A CBN News report in February described New York City mosques and their loudspeakers blasting the Muslim call to prayer across the city during the Ramadan holidays.
Such a display, which indicates dominance in Islam, would have been unthinkable in the weeks, months, and years after the 9/11 attack claimed 2,753 lives at the World Trade Center.
The very first fatality recorded in official records was Father Mychal Judge (pictured at right), a Franciscan priest. He died from falling debris in the North Tower lobby, where he ran from his friary to give last rites to the dying and to pray for the injured.
Three days after the Sept. 11 attack, President George W. Bush visited Ground Zero. That is when he stood on a fire truck to address a weary crowd of first responders who were digging through the rubble. Even with a megaphone, the noise of heavy machinery was drowning him out, and the responders told the president they couldn’t hear him.
“I can hear you,” Bush replied. “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
Despite that rousing promise of revenge, President Bush visited a Washington, D.C., mosque days later, on Sept. 17. He stated that “Islam is peace” and insisted the terrorists did not represent all of Islam.
A joke that really wasn't
Bush's mosque visit, which was triggered by backlash against Muslim Americans, has been called a real-life example of a Norm McDonald joke. The late "Saturday Night Live" comedian, who passed away in 2021, used his trademark deadpan delivery to criticize Islam in 2016 in a Twitter post.
"What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans," McDonald wrote. "Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”
Ten years after McDonald wrote that observation, Muslims are not in retreat. Texas authorities have fought development of a 400-acre residential community planned by members of the East Plano Islamic Center.
The development, called EPIC City, has since been rebranded as "The Meadow" after public outcry for what developers were calling the "epicenter of Islam in America."
Over in another red state, Florida, an imam named Muhammad Musri (pictured below) was describing Islam's progress in The Sunshine State during his 2024 visit to a San Francisco mosque.
“We bought three churches so far, and now we have one we are buying with a school,” Musri, speaking English, informed the audience.
Explaining why that matters, the imam says the West “invaded” Muslim countries a century ago, and turned its Islamic schools and mosques into “missionary schools” to spread Christianity.
“Today, we bring the favor back,” Musri, speaking calmly, said, “and turned their churches into mosques.”
As the 25th remembrance of 9/11 arrives, More than 230 Muslim Americans currently hold elected office in the United States. A 2026 report by the Rutgers University Center for Security, Race and Rights — a reported that laments 'Islamophobia' in the U.S. — says the numbers include four members of the U.S. House, with three additional Muslim candidates projected to win congressional seats in November.
For the 2026 election cycle specifically, a peer-reviewed study published by Cambridge University Press identified 130 Muslim American candidates for state legislative seats alone across 32 states. Minnesota had 19, Michigan 14, California 9, Georgia 9 and Maryland 9. That does not include all congressional, mayoral, county or other local candidates.
“Hamtramck, Michigan, near Detroit, has become and is widely regarded as the only Muslim-majority city in the United States, although the federal Census does not collect data on religious affiliation.”
Not far away, 54.5% of residents in Dearborn, Michigan, report Middle Eastern or North African ancestry according to the 2020 census.
'What is wrong with you people?'
Robert Maness, now a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, was 204 miles away and working in Washington, D.C., when an American Airlines Boeing 767 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. EST. The second Tower was hit at 9:03 a.m., by a second 767.
Maness, then an Air Force major, was watching live footage from New York City from his desk in the Pentagon. That is when American Airlines Flight 77 struck that building at 9:37 a.m. and claimed 184 victims.
After the Pentagon attack, Maness has been called a hero for running to help victims around him. One of them was Brian Birdwell, then a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, who was so badly burned he was not expected to live but somehow did. Maness held an IV and tried to keep the burn victim awake.
Maness never learned the Army officer’s name. He wondered for 15 years who the officer was, and if he lived, only to be introduced to Birdwell in 2016 at the Republican National Convention.
“When I realized that I was looking at the same gentleman, I started to cry and told him I was so grateful that he was still alive,” Maness told People Magazine. “We hugged each other and neither of us could believe that we were talking again.”
Looking at the state of the United States today, 25 years later, Maness told American Family News it frustrates him to see Islamists use constitutional freedoms to advance a religion that doesn’t belong here.
“What is wrong with you people who are in office, or you voters who are voting for this?” he said.
Gary Bauer, the longtime Republican activist, told AFN he believes the best way to protect the West from Islam is to end Muslim immigration to the U.S.
“Why would we bring people from other countries into America, a nation built on religious liberty, if the people we are inviting into the country reject the idea of religious liberty?” he demanded.
Maness told AFN he is especially livid over Zohran Mandani, the Muslim-communist mayor of New York City, who is in office for the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
“He hates America. He hates what we stand for,” Maness said. “Quite frankly, I think he in secret probably applauds the fact that 9/11 happened.”
Mamdani's careful public statements don't show support for the 9/11 attack, but it didn't go unnoticed when the first-term mayor appointed attorney Ramzi Kassem as city government’s chief legal counsel. Kassem once represented an al-Qaeda terror suspect.
Mamdani has stated publicly he intends to attend the New York's annual remembrance ceremony today despite calls for him to stay away.
A Change.org petition encouraging Mamdani's absence has accumulated more than 102,000 signatures.
Back in the CBN story, former Muslim Danny Burmawi warned that Islam is a political movement as well as a religion. Just like Communists would be banned from using loudspeakers to spread their beliefs in the streets, he said, so should mosques and their imams.
“Muslims don’t need it, but political Islam needs it,” Burmawi, referring to the call to prayer, said.
