We Said “Never Forget.” Did we mean it?

On September 11, 2001, America watched smoke rise from the heart of New York City. We watched men and women run for their lives. We watched firefighters and police officers climb into danger while others fled from it. We watched a nation mourn nearly 3,000 murdered souls.

And we said, “Never forget.”

Now, twenty-five years later, I must ask: did we mean it?

My friends, remembrance is not sentiment. Remembrance is not a ceremony, not a slogan, not a wreath laid for cameras and then forgotten by nightfall. Biblical remembrance means moral clarity. It means we remember evil as evil. We remember sacrifice as sacrifice. We remember Truth as Truth.

After 9/11, the shock wore off, and the emotions faded. We pushed the snooze button and we went back to sleep. America’s response was too often ruled by emotion rather than conviction, and a “blame America first” instinct soon returned in government, media, Hollywood, and universities.

That danger is more urgent now.

The issue before us is not the private religion of any elected official. America must defend religious liberty for all people. The issue is ideology. The issue is whether we have the courage to distinguish between peaceful Muslims, who should be treated with dignity, and political Islam, which seeks power, control, and submission. It is also whether we have the courage to reject socialism, which promises compassion while concentrating power in the hands of the state.

I know both dangers. I did not learn them from a textbook. I grew up under Islamic socialism in Egypt, and I saw firsthand what happens when government says, “We know best.” Redistribution and nationalization turned a country with few poor people into a country where nearly everyone became poor.

Socialism always arrives with tender language. It speaks of fairness. It speaks of justice. It speaks of helping the poor. But when the state replaces personal responsibility, when the state replaces family, when the state replaces charity, when the state replaces God—it does not produce freedom. It produces bondage.

Political Islam also arrives with carefully chosen language. It speaks of tolerance, inclusion, coexistence, and dialogue. But Islamists know how to use the freedoms of a free society in order to weaken that society from within. They use public relations, institutions, media, and politics, not only bombs and bullets, to advance an ideology that is hostile to freedom.

Brothers and sisters, listen carefully: terrorism is a tactic. Ideology is the enemy. For too long, we have fought the wrong war, focusing on violent acts while ignoring the Islamist ideology beneath them. Violent jihad destroyed buildings on 9/11. Stealth jihad seeks to reshape minds, rewrite history, and occupy institutions.

That is why the Muslim Brotherhood must never be treated as a harmless civic association. The Brotherhood’s own strategic memorandum described its work in America as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” Those are not my words. That is their stated vision.

So when Americans shrug at the spread of political Islam into public office, education, media, and civic institutions, they are not showing compassionate equality and inclusion. They are showing willful ignorance.

When New York City, of all places, normalizes leaders who advance socialist policies while giving cover to the language and ambitions of political Islam, the question is not whether we are tolerant. The question is whether we are awake.

Do you remember the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero? That location carried deep symbolic meaning: the building had been struck and damaged by debris from the 9/11 attack. Building there would have symbolized conquest—not peace. Political correctness is irrational and unjust. We have watched political correctness push crosses and other Christian symbols from the public square, not because reason demanded it, but because ideological pressure did.

That same spirit has only grown more pervasive today. It shames Christians into silence. It brands moral clarity as bigotry. It treats concern about political Islam as hatred. It treats socialism as compassion. It tells us to forget what we saw with our own eyes.

But God’s people must not forget. Every day we must decide if we will be ambassadors of Heaven or succumb to the city of man.

Scripture commands us to be watchful and stand firm (1 Corinthians 16:13). Jesus tells us that Truth sets people free (John 8:31-32). The Lord does not call us to panic. He calls us to discernment. He does not call us to hatred. He calls us to holiness. He does not call us to fear. He calls us to faithfulness.

And let me be plain: our ultimate hope is not in City Hall. It is not in Washington. It is not in a party, a candidate, or a court. We must never put our hope in a political party, but in the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet Christian hope is not passivity. Hope does not mean silence. Hope does not mean surrender. Hope means we speak Truth in love. Hope means we defend religious liberty without empowering religious tyranny. Hope means we care for the poor without bowing before socialism. Hope means we love Muslims enough to share Christ with them, and love America enough to warn her against political Islam.

Two forces are tearing at the foundations of our republic: radical political Islam from without and aggressive secularism from within. Though they contradict each other, they often cooperate in weakening the Judeo-Christian foundations that made the freedoms we enjoy in the US possible.

That is the great irony of our age. Secular progressives think they are liberating America from Christianity, but in removing the Biblical foundation, they are opening the door to ideologies far less tolerant than the faith they despise.

My friends, hear this: the answer is not rage. The answer is repentance.

We must repent of forgetting God. We must repent of trading Truth for comfort. We must repent of allowing our children to be discipled by ideologies that hate the Gospel. We must repent of cowardice dressed up as kindness.

And then we must stand.

Stand for the families who still grieve 9/11. Stand for the Constitution. Stand for the persecuted church. Stand for Jewish neighbors threatened by ancient hatred in modern dress. Stand for Muslims trapped under the fear and control of Islamist ideology. Stand for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the only power that can save sinners, transform hearts, and bring true peace.

We said we would never forget.

By God’s grace, let us remember rightly. Let us remember with courage. Let us remember with repentance. Let us remember with hope. And let us teach our children that freedom is never preserved by slogans—it is preserved by Truth, sacrifice, and faithfulness before Almighty God.