets more despicable, though, in verses 31-36, after the destruction of the two evil cities. “And the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.’ So they made their father drink wine that night; and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose...and the younger rose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.” Daughters knowingly and willingly sleeping with their father with the intention of becoming pregnant—very few things are as immoral. That is not tolerated in any culture, even the one of the ancient Hebrews that Lot and his daughters were a part of.

Monstrosity is rarely without motive; the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are no exception, nor are the characters of Genesis. Gary North wrote about revenge as a motive for the attacks. As of September, 2001, this country had been waging a terrorist campaign against Iraq's civilians for over a decade. Estimates range from 750,000 to 1,500,000 civilians dead, half of them children, because of our continuing trade sanctions. We refused to lift these trade sanctions until Saddam Hussein resigned. Yet he remained in power only because President Bush refused to pursue a military objective – warriors vs. warriors – by conquering Iraq in 1991. He deliberately let Saddam's army get away. We starved Iraqi children for a strictly political objective: to get Saddam Hussein to resign. The public neither knows nor cares. Motive? Here is a motive. It's called revenge – not for the sake of the secular Baath party, but on behalf of Islam (North). Bin Laden also talked about the benefit of the attacks for Islam. Revenge played an enormous role in the attacks of September 11, but this is obviously not the first mention of revenge in the history of the world. Driven mad with jealousy of Joseph's favored position in the eyes of their father, and with the dreams and prophecies Joseph spouted out about his lording over them, Joseph's brothers first plotted to kill him, then sold him to passing slave traders after staging his death (Genesis 37: 18-28). Even more vengeful is the story of Jacob's sons defending their sister's dignity, found in Genesis 34: 13-17, 24-29. The brothers had an entire city of men circumcised, one of the most painful experiences for grown men, saying that it was the only way that Shechem could marry their sister. This was in deceit, however, and the brothers proceeded to kill every male, plunder the city, and take all of the animals, wealth, children and wives. That is revenge to the extreme, a city taken for the harm to one person. The number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks is roughly 3000, in comparison to the half billion Muslims we have pitted ourselves against due to our foreign policy since 1948 (North). It almost seems like the terrorists did less damage than Jacob's sons did. They definitely did less damage per person originally harmed. And to think that we hold these stories as sacred texts, stories of destruction and revenge far worse than those of the September 11 attacks.

Genesis and 9/11 both involve monstrous deeds committed with the somewhat reasonable motive of revenge, but there is one more piece to the puzzle. The terrorists were religious men, as were the characters in Genesis. Why would they succumb to the call of revenge? The answer is one that has been seen throughout all of human history: “God told me to do it”. Divine calling caused the Crusades, it influenced the Holocaust; God seems to be our strongest justification and most common scapegoat. In the transcribed tape of Osama bin Laden and his supporters, the subject of divine justification is brought up several times. Bin Laden quotes several short and incomplete Hadith verses: “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.'' Shaykh quotes the verse from the Quran: “Fight them, Allah will torture them, with your hands, he will torture them. He will deceive them and he will give you victory. Allah will forgive the believers, he is knowledgeable about everything'' (Washington). Genesis is not free from the scapegoating of God either. In fact, it seems like in many stories, God is logically the one to blame for the wrongdoing. He doesn't exactly have a clean record, either, with the great flood (Genesis 6-8), destroying Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19: 24-25), putting people to death for their wickedness (Genesis 38: 7-10), and causing famine (Genesis 41: 30-31). In Genesis 20: 3-7, 18, others are punished by God because Abraham lied about Sarah being his sister. Genesis 16: 4-6 tells us of Sarah's abuse of Hagar. After Hagar escapes, God orders Hagar to “return to your mistress, and submit to her” (Genesis 16: 9). Later, in Genesis 21: 10-12 and 14, God tells Abraham to send Hagar and her baby son, Ishmael, out into the wilderness, an almost certain death. God tells Abraham to cause himself and others great pain in Genesis 17: 10-14, the ordering of circumcision. The largest and most questionable act ordered by God is found in Genesis 22. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, as a burnt offering. Abraham listens to God without hesitation, and sets off with his son to the mountain where God directed them to go. Once they arrive at the mountain, Abraham and his son travel alone to the peak. Abraham builds an altar and lays the wood. When Isaac inquires about the animal for sacrifice, Abraham tells him that God will provide. “Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, ‘...Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’” Abraham then receives a reaffirmation of God's blessing to him, offspring as numerous as the stars.

Which is more appalling: killing strangers in another country, whom you do not and will never know, or killing your one and only son, whom you love? It is illegal in every country to kill your own son. Yet at any moment in history there is a war raging, and strangers are being killed by strangers. This very second, an American is killing someone that he or she does not know, but because our soldier is wearing a uniform, because our country declared war, suddenly it is acceptable to society to kill another human being. Is there a difference between the acts in Genesis and the attacks of September 11, 2001? There most certainly is not. Both include monstrous people, revenge, and divine justification for evil deeds. Genesis tells us stories about the greatest and most faithful people, with whom God walked and talked. Yet Genesis also tells us about the polar opposite, the most immoral and faithless people. Abraham could be considered the epitome of faith, to the point of willingly sacrificing his only son. Abraham's nephew Lot, on the other hand, offered up his daughters to the men of Sodom, and his wife was turned to salt when she couldn't obey the Lord's command not to turn back and look at the burning city of Sodom (Genesis 19:26). Sometimes the same person contains both sets of traits, such as Jacob, the great deceiver and also the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Genesis reflects human nature, and its inclusion in the Bible is partly to justify the evil side of our nature. The attacks of September 11 reflect the atrocities committed in the name of God, and the evil in human nature that was present on both sides of that tragedy. We are not worthy of the pedestal we place ourselves on, both as Christians and as Americans. We are as much to blame for the attacks as the hijackers of those four airplanes. Evil is part of our basic human nature. In the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Our greatest evil flows from ourselves” (ThinkExist).


Works Cited

North, Gary. "The Unasked Question of 9-11: What Was the Motive?" LewRockwell.com. 13 Sept.
        2001. Web. 04 Sept. 2009. .

ThinkExist.com Quotations. Web. 16 Sept. 2009. .

Washington Post. "The Rhetoric of 9/11 - Transcript of bin Laden Video Discussing Sept 11 Attacks (10-13-01)." American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States. 13 Oct. 2001.
        Web. 04 Sept. 2009. .