Upvote:0
While I have not been able to find evidence that the planners of the 2001 hijackings were specifically aware of it or considered it important, the date of September 11 was already significant in the United States as a date associated with religiously-colored violence.
On September 11, 1857, a militia composed of followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("LDS" or "Mormons") attacked and slaughtered most of the members of a non-Mormon wagon train headed west to California via Utah. LDS member John D. Lee was convicted and executed for leading the attack.
Here is an article from the LDS church in which they admit that the attack was planned and executed by local church leaders but that an order from Brigham Young (then the president of the church) not to go forward with the attack did not reach the militia in time.
Upvote:2
Without suggesting there is any documented evidence of a connection, 9/11 was also the date of another recent aerial attack on the downtown of a major Western city, Pinochet's 1973 coup in Santiago, Chile.
Upvote:5
Don't know if Al Qaeda was conscious of it or not, but 11 September 1683 was the all-time high water mark of the advance of Muslim armies into Christendom, when the Ottoman Turks stood outside the walls of Vienna. They were defeated and driven back the following day, 12 September 1683.
I also don't know if it is significant that 12 September is of course a date in the Western, Christian calendar. Muslims do use it for convenience for secular purposes. However, they have their own lunar month based calendar used to determine date of Ramadan etc., in which year 1 is the year Mohammed moved to Medina (where he established the first Muslim government).
Upvote:16
There was no announcement by the terrorists after 9/11 using that name nor taking ownership for the events (check me on that). The name "9/11", and the significance of the date, was given by the US media after the fact, something the terrorists could not have likely predicted. It doesn't follow the pattern of any of the previous big attacks on the US. We don't refer to the USS Cole bombing as 10/12, Pearl Harbor as 12/7, nor Oklahoma City as 4/19. Following that pattern, 9/11 should have been referred to as "Twin Towers" or "WTC" or something after the location, not the date.
If 9/11 was chosen to have special meaning, it wasn't likely to be related to 911. As pointed out on Skeptics, the rest of the world writes the date as 11/9. Furthermore, in the Islamic Calendar, Sept 11, 2001 was Tuesday 23 Jumaada al-THaany 1422 A.H. or 6/23 (or 23/6).
Martin Gardner uses the example of finding "fiveness" in the Washington Monument to show you can find significance in any numbers (Numerology) if you look hard enough. Here's a list of what's special about the first 10,000 numbers (mostly mathematical). Similarly, you can find something interesting about every day of the calendar year. Throw in Bible and Qur'an references for good measure, feel free to pick from any book/chapter. Use 9:11 or 11:9 or 911 or 119 or 9.11 or 11.9.
In order to coordinate the attacks they had to pick a date. That was likely an operational consideration. Given how difficult it was to coordinate the attacks, and they wanted it to be even bigger, adding in the extra complication of an arbitrary deadline seems an amateurish complication. Then again, I've worked on some business projects which did just that.