The Day that Changed the World

For the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, CRC News has prepared a series of stories about how the Christian Reformed Church and its members have responded – and what we have learned – in the last 10 years.

I was walking through the newsroom of the Kalamazoo Gazette in Kalamazoo, Mich., on a bright sunny morning inSeptember 2001 when something on the TV in the sports department caught my eye.

I saw the tail end of an airplane sticking out of a tall building. When my managing editor, Hollis Townes, stopped next to me to have a look, I asked: "What's this all about?" He shook his head.

Our eyes remained glued to the TV screen. The deadline for the day, we had thought, was over and so the newsroom was quiet with the post-deadline lull.

At that point, only Townes and I were watching the TV, still calm, simply wondering what was up. But then the whole world changed as another plane appeared and smashed into the second tower.

As was the case with millions of people around the U.S. and around the world that day, it was surreal. We kept looking at the screen, not believing what we saw. My editor turned up the volume on the TV and we quickly learned what was happening.

"Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center, everybody!" Hollis yelled.

He called the press room, telling the printers to scrap that day's paper. Big news had just exploded and we were going to publish a special edition to report what was happening.

Since that morning 10 years ago, I have been on a journey, first as a newspaper reporter and then as news and media manager for the Christian Reformed Church in North America, that has led me on a path to try to understand Islam. It has also led to writing many stories about the aftermath of that awful day.

I’ve had a chance to meet, befriend and to write stories about Muslims. Early on and in the years that followed, we were told that the Muslims who perpetrated those attacks were acting on the beliefs of Islam – to kill non-believers who were a threat to the religion. Other Muslims told us that the terrorists were fanatics and did not represent their religion. Islam, they told us again and again, is a religion of peace.

When I left the newspaper business and took the job with the Christian Reformed Church, I was able to continue the journey of trying to understand Islam, in the classroom and on the job.

I am no expert, but I am a journalist, and as such I offer a look at what this church has done since that morning when terrorism became utterly real and took on an ugly face in North America.