9/11 at 25:
How the ‘War on Terror’ helped mainstream Europe’s far right
Islamophobic narratives that shaped global policy after 2001 legitimised an anti-Muslim racism.
Even Osama bin Laden could not have imagined that there were many in the Bush administration in Washingon and in every key decision making segments such as Pentagon who were only too glad to reciprocate '9/11' in their own style.
Many in the US than had seized on the twin-tower attacks as "pretext" to fulfill their ambitions for a US attack on Iraq.
The ‘War on Terror’ gave far-right Islamophobia legitimacy, reach and electoral force.
Initially Germany and France opposed the George W Bush-led war on terror.
But UK and Poland took on major combat roles.
European governments — with the far right still largely excluded from power — enacted their own Islamophobic policies: countering violent extremism and deradicalisation programmes, including the UK’s Prevent strategy.
They also cooperated in hosting secret CIA ‘black sites’ and facilitating rendition flights to Guantanamo Bay and other torture sites. These programmes rested on the premise that Muslim religious belief was itself a kind of dormant threat, always capable of being “activated” into violence against the West.
A far-right activist shouts during an anti-Islam rally on 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York on Sept 11, 2026. snap AFP (Aljazeera)
Before 2001 --- September 11, far right parties in Europe had been largely marginalised within the continent’s multi-party systems.
Even where some won significant electoral support, many remained politically stigmatised or excluded from power, and were better known for anti-Semitism.
There was open nostalgia for their fascist origins than as credible contenders for government.
Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the political order built in their aftermath continues to shape Europe.
The 'Global War on Terror' (GWOT) helped far right parties in Europe gain political prominence -- something they had long been denied.
Islamophobic narratives that shaped global policy after 2001 legitimised an anti-Muslim racism that had already been building within Europe’s far right for years.
When 19 al-Qaeda hijackers crashed four planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,977 people, President George W. Bush declared a ‘Global War on Terror’.
The far right no longer needed to manufacture anti-Muslim sentiment on its own; political speeches, media coverage and wars waged across Muslim-majority countries did much of that work for them.
Bush insisted the fight targeted “terrorists” who had perverted the message of Islam, not Islam itself.
But the rhetoric and policy that followed routinely treated all Muslims as suspects, casting the religion itself as inherently violent — a framing that helped mainstream and globalise Islamophobia over the course of the ‘War on Terror’.
Bush’s declaration that “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” left European governments with little room to manoeuvre.
More than 13 European countries joined the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, with British forces most directly engaged in combat.
Twelve joined the invasion and occupation of Iraq; the UK and Poland took on major combat roles, while France and Germany, this time, opposed the war.
In Britain, Robin Cook, the leader of the Commons and a former foreign secretary, in May 2003 resigned from the government in protest over the British prime minister Tony Blair's stance on Iraq.
In his book 'The Point of Departure' - Robin Cook wrote - "I left (quit Blair cabinet) because I could not support a war based on a false prospectus".
Cook also had his argument - "Osama bin Laden's evil intention in attacking the Twin Tower has been to precipitate violent confrontation between the west and the world of Islam".
Blatantly Islamophobic media coverage across the continent accompanied these campaigns, reinforcing an image of the violent, threatening Muslim.
Attacks by al-Qaeda affiliates in Madrid and London deepened the sense that the enemy was already “within,” casting suspicion on any Muslim as a potential threat.
Self-styled experts on “extremism” and “terrorism” — Pamela Geller,
Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes,
Robert Spencer — built careers legitimising this framework for American audiences and soon forged connections with Europe’s strengthening far-right movements.
"Together they formed the self-described “Counter-Jihad Movement”, a transatlantic network of anti-Muslim organisations, political parties, writers, bloggers and activists united by the claim that “Western civilisation” is under attack by Islam," writes Farid Hafez in Aljajeera.com.
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