The other night I was getting ready to go out and I had the news on in the background. I overheard the words “...a priest’s throat was cut while performing mass in France early this morning...ISIS.” I stopped what I was doing and turned up the volume on the TV. In Rouen, a suburb of northern France, in the midst of an intimate mass with two nuns and two parishioners present, eighty-four-year-old Father Jacques Hamel’s throat was cut by two men, while the four other people present celebrating mass were taken hostage. Sister Danielle, one of the nuns present at the time, says she witnessed the two men forcing Fr. Hamel to his knees and recorded themselves performing some kind of ritual around the altar in Arabic, preparing to kill him, before she managed to escape. Elite police units specializing in hostage crises had already surrounded the church when the two men exited, one of the men proclaiming “Allahu Akbar!” before they were shot and apprehended by police. The attack was later claimed by ISIS.

I could not believe what I was hearing. It was the opening scene of a horror movie come to life. Growing up religious, there was a safety in going to church. It was God’s house, and God was safe. Church administrators and religious leaders worldwide help the poor and open their doors to people of all skin colors and all ages, so that everyone might exercise their right to worship. All churches, any church, of any denomination, all want only one thing: peace and to spread the word of God. With ISIS/ISIL, there are no safe spaces. An attack might come at anytime, anywhere. These terror attacks in the recent months have broken families and caused destruction, death, and oceans of grief. I am constantly afraid that the United States will suffer an attack like the ones in Paris, Nice, Munich, or Belgium. I’m afraid the subway that I take to go to the city on the weekends will be attacked. I’m afraid for my friends who want to take a graduation trip to Europe, and for my Dad when he gets on a plane to go on a business trip. We shouldn’t be afraid to experience life and to go new places and see new things, but I am. I pray every night ISIS is completely neutralized before another attack on U.S. soil like the ones in San Bernardino and Orlando. I can’t fathom the grief the families and friends of those murdered by ISIS have had to cope with. I don’t know what I would do if one day one of my loved ones didn’t come home.

I think about ISIS attacking a Catholic priest inside a church during mass, taking away what I always felt to be my safety net, and I get so angry. I get even angrier when I think about one of the men shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” upon exiting the church. It means God is good. I am dumbfounded as to how ISIS could declare itself part of Islam. ISIS is not Islam. ISIS could not be further from Islam, or any faith for that matter. Islam is a religion of peace, hope, charity, forgiveness, love, and brotherhood. It is a religion praising God and promoting good will towards men. How dare they murder in the name of God; in the name of Islam? When ISIS chose this past Ramadan, one of the holiest times in the Muslim calendar, to wreak havoc across the Muslim world, I asked myself how they could even pretend to have allegiance to any sort of religion. They chose one of the most sacred times in the religion they claim to love so deeply that they would die in its name, to murder hundreds. Attacks on some of the holiest cities in the world: 200 killed by a truck bomb in a Baghdad market, 44 killed at an airport in Istanbul, 23 killed at a café in Dhaka, and finally, an attack on the Saudi city of Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Mohammed, killing four security staff outside the Prophet’s Mosque. The vast majority of ISIS victims are Muslims. ISIS has no God and they have no religion. They want only to promote terror and fear.

I grow more frightened with each passing news cycle, each passing CNN update on my phone, each passing attack at a café, at a shopping mall, at a church, down the street. I know that fear is what ISIS wants from us, but I can’t help but to be afraid. I don’t know what the solution for ISIS is, but I am so sorry to all people of Islamic faith that have had a terrorist group try to align themselves with your peaceful religion of love.