New York remembers the victims while faith communities revisit the questions of solidarity, identity and belonging that followed the attacks.
Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks transformed New York and much of the world, remembrance is again bringing Americans to places of mourning, worship and reflection. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the anniversary remains inseparable from the enormous political and security consequences that followed.
But September 11 also left another legacy: a continuing conversation about religion, religious identity and the boundaries of belonging in a pluralistic society.
That dimension has been particularly visible in New York this year. On the eve of the 25th anniversary, people from different religious traditions participated in the Children of Abraham Peace Walk, moving through Manhattan from Hebrew Union College to Judson Memorial Church and finally to the Islamic Center of New York City.
The route itself carried a message. Jewish, Christian and Muslim institutions became stops on a shared act of remembrance rather than separate religious spaces responding independently to a common tragedy.
Remembering across religious boundaries
The Children of Abraham Peace Walk began in the aftermath of 9/11 and has continued as an interfaith initiative intended to encourage understanding among religious communities.
This year’s gathering took on particular meaning because of the anniversary. More than two decades have now passed since religious leaders in New York and elsewhere found themselves confronting two challenges at once: mourning the victims of terrorism while resisting the temptation to turn a crime committed by extremists into suspicion directed at an entire religion.
That distinction was especially important for Muslim Americans.
The September 11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists invoking an extremist interpretation of Islam. Yet Muslims living in the United States, the overwhelming majority of whom had no connection whatsoever to the attackers or their ideology, experienced increased suspicion, hostility and scrutiny in the years that followed.
For religious freedom, the question was fundamental. Does a society committed to freedom of religion continue to protect that freedom when fear makes a particular religion unpopular?
Twenty-five years later, the question has not entirely disappeared.
A Muslim mayor at a 9/11 commemoration
This year’s anniversary has given the issue an unusually visible political dimension because New York City is now led by its first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani has participated in events commemorating the attacks and is attending the anniversary observances. Some of his critics have objected to his participation on political grounds. Others, however, have explicitly cited his Muslim faith in arguing that he should not take part.
That distinction matters.
Political leaders can legitimately be criticized for their policies, statements and decisions. Excluding a public official from an act of national mourning because of his religion raises a different question — one touching directly on equal citizenship and religious freedom.
The controversy illustrates how the legacy of September 11 continues to intersect with debates over Islam in American public life.
Mamdani joined the concluding stage of the interfaith peace walk on Thursday evening at the Islamic Center. In his remarks, he honored those who died and the first responders who entered the World Trade Center while others were escaping, while also emphasizing the solidarity New Yorkers demonstrated after the attacks.
From remembrance to service
New York City has also formally expanded the meaning of the anniversary.
Ahead of this year’s commemoration, the mayor signed an executive order establishing September 11 as an annual Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service. The measure calls for remembrance of the victims, first responders and those who later died from illnesses associated with exposure at the World Trade Center site, while encouraging city agencies and New Yorkers to participate in service and educational activities.
That approach reflects something religious communities have often emphasized after collective tragedy: remembrance does not have to end with grief.
Acts of service became an important part of New York’s response in the immediate aftermath of September 11. Volunteers provided food, medical assistance, transportation, counseling and spiritual support. Houses of worship became gathering places. Clergy from different traditions accompanied families, emergency workers and communities struggling to understand what had happened.
Among the figures remembered from that day is Father Mychal Judge, the Catholic Franciscan priest and FDNY chaplain who died while ministering to firefighters at the World Trade Center. His story has come to symbolize a form of religious service expressed not primarily through words, but through presence beside people facing extraordinary danger and suffering.
Religion after catastrophe
The relationship between religion and September 11 has always been complicated.
Religion was invoked by the perpetrators of the attacks. Religion also provided consolation to countless people affected by them. Religious differences became a source of suspicion, while interfaith cooperation became one response to that suspicion.
Churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious communities participated in memorial services across the United States. Interfaith organizations expanded their work. Conversations between Muslims and their Christian and Jewish neighbors acquired an urgency that had not existed in the same way before the attacks.
At the same time, public arguments emerged over how terrorism connected to religious extremism should be described. Some feared that avoiding discussion of extremist ideology prevented an honest understanding of terrorism. Others warned that treating Islam itself as responsible placed millions of ordinary Muslims under collective suspicion.
Those tensions have never been completely resolved.
The challenge for democratic societies has therefore been to hold two propositions at the same time: extremist ideologies invoking religion can be examined and confronted without transforming criticism of extremism into condemnation of an entire faith or its followers.
That principle extends beyond Islam. Religious freedom has its greatest significance precisely when it protects communities whose beliefs are unfamiliar, unpopular or caught up in wider political conflict.
A generation with no memory of 9/11
The 25th anniversary also marks an important generational change. A growing proportion of Americans were either children in 2001 or had not yet been born.
For them, September 11 is history rather than personal memory.
At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York, relatives of victims are again gathering to read the names of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Seven moments of silence are being observed this year, including a tribute to people who have died from illnesses and injuries connected to 9/11 in the years since.
Such ceremonies preserve the names and experiences of individual human beings against the tendency for historical events to become abstractions.
Interfaith remembrance performs a related function. It preserves another part of the history: the choice made by many people after an act designed to spread terror and division to encounter their neighbors rather than withdraw from them.
Twenty-five years later
September 11, 2001, changed international politics, national security and the lives of millions of people. Its religious consequences were less easily measured but no less significant.
It forced Americans to ask difficult questions about extremism and faith, security and liberty, prejudice and belonging. Those questions have changed form over the years, but they have not vanished.
The sight of Jews, Christians and Muslims walking together through Manhattan on the eve of the anniversary does not erase those tensions. Nor does it resolve the political disagreements surrounding today’s commemorations.
It does, however, represent one answer to a question that has remained since September 11: how should communities respond when violence seeks to make religious difference itself a reason for fear?
Twenty-five years later, New York is still working out that answer — through remembrance, argument, worship, service and, at least for one evening, by walking together.