"All Muslims Should Be Killed"

It's been ten years since the devastating events of September 11, 2001 and I have to say the fears the attacks left us with are still here.

Before I continue, though, I would like to offer my prayers and thoughts to all of the families that suffered that day and to the people who lost friends and loved ones. For me, I was luckily spared. In the ten years that have passed, I haven't learnt of anyone I knew personally who died at The World Trade Centre or at the other attacks. The closest I came to losing someone was an ex-girlfriend who was schedule to have a meeting in one of the towers at 9 am that day. Her meeting got cancelled so she was home.

As I mentioned, though, the fears of those attacks still haunt us. A couple of weeks ago, as I was cleaning up in my bathroom, the house swayed and the shelf and the bottles on it swayed. It turned out that New Jersey was feeling the effects of a 5.9 earthquake from Virginia. After tweeting and exchanging Twitter messages with a couple of contacts, I jumped to the TV and turned on to CNN. In one of their reports, there was footage of a press conference. As soon as the shaking started, the journalists and camera crews, stampeded for the exits.

I couldn't help from feeling, as I watched the report, that the immediate rush out of the building was due to fear of the building they were in having just been hit with another aeroplane. In today's world, after 9/11, it's a legitimate concern. Nonetheless, as I watched, I was saddened to the point of pooling tears that the world has come to this and that people - the terrorists - would do the things they do. I'm not naive to terrorism. I recall the Iran hostage crisis of 1980 and the terrorist takeover of the Achille Lauro cruise ship quite well. I didn't get why people did that and I still don't. It makes me wonder and worry of the nature of mankind - or is it the conditioning of man? - that makes us say things like "Let's agree to disagree" yet if we can't see eye-to-eye we'll still gouge the other person's eyes out to, fearfully, make him or her agree.

To try and think positively about the world we live in, I think the events of 9/11 have made me more open-minded, forgiving and even tolerant; and I like to think I'm one of the more tolerant ones out there. Sometimes, I fear, however, that perhaps I've become more open-minded, forgiving and tolerant to a fault and as a way of compensating for those who aren't.

Two years after 9/11, there were bombings in the London Underground. Someone I know said, of the bombings, "All Muslims should be killed." This person and I were never friends in the true sense of the word but we were more than just colleagues, co-workers and acquaintances. I don't talk to this person anymore. Reacting and not responding, initially, I wanted to beat him to a pulp. I didn't. What he'd said was really stupid, ignorant and I have some very close friends who are Muslims so, for their sake, I simply wanted to kick this guy's you know what. I just walked away. Then, I wanted to come back and say, "Then, shouldn't all white guys be killed since it was a white guy who bombed the Federal Building in Texas in the late 1990s?" I didn't do that either. I did , however, walk away with the strong feeling that it is people who do things - good and bad - and NOT ideology. Ideologies are guides, in my opinion, that are meant o be interpreted for the greater good of ALL mankind. Any time an ideology is interpreted in such a way that there is destruction and death then that ideology has been misinterpreted.

People hurt people. Not religions, not races, not genders. People.

People can change, too, and make this world a better place to live in. That change, however, can't be forced. It has to come from within the person. I can't change you. You can't change me. We can influence each other's thought processes and belief systems but we can't change unless we make the conscious decision and effort to change.

As the great Mahatma Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see."