Abstract
When the terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, and their supporting organization, Al Qaeda, used the rhetoric of Islam to justify their actions, the problem of religion and violence entered the public square in an unprecedented and urgent way that it had not in recent U.S. history. Whereas much of the public discourse of the twentieth century focused on the dangers of ideology -- fascism on the right and communism on the left -- the twenty-first century has given birth to a new enemy: the religious extremist. Religion had previously served a positive social role, such as the religion of Martin Luther King Jr. and others that was a catalyst for peace and social change during the Civil Rights Movement. With 9/11 religion became the legitimation of mass murder. Moreover, the problem of religion and violence posed by the terrorism of 9/11 was compounded by the fact that the new enemy spouted its hate through a religious rhetoric with which most Americans were unfamiliar. Adapted from the source document.