Religious leaders call for unity 10 years after 9/11

By Hamil R. Harris, Published: September 9

From Wakefield High School in Arlington to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Shakila Yasmin Miah was adored by her peers. After college, she moved to New York, where she fell in love.

She met Nurul Haq Miah at a friend’s wedding, and four years later, in 1999, the couple got married. Both worked for Marsh & McLennan, a professional services and insurance brokerage firm, in the World Trade Center — one on the 93rd floor and the other four stories up — on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists struck.

“Nural was attending a meeting on the 99th floor when the first plane hit their building,” said the Rev. Daniel Vestal of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. “They were the only couple that died in 9/11” inside the World Trade Center.

Vestal told the story of the young couple to make the point that Muslims also died when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and headed another toward Washington before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He and other church leaders said Thursday that, a decade later, too many religious leaders have painted the 9/11 attacks in terms of Christianity under attack by Islam.

“We need to put a new face on what the Christian community looks like in this country,” said Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ.

Please read the rest of this post at The Washington Post.