Seven years ago today the world changed in unimaginable ways. It changed far beyond the huge hole left in the Manhattan skyline, the tall and magnificent buildings stretching skyward with their lights that used to fill my view as I sipped coffee on my couch and wondered about the lives of those working so late and providing me, by their office lights, almost a magical experience every evening of every day. Those buildings, lights, and lives disappeared seven years ago today but a lot more disappeared with them.

The change went beyond Manhattan, and it went beyond the U.S., and it went beyond the wars that destructive, senseless, inconceivable act sparked in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The entire world changed. While the world and the people of Manhattan and Washington have returned to their everyday lives, their daily routines, a banal normality, it is a new normality that we all live with. The world not only seems a far less safe place but is in fact less safe.

September 11, 2001 ushered in a worldwide intifada. Since that day, terrorist plots have been fostered and foiled in nearly every Western country –including countries that before have seen no acts of terrorism directed against their lands, such as Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark — and some of those terrorist plots have succeeded. It has heightened the acts of terror in those countries that are far too familiar with terrorism such as in India, Indonesia, Spain and across the Middle East. It has given strength to extremist elements that were previously marginalized and thus we have seen the rise in not just rhetoric but also power and acts of movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah. It is why, in no small part, today Iran has risen to be such a threat. And it has increased extremism within the muslim communities around the world, reaching two and three generations removed from their Middle Eastern roots.

It has also increased fear and suspicion, that in turn have bred discrimination against muslims around the world.

It has been seven years since those heinous acts on 9/11 and the world is not the same.