I was having breakfast in my serene world, unaware that zero-hour had arrived. I went to my 9:30 math class, came back to my dorm after the class was over, and checked online for the latest news and upon scanning caught three words.

"World. Trade. Crashes."

"Hunh, the stock markets are crashing?" was my confused thought.

"Center," was the fourth unbelievable word that hit me.

I clicked the link and there on the page was a picture of one of the twin towers crumbling.

"No."

I ran out to the main living room and turned on the TV. The twin towers were no more.

I knew who was responsible. Every fiber in my body knew. It was the scum who had declared war on Americans in 1996, and then masterminded the attacks on the embassies in Africa two years later. His group had attacked a US warship in Yemeni waters in 2000. I knew that he wanted to showcase a grand attack. Perhaps, bombings of multiple airliners over the Pacific and Atlantic or assaulting the enclosed infidel sites in Saudi Arabia. Instead, Osama had struck at the jugular of the American Republic.

Practically all the channels showed gruesome scenes and presented scary scenarios. Some thought that there were more than 10,000 dead. Others differed but still offered numbers in the thousands.

Students started to stream in the living room. They all watched the horror without uttering a word. I left them and went to my room. That morbid picture on the screen, in which so many innocent lives were instantly extinguished, produced a feeling of emptiness.

I checked other websites and came upon a most wretched spectacle. Palestinians were celebrating and passing around sweets. Their euphoric performance made my stomach churn. How demented is a society when it reacts with glee to thousands of innocents perishing? I simply couldn't comprehend the depths of their depravity.

As the day passed, my grief morphed into anger. Anger for those who had carried out, supported, and financed the heinous acts, for those who had rejoiced at the news of the atrocity, and for those who were planning more assaults on the West. For too long the Islamists had thought of Americans as cowards. For too long the Americans had been at the receiving end of their attacks. For too long the US had done little in response. For too long the majority of the American public had not acknowledged their evil enemies.

At long last, at tremendous personal cost in blood and treasure, the US was awake and furious.

The Fourth World War had begun.

* * * *

The immediate months after 9/11 were quite jarring. An economics professor of ours told us to not believe "the official" version of events. He hinted at some dark conspiracy without illuminating the situation. Sometime later, on a different topic, he told us to not pre-judge communist economies. I stopped listening to his Leftist palaver after that.

Then there were the idiotic doom and gloom scenarios. For example, thousands of American troops dying, millions of Afghanis starving to death, and the war raging on for years and years. The Ayatollah of the Left, Noam Chomsky, was always present to crown the US as the leading terrorist state in the world. Yet, there was a clear-cut choice. America plus the Allies were up against 7th century woman-beating, gay-hating, liberty-crushing Islamists. After the incredible victory of the American army in less than two months, the credibility of the Left was in a quagmire. The overwhelming majority of Leftists kept on spewing venom at the Americans.

Leftists were not alone. One day, I walked into the living room where two guys were watching some news channel. The program was about the merciless lampooning of Osama in every late night show. One of the guys was very agitated.

"I understand why he makes fun of Osama all the time. It's because he's a rotten stinking Jew. But I don't get why Leno jokes about Osama so much?"

The other guy nodded. I was speechless. I don't know to whom he charmingly referred to as "a rotten stinking Jew," though, I was touched to hear him defend a mass-murdering psychopath. A few months later, I would find the same guy laughing heartily at the President Bush pretzel incident. It seemed that no amount of ridicule of the Chimp-in-Chief was too much.

I found out later still that the guy was a member of the Muslim Student Association.

From my experience, the reactions of the Muslims in Canada ranged from indifference to outright support of Islamists. It made little sense because these Muslims would never live in an environment with harsh Islamist rules. It's uncanny how this attitude is shared by most Leftists in the West who proclaim the superiority of Castro's Cuba or in years past the Great Soviet Russia. Yet, all of them, like most Muslims in the West, are leeches on the democratic capitalist system.

* * * *

After finishing the exams, it was time for the December trip to Saudi Arabia. As usual, on the flight to Saudi Arabia, the passengers are provided Saudi customs cards. So, I started to fill one out.

"First Name. Second Name. Third Name. Family Name." I filled out the entries.

"Nationality." Pakistani.

Further along, checkboxes for "Single" and "Married." Single.

"Religion." I stopped.

"Religion." I had mindlessly filled out those forms on countless occasions.

"Religion." Why was it so hard to write the same thing I had written so many times before?

"Religion." Finally, I wrote down the usual answer: Islam.

The days that followed were unreal.

"The planes were remote controlled by the Americans. That's why it was easy for them to be slammed into the buildings."

"They want to start a war to go after Afghanistan."

"How could Osama pull off 9/11? He is thousands of kilometers away in Afghanistan."

"The US is the superpower, isn't it? So, how could supposedly 19 Arabs cause such havoc to such a super country?"

"The US wants to subjugate Muslims."

That's just what I heard from my family. The situation was not much different in the newspapers and magazines. Every time the media mentioned Osama in a story, the "who is blamed for 9/11 by Washington" was not far behind.

I was reading through a Pakistani magazine where in the letters section was this gem. "The attacks on 9/11, which we all know were caused by Mossad,..." It was mind-numbing. The Muslim world simply couldn't agree as to who was behind the 9/11 attacks when the plain truth was staring them in the face.

Though, what they could all agree on was a sense of uninhibited joy. Whether it was Americans, Israelis or the tooth fairy that was behind 9/11, they didn't mind the auspicious atrocity.

My dad told us of a blue Saudi in his office.

"He was distressed because he wanted the twin towers to topple sideways for more death and carnage."

I felt sick. The US, just a decade before, had sent half a million of her finest to save the Saudis from imminent danger. On 9/11, the citadel of the US was attacked, thousands of innocents were murdered, and the ingrate citizens of Arabia were delighted.

Many went a step further and defended the "innocent" Muslims of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia was one of three countries which not only recognized the Taliban regime but also sympathized with it. The attack on the pure Islamic state of Afghanistan was considered an attack on Islam itself.

It seemed that with a few exceptions the entire Muslim world had gone stark raving mad. Instead of opposing the evil regime of Afghanistan, they openly supported it. There were women in Pakistan who publicly supported the Taliban. That made about as much sense as blacks in favor of the KKK. It felt like being in a lunatic asylum where the US was attacking Muslims and the Taliban were gentle and sinless creatures.

Many Muslims had supported Saddam against the US, more than a decade before 9/11. Why? Because he's a Muslim! Again, the same horrid logic was being used to defend the most wretched and wanted man in the world.

* * * *

The West simply can't please the Muslim world. The Umma basically manufacture reasons to hate the West. There's a conspiracy theory to back up each and every grievance for loathing the West. The infidels, in the minds of most Muslims, are out to destroy their communities. However, their very Islamist rules cripple a functioning society. Their one-and-only solutionTM to every perceived problem is more Quran, more Islam, more aping of Muhammad, more 7th century barbarism - in one word, Islamism. That was, and is, by far the loudest force in the Muslim world.

Very few, very precious few, look at the US, and the West in general, and say, "How about emulating those successful folks?" The rest are shocked and ask, "You want the Great Satan and his minions to be our role models!?" That is enough to shut up most liberals in the Muslim world.

I had wondered about many questions that had gone unanswered. After coming to North America, my life was on auto-pilot and I hadn't given much thought to those questions. Then, 9/11 acted as a catalyst. The Muslim mask of peace and tolerance was removed and the hideous truth was in the open. No amount of evidence could convince the Umma of America's innocence.

I left Saudi Arabia for Canada in January. I filled out the Saudi customs card as same as before. The trip was long and arduous.

I walked in my dorm room and firmly shut the door. I was a Muslim no more.

Used with permission from Faith Freedom
Original article can be found here