Five years ago ...

... I was walking across campus on a beautiful September morning, on my way into the lab. The sky was a brilliant blue and the air was crisp. It was a day that stood out on its own merits because I remember feeling especially alive on my way in to work.

As I was unlocking the door to the lab, the department vivarian -- with whom I usually exchanged pleasant banter -- came up to me and said something about a plane having been flown into the Pentagon. Then, while my mind was processing this news to mean "lone nut flies Piper Cub into building", he added something about the twin towers in New York City. I am certain that he made it clear that he meant hijacked jet airliners at some point, but I do not remember when.

That conversation is at once among the clearest and the most garbled memories I have. I distinctly remember its beginning, with what I took to be a small commercial aircraft being flown into the Pentagon, and its end, when he had successfully conveyed -- or I had finally wrapped my mind around -- the enormity of what had occurred. I remember saying back to him, "This is war. We have got to do something about this."

I walked across the street to the commons, where I'd arrived to see a huge crowd watching the big screen television in one of the rooms. I was there just in time to see the collapse of one of the towers. I don't remember which.

The rest of what had started out as such a beautiful day I spent mainly in a daze of incomprehension and disbelief. While I quickly understood that we were now at war and grasped on an intellectual level that the hijackers were motivated by what they thought was God's will, I found it impossible to fully understand the depths of depravity these men had reached.

The confusion gave way to an anger I have felt ever since.

September 11, 2001 was the day I learned that -- because of a superstition named Islam -- men from the opposite side of the world I never met and wanted nothing to do with had decided that that beautiful day was not mine to live, but mine on which to bow and scrape for mercy towards the imaginary psychopath (shown at right) they worship as a god and on which to mindlessly take orders from their "prophet" (pictured at left). And not just that beautiful day, but the whole of my life.

The only thing I can imagine that could be an uglier, more unholy thing than what those reprobates did that day would be to do what they demand -- to join them in doing to myself what they did to my lost countrymen. That is what is meant by "Islam", which means "submission".

To hell with Islam. I will not submit my life to that.

Islam, which attempts to stamp out every independent thought, to eradicate individuality, to snuff out that spark within each of us, is pure evil. This creed is a living death.

I choose to live. And if every single solitary follower of Mohammed who lives on this earth must die as a result of my right to self-defense, then so be it.

From that day onward, that has been and will remain the full extent of my thoughts on Islam.

-- CAV