“On Sept. 26, 2022, Yusuf al Qaradawi died at age 96 in Qatar. The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi was the most well-known Muslim cleric in the West, infamous for his calls to murder Americans, Israelis, and others during the height of the Global War on Terror. Once called ‘the most popular and authoritative’ Sunni cleric in the world, Qaradawi’s death attracted little attention, at least as compared to his influence on world events. That reaction, perhaps even more than the death itself, is an important pronouncement: The post-9/11 era is over. …
‘Every person who has fought in these wars and left them,’ the war on terror veteran and writer Elliot Ackerman recently wrote, ‘has had to declare the war over for themselves.’ … There are no ticker-tape parades, and there will not be anything analogous to a ‘Victory in Europe’ day. The war against Islamist terrorism, while winding down, will no doubt continue.
But the forever war seems to have reached a turning point, leaving America searching to articulate its posture on the world stage. The muted attention given to Qaradawi’s death suggests the hateful cleric outlived the era he did so much to shape.”
– Sean Durns, “The End of the Post-9/11 Era,” washingtonexaminer.com, October 14, 2022