Podcast brief
Sam Harris on 9/11, Belief, and the Islamophobia Debate
Sam Harris marks the 25th anniversary of September 11th by arguing that sincere religious belief, not poverty or madness, drove the attacks and still drives jihadism today.
A Stoa brief of an episode from Making Sense with Sam Harris
#492 — The Second Plane, 25 Years Later
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The episode belongs to its makers. This page summarizes its arguments in Stoa's words and points to the moments where they are made. Brief updated .
The brief
Sam Harris argues that the central lesson of September 11th has never required revision: sincere religious belief can produce mass murder. He traces this conclusion to the moment the second plane struck the South Tower, which ruled out accident and lone madness alike and left intentional, coordinated self-sacrifice as the only explanation, a conclusion that led him to write The End of Faith.
From there Harris widens the target. He argues that both major political responses to 9/11 were forms of denial. The religious right answered with more piety and a crusade framed against evil, while much of the secular left reached for poverty and foreign policy as causes, ignoring the hijackers' own stated religious motivations, including belief in martyrdom and paradise. He does not let American power off the hook: he concedes the war on terror produced real harm, from the Iraq invasion to the abandoned withdrawal from Afghanistan and its allies. But he insists these failures are a separate question from whether jihadism, as an ideology, converts belief into violence. That, he argues, remains true regardless of what Fallujah or Abu Ghraib tell us about American conduct.
The strongest objection Harris takes on directly is the charge of Islamophobia. He argues the term wrongly borrows the logic of antisemitism, which targets an ethnic group, and applies it to criticism of Islam, a missionary system of ideas held by roughly a quarter of humanity across many ethnicities. Criticizing those ideas, he maintains, is not bigotry toward Muslims as people. He extends this into a broader claim about immigration and liberal values, arguing that societies are entitled to weigh ideological compatibility with free speech, secularism, and equality for women, without this becoming a matter of race or ethnicity. Stoa's reading: this is a contestable move, since sorting ideology from identity in practice is exactly where critics say the difficulty lies.
He closes by drawing a straight line from 9/11 to October 7th, arguing both were expressions of religious certainty rather than desperation. The usable point he leaves the listener with: examine what people say about their own motives before supplying better ones for them.
Strongest arguments
The second plane proved intentional, sincere belief
1:31Harris argues that a single plane hitting the North Tower could be explained as an accident or the act of a lone madman, but a second coordinated plane ruled out both possibilities. This combination of intentionality and willingness to die revealed sincere religious belief as the cause, not mental illness or despair.
Both right and left responded with delusion
4:58Harris argues the political right responded to 9/11 with more religious piety and a crusade against evil, while much of the secular left attributed the attacks to poverty or American foreign policy despite the hijackers' own writings and testimony showing religious motivation, including belief in martyrdom and paradise.
War on terror had real costs but does not refute jihadism
7:24Harris concedes that the war on terror caused enormous harm, including tens of thousands of civilian deaths, the disastrous Iraq invasion, and a shameful abandonment of Afghan allies. But he argues that none of these failures make it false that jihadism converts sincere religious belief into mass murder using scripture accepted by a quarter of the world's population.
October 7th is continuous with September 11th
12:50Harris argues that the audio and video documentation of the October 7th attacks, including a perpetrator boasting to his parents about killing Jews, shows religious rapture rather than despair, and that this is the same certainty that motivated the 9/11 hijackers.
A new identitarian confusion is worse than the old political one
14:48Harris argues that the post-9/11 confusion was political, citing root causes and blowback, but the post-October 7th confusion is a pseudo-moral, identitarian framework in which oppressor and oppressed roles are fixed regardless of facts, allowing a jihadist massacre to be reframed as liberation.
Islamophobia is not analogous to antisemitism
22:11Harris argues that Judaism is a non-proselytizing faith tied largely to ethnicity, while Islam is a missionary system of ideas with over two billion adherents across many ethnicities, so criticizing Islam as a set of ideas cannot be equated with racism or xenophobia toward Muslims as people.
Liberal societies should vet for ideological compatibility, not ethnicity
25:13Harris argues that maintaining liberal values such as free speech, secularism, and political equality for women requires being honest that societies do not want more committed Islamists or jihadists, and that this concern is about ideology, not about race, ethnicity, or cultural diversity in general.
Disagreements
Harris versus critics who blame American foreign policy for jihadism
7:55Harris presents and rejects the view, which he attributes to critics of the war on terror, that the real lesson of 9/11 concerns the pathologies of American power rather than the reality of jihadist belief. He argues that no failure of American foreign policy, including Fallujah or Abu Ghraib, makes the religious motivation of jihadists false.
Harris versus those who call Islam criticism Islamophobic
20:54Harris argues against the use of the term Islamophobia by those, including major newspapers, who treat criticism of Islamic ideas as equivalent to racism or bigotry against Muslims as people. He insists ideas can be criticized without hatred of people, and treats this conflation as itself a capitulation to theocracy.
Philosophers and works discussed
- The End of Faith By Sam Harris.
Questions this episode answers
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Why did the second plane hitting the South Tower change how people understood 9/11?
1:31A single plane could be explained as accident or lone madness, but a second coordinated plane proved intentionality and willingness to die, which together indicate sincere religious belief rather than desperation or mental illness.
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Why does Sam Harris say the term Islamophobia is not analogous to antisemitism?
22:11Judaism is non-proselytizing and largely tied to ethnicity, so antisemitism targets a people, while Islam is a missionary system of ideas spanning many ethnicities, so criticizing Islam as a set of ideas is not equivalent to bigotry against Muslims as people.
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What continuity does Sam Harris draw between September 11th and October 7th?
12:50Both attacks were documented by their own perpetrators expressing religious rapture, such as martyrdom and paradise, rather than despair, showing the same sincere religious certainty driving mass murder in each case.
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Does the failure of the war on terror disprove the religious explanation of 9/11?
7:24Harris concedes the war on terror caused massive harm and includes catastrophic policy failures, but argues these failures do not refute the claim that jihadism converts sincere religious belief into mass murder.
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Why does Sam Harris say criticizing Islam is not bigotry?
23:54He argues that Islam is a set of ideas rather than a race, ethnicity, or nationality, so criticizing those ideas and their effects is a legitimate exercise of liberal free inquiry rather than racism or xenophobia.
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What is Islamo-leftism according to Sam Harris?
16:04Harris describes it as an alliance between the far left and Islamist politics in which identifying with Islamism carries little political cost and can even be an asset, citing politicians who avoid clearly condemning calls for violence against Jews.