Entrance to Fort Hood (file) (AP Photo/Greg Sharkey)
His name is Malik Nadal Hasan. Today he earned another name: mud. The question still remains: why did he kill 12 people and wound 31?
As everyone knows by now, this massacre happened at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas, today beginning at 1:30 p.m. CST (or 1330S, as they say in the Army). Major Malik Nadal Hasan, US Army Medical Corps, walked into the Soldier Readiness Center, the largest and most crowded complex on the largest Army post in the world, and started singling people out and shooting them. Reports aired today on Fox News state that Hasan was deliberately shooting people he knew, right up to the time that a civilian contract police officer wounded him.
Update (November 6): The police officer involved put four rounds into the perpetrator and took one round herself. Happily, she did not die. Unconfirmed reports state that she was still using her cellphone to check up on other personnel while in transit to the hospital.
Now any police officer will vouch that in the overwhelming majority of murder cases, the murderer knew his target(s). The difference is that most murderers will kill only two or three primary targets and occasionally will try to kill any and all witnesses. This killer evidently bore a grudge against forty or more people, and came to the Soldier Readiness Center prepared to kill them all.
But what was the source of that grudge?
The answer to that question seems to depend on the source. First, exactly who he was: he was an Army psychiatrist, originally stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and recently transferred to the post hospital on Fort Hood and scheduled to be deployed to the Iraq theater. Everyone agrees that Major Hasan was Muslim. Most say that he was a recent convert, but his cousin says that he had been a Muslim all his life.
And now, the motive. The cousin says that Major Hasan had taken a great deal of "harassment" over his Muslim faith and his Middle Eastern heritage, and had expressed distress over his pending deployment. But Colonel Terry Lee USA (retired), who once worked with Major Hasan, says that he had expressed sympathy with Abdulhakim Bledsoe, the suspect in the shooting at a Little Rock, AR, recruiting office last summer, and even said that "it's about time that Muslims stood up against the aggressors," and words to similar effect. This officer further states that Hasan had had similar arguments with several people, on such themes as whether Muslim should fight Muslim. (Furthermore, Col. Lee says that no one ever "harassed" Hasan or called him any racial names. Hasan, not any of the others, started those arguments.)
So perhaps--just perhaps--Hasan suddenly decided, on his own, to kill all those people whom he had had arguments with.
This raises another issue: Muslims in this country have never once faced up to such spectacles as honor killings (like the killing of Noor Faleh Almaleki in Arizona by her father on October 20) and the "fighting words" in the Qu'ran:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
Hasan's action today is the second such action in less than half a year. He also drew a moral from the first attack, and said so to a fellow officer.
Coincidence? Here is what Ian Fleming once said about things like that:
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it's enemy action.
Comments
You dont have a clue. Just a typical narrowminded redneck who'se looked up a few verses and decided to input them wherever his miniscule brain finds makes sense.
So this retired Colonel who longer even works there, how does he know that "no one" ever harassed this person.
And what does the killing of a daughter have anything to do with this?? What about the numerous white Christians boyfriends, husbands, babysitters and neighbors who rape and kill... how come that isnt brought into your convenient equation..
think dumbass before you write..
And...?
Why you jump to religion when anything happens has thing to do Muslims? Do you want people to hate Muslims or you want them to think that Islam is threat. Are you a redical Jewish? Can you be more specific? By the way, the verse you are quoting came when there were wars 1400 years ago, which means those verses in the holy Quraán DO NOT apply now. Educate yourself Mister
Educate *your*self, Fred. Muhammad wrote that verse, and many others in a similar vein, after he had fled from Mecca to Medina and started a long war of conquest that was suspended only when Ferdinand and Isabella chased his successors out of Spain. He died with orders for war on his lips.
How much of the Quran have you actually read? If you sort by time of writing, rather than by length from longest to shortest as the Quran is put together, you see that the fighting words were written later than the conciliatory words. And guess what? The Abrogation Principle says that the words most recently written take precedence. That's in the Quran, too.
And "radical Jewish"? I love that. FYI, I am a Christian, and more to the point, a Gentile.
And I did not say, "First Saturday, then Sunday." Muslims did. And the silence of Muslims on the spectacles that I mentioned is well and truly deafening.
I warn anyone wishing to comment on this or any other thread that I moderate: I will not tolerate profanity, obscenity, or similar vulgarism. A string of asterisks won't cut it. And in this I am no respecter of persons, or what side someone is on.
I repeat: no obscenity on these threads. This is a family-friendly page, and I mean to keep it that way.
Terry, are you going to delete the first post by "dumbass?"
Brad: Technically, even the name he used (and mistakenly signed himself with) is not necessarily obscene. The root word was once a perfectly legitimate word for "donkey." But if I start letting anyone, on either side, use certain other words I've had to delete, there'll be no limit. Sadly, this site doesn't grant me a "word-item veto."
Nice article. Glad some in the media aren't afraid to bring it up.
There have been several incidents, although not to this degree of viciousness, at Fort Hood over the last two years. Also, the shooter is in custody with 4 wounds and not dead.
Religion is ridiculous, there is as much need to educate yourself on any religion as it is to educate yourself on Dungeons and Dragons. Muslims are twisted people, i dont know much about the silly religion but apparently its ok to kill innocent people but against the religion to pet a dog.
Family friendly threat? My family swears all the time!
I often wonder if religion can lead to psychosis. Practice of Islam includes a lot of personal sacrifices e.g. fasting and some pretty strict codes of conduct. When a Muslim lives among us and sees how we swear, spit, curse, chase women and generally enjoy life in general how can they NOT harbor some resentment? This has to bother them 24-7. Does anyone think for a second that if you're out in your yard slow cooking a rack or two of ribs (pork of course) that a Muslim in your neighborhood will smell it and not think either "infidel!" or worse yet have their own mouths begin watering and develop the feeling that YOU are making them question THEIR faith? I'm not sure if Hasan killed who were up to that point his brothers in arms because he could not accept that the Army who took him as youth just out of high school and made him a MAJOR and a DOCTOR now expected him to go to war OR if his Islamic faith inspired him to have a mini Jihad. One must be true and both disgust me.
deport all of the muslim faith, wall up the middle east, nuke it, let the sand turn to glass, and lets move on. Do i truly believe this or want this to happen?, no - am I sick of American involvement with the Middle East? Yes - alternative energy couldn't take over quick enough
Pray for the families and if this guy survives his injuries lets make it a short trial and hang him up high to show that this will not be tolerated and will be dealt with swiftly
Boy, there are some real problems with this article if you take other sources of media into account. Course my #1 problem and frustration with media of all types is: Who in the media is telling the truth as it is and who is distorting it for whatever reason. Not to bore you with already published media of all sorts, but there is just so much controversy (meaning this special interest says this is so and this other special interest says that is so) out there. It really just dumbs you down to it all.
So just a tidbit or two of mine on this article: Your time line for when the event occurred is a tad late in the day it occurred (according to other news sources) and also according to them (several) she was shot in both hips and one wrist......all this and she still brought him down
So for you thieves, thugs, felons, dope heads and whatever, IF YOU ARE CONFRONTED BY A FEMALE OFFICER WITH WEAPON IN HAND AND SHE TELLS YOU TO PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON AND SURRENDER...BETTER TAKE THE ADVIC
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