instead of mourning, instead of a moment of silence or a hateful, islamophobic message, how about today we make the world a little brighter?be kinder. be a little gentler, with yourself and others. take more pictures. tell more jokes. be a better human.today is a lot more than a tragedy. today is a birthday. a day of suicide awareness. a wedding. a birth. a new job. today is a kiss and someone on a tarred over warehouse roof whispering about the day the earth stood still and the day it began spinning again.be kind. just be kind. it's time we took this day back for the wild ones, for the fiery eyes, for the happy and the brave and the new. no more mourning. let it just be a sunday.

~ Taylor Rhodes

Taylor Rhodes 9 11 Grief Loss Mourning Moving Forward Nonfiction September 11 Take Your Power Back Terrorism

It’s possible to be flippant here, when Jihadists fly aircraft into buildings they shout God is Great, what do atheists shout when they do it?

~ Martin Amis

Martin Amis 9 11 Atheism Atheist Flippant Funny Humor Islam Jihad Jihadists Motivation Muslims September 11 Shout Terrorist

Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.

~ Nathan Phelps

Nathan Phelps America Blind Faith Fred Phelps Harm Irrationality Leaving Faith Leaving Religion Leaving Westboro Baptist Church Manhattan New York Pennsylvania Religious Harm September 11 September 11 Terrorist Attacks Terrorism Washington Westboro Baptist Church

It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are inadequate. Further, we usually consider too few offspring of their troubled marriage: when we think of “religious violence,” we tend to think only of holy war and (especially since September 11) religious terrorism. However, those are not the only types of religious violence.

~ Jack David Eller

Jack David Eller Crusades Holy War Intolerance Jihad Religious Terrorism Religious Violence September 11 Terrorism Violence