CAIRO - The world has changed since September 11, 2001. We all take for granted the people who are closest to us, don't we? How many of us leave home in the morning with a farewell to no one in particular, assuming that each one of us is going to return at the end of the day? Well, on that day ten years ago many thousands of people set off from home for work with a brief goodbye, little knowing they would never see their loved ones again. On that terrible day, the last words that some heard from their wives or husbands were text messages from hijacked airplanes saying how much they loved them. But by then, it was too late. Now before we begin to compare one terror attack with another or begin to say just as many, if not more, people have been killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza as the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, let us leave aside such comparisons. They are true. Arabs and Muslims are being killed daily by NATO bombing raids or in drone missile attacks. But they can form the basis of another article. Here, we are beginning with the senseless deaths of thousands of ordinary folk, going to work as we all do every day. No human being could not be horrified or heartbroken at such a waste of human life. We will probably never really know the full story of September 11. The full truth has been very carefully hidden. Quite who masterminded these attacks or who used them to mastermind the attacks will remain the subject of conspiracy theorists for many years to come. The only fact we know for sure, and something we are all agreed on, is that many innocents died on that day, Muslim as well as non-Muslim. There were at least two main victims of those attacks on September 11. The first victim was the American people, who have been traumatised ever since by the fact that someone could penetrate their defences and wreak havoc right in the heart of their communities. US foreign policy for the last decade has been driven by the effects of September 11. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are just the outward manifestation of the effect on the American psyche. The economic cost has almost crippled the nation. The second victim, though, was not a country. The second victim of what happened on that day ten years ago was Islam. Since that day, Islam and September 11 have become synonymous. Islam and terror have become, in many people's minds, two sides of the same coin. Those who control the world's media have very cleverly managed to portray Islam as the aggressor, as uncompromising and severe. Quite how has this managed to happen? The majority of the world's Muslim men and women are ordinary people, just like those ordinary people who died in those horrific attacks. A bus driver in Karachi is no different to his counterpart in San Francisco. They both go out to work to put food on the table for their families. Neither of them is a fanatic, nor someone wanting to dominate the globe. Yet, this is the picture we have been given. People talk about Islam and the West, as though the two are quite incompatible. The mischief makers who would have us believe in a clash of civilisations have done their job well. So how has it come about? Well, the answer lies partly with Islam itself. Because the world's great Islamic institutions have, over the years, become associated in people's minds with corrupt and Western-leaning regimes they have lost the respect of Muslims. Let us be honest here. Al-Azhar has for centuries been the authentic voice of moderate Sunni Islam, but in recent years has been seen by many as an arm of the state, prepared to speak out on trivial matters that affect the ruler or his wife, but remaining silent when Muslims suffer in Gaza.Under-funded by successive governments for years, and with the appointment of its highest officials in the gift of the government, Al-Azhar lost credibility. When it spoke no one any longer listened to what it had to say. The tragedy of all this is that the authentic, moderate Islam lost its voice in the world. Instead, the only voices heard speaking on behalf of Muslims were voices coming from mountain caves or desert camps, shouting their messages of hatred and being listened to by ordinary men and women at their breakfast tables in London and New York. Now, everyone is entitled to his opinion and everyone can express it, but not everyone is authorised to speak on behalf of Muslims or in the name of Islam. The unfortunate thing in all this is that those who could have done something about it were so keen to keep their control over regimes inside and outside the Arab world that this was allowed to continue. In fact, it was even encouraged. In one of his more ridiculous statements, and there were many, President George W. Bush claimed that "if you are not with us you are with the terrorists". Apart from being quite untrue, since being neutral has always been a legitimate option in world affairs, such statements widened the divide. What is worse, they made it seem to ordinary Muslims that they could either be on the side of the United States or on the side of Osama Bin Laden. Being on the side of neither was not presented as a possibility. So this extreme talk, coming from both sides, led many of our Muslim youth to opt for extreme views, and led many in the West to reject Islam as outside the bounds of what is decent. January 25 has opened up possibilities that go far beyond the borders of Egypt. Set free from the shackles of a regime that was less than honest, Al-Azhar is once again finding its feet. It does still feel the need to cater for a domestic audience, and has something useful to contribute on the way Egypt will progress in the coming years, but far beyond that Al-Azhar has a place to play on the world stage. Returning to the place it has held down through the centuries as the voice of moderate Islam, Al-Azhar is rising once more to silence those voices from mountain caves, who represent no one but themselves. This is the achievement of Egypt's revolution. In this we see a great hope for healing the misunderstandings and dispelling the misconceptions of the 9/11 decade. Those voices which disparage Islam will be silenced when Al-Azhar is able to affirm with authority what is authentically Islamic and what is not. This decade of such waste in human life and effort is surely coming to an end. No longer need ordinary families sitting in front of their television screens in New York fear Islam and Muslims as a religion of fanatics, but they will see, inshallah, that its message is both beautiful and sweet and that it speaks to the hearts of men and women all over the world, in East and West. With the strong voice of Al-Azhar at the helm, the world will see that Islam is a blessing, not a threat, to any culture and any civilisation. And those young men and women who offered their lives as martyrs in Tahrir Square and other places on the soil of Egypt will not have shed their blood in vain. Their blood will shout out to the world and heal the wounds it has suffered from misunderstanding and ignorance. The author of eight books about Islam, British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com
