Twenty-Five Years On | Statement of the International Freedom Coalition
Washington, DC, USA, Sept. 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A child born on the morning of September 11, 2001 turns twenty-five today. Twenty-five years on, much of American public life still cannot describe the ideology that killed her countrymen.
The International Freedom Coalition exists because the people living under that ideology got tired of waiting while America forgot what really happened. The Coalition brings together communities for whom jihadism is a present condition, lived with daily: Afghans resisting the Taliban, Assyrian Christians of Iraq, Iranians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds in Syria, Lebanese, Israelis, Nigerians and Biafrans, South Sudanese, and American religious and civic leaders who have refused to let the subject close. The Afghanistan United Front became the Coalition’s first formal partner in August 2026.
“There were two forgettings,” said Dr. Charles Jacobs, President of the International Freedom Coalition. “One was ordinary, the fading time works on every memory. The other was deliberate: a reinterpretation that detached the attack from the movement that produced it and reattached it to the sins of its victims. A generation has now been educated into that second account, and it has left them without the words for what our members live with.”
The Coalition draws no partisan line here. Most American liberals mourned that day and mourn it still, and some of the bravest critics of jihadist ideology are liberals, including Muslim liberals who fight it at personal risk and with little institutional protection. The failure the Coalition describes is institutional, and it crosses party lines.
“We gather as a coalition because of what happened on that day, and because of what has happened since in Kabul, Nineveh, Maiduguri, Damascus, Beirut, and southern Israel,” said Dr. Walid Phares, Vice President of the International Freedom Coalition. “Our members are separated by language, faith, and continent. They arrived at the same conclusion from different directions, having met the same ideology in different uniforms.”
The Coalition’s work is documentation and advocacy: regional desks, country dossiers, and case filing before the United Nations, the United States Congress, and European institutions. The purpose is a public record that outlasts a news cycle, and a vocabulary honest enough to describe what is in it.
Twenty-five years is long enough for a child to become an adult. She is owed an adult account of why that morning happened.
About the International Freedom Coalition
The International Freedom Coalition documents and advocates for communities affected by jihadist violence worldwide. Working through a regional desk model, the Coalition produces country dossiers, builds coalitions among affected communities, and files cases with the United Nations, the United States Congress, and European institutions. The IFC was co-founded by Dr. Charles Jacobs and Dr. Walid Phares, launched in Congress in July 2026, and counts Ayaan Hirsi Ali among its endorsers. The IFC is a project of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Watertown, Massachusetts.
internationalfreedomcoalition.org
Attachment
- Twenty-Five Years On | Statement of the International Freedom Coalition
CONTACT: International Freedom Coalition [email protected]
