We forget at our peril…
(Ground Zero: Photo – Public Domain)
Yes, it has been 25 years since Islamic jihadists killed nearly 3,000 innocent American citizens. I understand that roughly 100 million Americans, approximately one-third of our population either weren’t born yet or were too young to remember the attacks. But what about the rest of us?
My memory remains vivid for a very specific reason: I was working for a United Express carrier at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD) when the World Trade Center fell, when the Pentagon burned and when United flight 93 ended as smoldering remains in a Pennsylvania field. The immediate aftermath was chaotic and uncertain. We scoured flight manifests for hours every day in those first few weeks, looking for “certain” names. We found some, from our own flights.
We dealt with desperate people, reduced to driving from state to state across country, hoping the skies would open again and maybe they could fly home. While we understood their frustration, we also knew that grounding every commercial flight in the country that morning, a historic call made by FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney on his very first day on the job, saved countless lives.
(FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, National Park Service Photo)
Following the attacks, United, along with other airlines, made internal security changes. Weekly “Security Circulars” detailing active threats to civil aviation became required reading. Internal matching protocols were used to compare names and birthdates to a security watchlist. Believe me, when I had to ask a Middle Eastern passenger to step aside while I took their ID and called United security to make sure their complete name and birthdate didn’t match that of a terrorist on the watchlist, it was not a pleasant situation. One man angrily told me he didn’t understand. My instant response was, Well, you should.
Our nightly routine shifted drastically. We found and reported anti-America graffiti in cargo holds. Every seat cushion on every airplane had to be lifted and propped up during overnight cleaning to ensure weapons hadn’t been stashed beneath them for a future flight. Once cleared, the planes were completely sealed for the night. Airport security and the environment in the terminal became strictly regulated. Families could no longer walk loved ones to the gate or wait on the concourse for arriving passengers.
In those chaotic first hours, South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow took an incredibly aggressive stance on local security. He reasoned that a smaller South Dakota airport could easily be exploited as a terrorist dispatch point. Working the FSD ramp and gate, we experienced his emergency directives in real time. Under Janklow’s orders, massive klieg lights were rolled onto the ramp to eliminate every shadow and blind spot. The governor ordered soldiers from the 147th Field Brigade, based in Sioux Falls to deploy immediately to FSD. We had an armed soldier present every time we boarded a flight. It was comforting to see them strolling around the airport, keeping a sharp eye on the passengers coming and going.
South Dakota instituted these measures before the sun went down on September 11. The rest of the country lagged behind. It wasn’t until September 27 that President George W. Bush announced a federal plan to deploy the National Guard to airports nationwide, a proposal the White House later noted was partially modeled after what South Dakota was already doing. Janklow then seamlessly transitioned our state’s response, blending the National Guard into the roles local tactical officers had been holding down for over two weeks.
Say what you will about “Wild Bill,” our affectionate term for an unpredictable, unruly, and ultimately flawed governor, but he put South Dakota’s security at the absolute forefront. He ensured our state could not be used to further a terrorist agenda.
(Governor William Janklow. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
So, where am I going with all of this?
To be brief: it breaks my heart and frightens me to see how nonchalant so many citizens have become about that day. Because those events reshaped my life, I spent years researching Islamic terror groups, focusing heavily on the Muslim Brotherhood. That research led me to “An Explanatory Memorandum,” a 1991 document written by Mohamed Akram for the Shura Council of the Muslim Brotherhood. Discovered by the FBI during a 2004 raid in Virginia, this memo outlines a long-term, patient strategy for North America.
It explicitly states its goal as establishing a stable Islamic Movement to: “…present Islam as a civilization alternative, and support the global Islamic state, wherever it is.”
The document defines this mission not as an immediate military onslaught, but as a gradual “Civilization-Jihadist Process.” The author explicitly details the strategy:
“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
If you look closely at the 25 years since 9/11, you can see how successfully this patient strategy of gradual infiltration has played out – not through kinetic warfare or hijacked planes, but through our own parallel institutions. First, consider the institutional infiltration via front organizations. The 1991 memorandum explicitly listed dozens of organizations it hoped to utilize under its umbrella.
In the years following 9/11, federal investigators successfully tied major American Islamic advocacy groups directly to this network. The most prominent example occurred during the 2007–2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing trial in U.S. history. Major advocacy groups were officially named by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators with ties to the Brotherhood and Hamas.
Second, the strategy has masterfully weaponized Western academia through “lawfare” and cultural influence. Over the past quarter-century, billions of dollars in foreign funding, largely from Brotherhood-aligned nations like Qatar, have flowed into elite American universities. By funding Middle Eastern studies departments, specialized chairs, and campus organizations, they have successfully shifted the cultural narrative. They have institutionalized a worldview that portrays Western civilization as an oppressor, precisely mirroring the memo’s goal of “sabotaging its miserable house” from within by using our own intellectual systems against us.
Third, we see this erosion playing out dynamically at the local government level, where cultural pushback is increasingly met with institutional hostility. An example occurred in Dearborn, Michigan. During a city council meeting, a local Christian resident and pastor, Ted Barham, publicly objected to a street name honoring Osama Siblani, founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Arab American News. Siblani consistently praises Hamas and Hezbollah as freedom fighters, “protecting their people and their countries from occupiers and occupation.”
Instead of addressing the resident’s valid security concerns, Dearborn’s Muslim mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, publicly castigated the man, telling the taxpaying resident, “You are not welcome here,” and stating he would celebrate the day Barham moved away. The comparison is stark: Barnam objecting to honoring someone who praises terrorist organizations is met with hostility, but Siblani is honored with a street in his name while calling Hamas and Hezbollah freedom fighters. When an elected official tells a citizen they are unwelcome in their own hometown for opposing figures aligned with foreign terror groups, the encroachment is no longer theoretical.
Fourth, we are seeing parallel legal structures testing the boundaries of American law, most notably in Dallas, Texas. A group established what they billed as the “Islamic Tribunal,” utilizing Sharia principles to arbitrate civil disputes and family law. While proponents argued it functions strictly as a voluntary mediation service, the organization began publicly claiming authority over “all aspects of Muslim life” and falsely asserting that its decisions carry the backing of the regular legal system. The subversion grew so severe that the Texas Governor and Attorney General launched formal investigations into the entity to stop it from operating as a parallel, extra-judicial star chamber designed to bypass the U.S. Constitution.
25 years on, these are just a few examples of the ongoing civilizational jihad we’re living through. There are many, many others. I encourage you to do your own research. The terror masters don’t need violent sleeper cells, until things are much further along. They’re slowly, stealthily winning the cultural, inside battle. Americans are either indifferent, ignorant of the facts, too lazy or busy to be bothered with things happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. And perhaps above all, wish to be seen as tolerant and not Islamophobic.
We may not want to offend anyone, but unless we pay attention and are willing to be involved in preserving American culture, we will become kafir, infidels, dhimmis. Never, ever forget, the goal remains constant: Islamic domination and the US as the next Caliphate. Islamic jihadists offer infidels the choice of conversion or execution. So think hard about what matters to you, beyond the daily grind of career, kids, bills, and the minutiae of life that seems to overwhelm our every waking thought. It’s important for the future of our country, which was designed to be a representative republic, not a bastion for covert terrorists planning on making it the new Caliphate. It’s important for your own future and those of your kids and grandkids.
After years of research into Islamic terrorism and the continuing encroachment of Islam into our culture and seeing the Patriot Act become law, plus being a writer possessed with an imagination gone wild, I started thinking…what if? What if the President put out a request on the down low for someone who could act on our country’s behalf in black ops only he could authorize. What if a ruthless, hard hearted Iranian American FBI agent volunteered to use his skills against the monsters who robbed him of everything he loved on 9/11?
Thus was born my thriller series, The Rowan Milani Chronicles. I wanted to capture the high-stakes tension, the hidden threats, and the fierce need for vigilance that I felt on the ground in South Dakota. Today, the series spans five books. It is fitting that as we pass the 25-year milestone of 9/11, I am wrapping up Rowan’s story in book #6, A Most Wanted Man, a finale that pushes the concept of modern vigilance to its absolute, high-stakes limit. Writing these thrillers isn’t just about entertainment for me; it’s a way for me to educate my readers about the ongoing threats we face and the need for the same vigilance we all embraced 25 years ago. Do you remember the unity and the sudden, sharp focus on security in the weeks after 9/11? Have we grown too comfortable? What do you think?
(Freedom Tower, NYC. Photo credit, Mary Yungeberg)
The ROWAN MILANI CHRONICLES 