Islamophobia and jumping to conclusions

November 9, 2:19 PMLouisville City Hall ExaminerThomas McAdam

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  (Graphic:  McAdam/ImageChef)

President Barack Hussein Obama said Friday the entire nation is grieving for those slain at Fort Hood, and he urged people “not to jump to conclusions” while law enforcement officers investigate the shootings. "We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," Obama said in a Rose Garden statement.

The Washington correspondent for the left-leaning Nation magazine claims those who highlight the Fort Hood killer's Muslim ties are inspiring "Islamophobia." Instead, John Nichols proposes that Americans regard Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose terrorist shooting massacre left 13 dead and dozens more wounded, separately from his faith. "There was clearly something wrong with this imperfect follower of Islam. But that does not mean that there is something wrong with Islam," wrote Nichols. "Enlightened Americans ... should be unsettled by the rush to judgment regarding not just this one Muslim but all Muslims."

  Maj. Hasan (WikiMedia Commons)

Then, along comes Ralph Peters, writing in The New York Post, telling about “…a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.” Peters suggests that “Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.”

Peters reminds us: “A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized. Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that ‘Islam’s a religion of peace.’”

  (AP photo/Jack Plunkett)

Well. The president and his liberal friends in the media are all suggesting to us that the terrible events of last Thursday at Ft. Hood are probably the work of a deranged and stressed-out soldier, who just happens to be of the Muslim faith. Folks on the right are screaming that this is just the latest example of Islamic terrorism, perpetrated on a vulnerable nation too politically-correct to realize that a fifth-column of suicidal killers has infiltrated every level of our society; hell-bent upon destroying out way of life.

How can we decide which, if either, of these extreme conclusions merits our consideration? We can start by looking at the facts.

The London Daily Telegraph reports that Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001. Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year. At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors".

  Screenshot of Anwar al Awlaki's web page

According to The Washington Post, at least 10 domestic terrorism investigations in the past year, the most since 2001. A number of them involved plots or attacks against U.S. military personnel within the United States. In September, federal prosecutors charged two North Carolina men with conspiring to kill personnel at the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico. In June, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American Muslim convert, allegedly shot and killed a soldier and wounded another at a military recruiting center at Little Rock in what he said was retaliation for U.S. counterterrorism policies worldwide.

Verum Serum reports that Anwar al Awlaki, Maj. Hasan’s former mentor at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque, has this to say on his web site:

Nidal Hassan [sic] is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges.

Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.

The heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the Muslim American community. Increasingly they are being cornered into taking stances that would either make them betray Islam or betray their nation. Many amongst them are choosing the former. The Muslim organizations in America came out in a pitiful chorus condemning Nidal’s operation. The fact that fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right -rather the duty- to fight against American tyranny. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims. The American Muslims who condemned his actions have committed treason against the Muslim Ummah and have fallen into hypocrisy.

Virginia Medical Board listing for Dr. Hasan

An Islamic group, calling itself “Revolution Muslim,” posted the following on its web page Friday:

Major Nidal Hasan M.D. = An Officer & a Gentleman.
An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a preemptive attack. Get Well Soon Major Nidal. We Love You. We do NOT denounce this officer's actions, we do however apologize for the following acts committed by our country:
Bay of Tonkin, The East Timor Massacre by USA Supported Suharto, 1902 Samar Massacre in the Philippines by the USMC, 1,000,000 Dead Iraqis, Afghani & Pakistanis Killed by the USA, Starvation of Africa & Rape of it's Resources by the USA, Support of the Brutal "Israeli" Occupation Entity, Etc. Etc.  
Every day is Fort Hood for the world community due to USA policies and & their tyrant totalitarian puppet regimes. Rest assure the slain terrorists at Fort Hood are in the eternal hellfire and it is not to late for YOU to change your policies. 

  Screenshot of Revolution Muslim's web site

On Friday, the Washington Post ran a touching story about Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, who was one of the unarmed soldiers killed by Hasan. “She felt she needed to be ‘an army of one,’ a story in the local Tri-County Times quoted Krueger as saying two years later after her first overseas deployment, to a 24-bed hospital in Afghanistan. Her mother, Jerilyn Krueger, told her, ‘You can't take this on all by yourself,’ the story said. ‘Just watch me,’ Krueger replied, according to her mother.”

At 2 a.m. Friday, a pair of officers arrived at her mother's home with the news that Krueger, 29, now a sergeant with the Madison-based 467th Medical Detachment, had been killed in the Fort Hood massacre.

At right is the graphic which was run on Revolution Muslim’s web site Friday.

Even the uber-liberal reporters on NPR’s Morning Edition (listen on link below) have been putting the pieces of information together to arrive at the conclusion that Maj. Hasan’s actions were clearly predictable:

NPR’s Steve Inskeep: I understanding you've spoken with someone who knew him, worked with him at Walter Reed.

NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling: Earlier today, I spoke to a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan and knows him very well. And he said, you know, from the beginning -and Hasan was there for four years - the medical staff was very worried about this guy. He said the first thing is he's cold, unfriendly. At least that's who he came off. He did not do a good job as a psychiatrist in training, was repeatedly warned, you better shape up, or, you know, you're going to be in trouble. Did badly in his classes, seemed disinterested. But second of all - and this is, perhaps, you know, more relevant. The psychiatrist says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

Maj. Hasan's Scribd posting

Finally, we should take a look at Maj. Hasan’s original postings on his Scribd profile (reproduced at left):

There was a grenade thrown amongs [sic.] a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally [sic.] took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its [sic.] more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled [sic.] this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees [sic.] in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i [sic.] you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars [sic.] main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.

Who could possibly have suspected that this American soldier would turn on his comrades and gun them down in cold blood? That would certainly have been jumping to conclusions, and—dare we say it—Islamophobic.

Listen to the audio: NPR, Morning Edition-- Officials begin putting shooting pieces together (5:47)

Watch the video: Colleague Terry Lee on Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan -- He wanted Muslims to "stand up"

Watch the video: Islamic street preachers claim America’s “chickens have come home to roost”
U.S. Islamic street preachers declare slaughtered soldiers got just deserts

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