F

ifteen years ago, world history restarted. After 10 years of peace and globalization, American primacy was crushed with the collapse of the twin towers.

Three years after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was despised throughout the world, Tony Blair had fallen from being the world’s hippest leader to the pathetic sidekick of George W. Bush, and Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide were suspicious of each other.

That year was not exactly a peaceful time for Indonesians either. Blood was shed in several provinces due to religious conflicts and communal violence.

A series of bombings and murders happened in Jakarta that year and not all of them were related to al-Qaeda.

On the other hand, 2001 was the year Indonesia began emerging from the dark. Somehow the “monetary crisis” ended and Indonesians returned to spending and investing.

The nation’s book market of 2001 broke apart the taboos of the New Order — Marxism, Chinese culture and the history of human rights violations.

The Indonesian economic renaissance began alongside the wave of bombings committed by al- Qaeda’s allies here. Indonesians united in condemning terrorists and terrorism, but could not agree on who the terrorists were.

The opinion that the US and Israel were the bigger terrorists was popular in many countries, including Indonesia.

During the first half of the decade, the government denied that the Jamaah Islamiyah terror group was real before fighting and defeating them in the decade’s second half.

Indonesians also turned to religion in the 2000s, with our laptops, mobile phones and mp3 playlists expressing our Muslim and Christian pieties.

The world after 9/11 also widened the rift between Muslim and non-Muslim Indonesians, as many Christians (and also Hindus) came to believe that Muslims hadn’t done enough to condemn al-Qaeda and Indonesian Islamists.

On the other hand, Muslims were perplexed by George W. Bush’s evangelical Christian rhetoric, the hardships experienced by Iraqis and eventually the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The re-election of Bush and Australia’s John Howard in 2004 seemed to confirm their suspicions that common Americans and Australians favored leaders who were hostile toward Muslims.

The mess the US created in Iraq is still with us, in the form of Islamic State and the influx of refugees to Europe. Iraqi athletes still have to compete overseas. Blair still insists that had he not attacked Iraq, Saddam Hussein would have remained in power, with his terrible sons waiting to replace him.

It is very possible that Bush and his fellow neoconservatives were ready to topple Saddam, even if 9/11 hadn’t occurred. And without that rationale the Republicans still would have sabotaged the reconstruction of Iraq by staffing the Coalition Provisional Authority with fresh graduates and deliberately leaving out the few Americans who knew the Arabic language and Arab history.

With or without 9/11, the Taliban is still wrecking Afghanistan. Worse, with or without 9/11, the Syrian civil war would still have happened.

If the FBI and CIA were able to stop 9/11 before the hijackers boarded the planes, would Indonesia have become a more peaceful place? Jamaah Islamiyah might not have grown so audacious in planning bombings in Bali and Jakarta.

The mutual distrust among Muslim and non-Muslim Indonesians might not have intensified and the rise of religiosity among Indonesians would not have been as sharp.

The alternative path of history, however, is short lived. The animosity against America would not have happened only if Bush had canceled the invasion of Iraq. In fact, 9/11 heightened the world’s sympathy for the US.

In any case, the bombings of dozens of churches across Indonesia took place nine months before 9/11.

Thugs using religious justifications would have still appeared, using the myth that Islam in Indonesia is under attack. The 2004 tsunami would still have hit Aceh, as would have other natural disasters. At best, if there was no 9/11, then the Bali bombings might not have happened.

A strange thing is taking place in 2016. While some Indonesians still like to blame a Jewish conspiracy for setbacks in Indonesia or the world, this theory has gone out of fashion inside our borders.

Meanwhile, Jewish conspiracy theories have become more popular in the US among the millions of Donald Trump supporters. An atheist American, rather than a Muslim Indonesian, is now more likely to publicly declare that 9/11 was a Jewish plot.

Fortunately, the world in 2016 is not as bleak as we imagined it could be in late 2001. This is still a very bloody year marred by terrorism, but terrorism hasn’t teared societies apart in the West and Asia.

Indonesian liberals still worry that the number of attacks on human rights is increasing, but we are still the only working democracy in Southeast Asia after a turbulent and challenging 17 years.

Our greatest danger is no longer terrorism, but hatred and racism. Every country is experiencing it as the world is still in a state of shock from rapid demographic, economic and technological changes. Every country has plenty of good people who advocate acceptance and cooperation, but it is easier to give in to anger and dread toward minorities and outsiders.

Fifteen years ago, many New Yorkers and Americans refused to give in to hatred and stood with Muslims in America. Once democracy in Indonesia was thought to be harmful and untenable, but the majority of Indonesians have consistently refused conservative Islamism and militarism. The Trumpian politics of fear and loathing is still not popular in Indonesia.

The 9/11 attack was the loss of a better world. The image of the two planes crashing into the World Trade Center was a grand gesture of hatred toward modernity and globalization.

For at least a decade, some of us have been looking for the meaning of the tragedy. It did not end with the death of Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, the US has to defeat the politics of hatred this year, and Jakartans might face the same monster next year.
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The writer is a columnist for feminist website Magdalene.co