Seven messages and counting on my voice mail from different Bay Area reporters, all wanting to know the Muslim community's reaction about the recent heinous killings of Nidal Malik Hasan. All wanting to know what had driven a 39-year-old Muslim to go on a killing rampage, murdering 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas. "He had it all," someone said, "he's an educated man, he's a doctor." Why did he do it?
Apparently, I fit the profile of someone who has these answers: I am a Muslim Palestinian American: I must know what one out of the 1.5 billion Muslims around the globe is thinking at any given time.
"Hey, Jamal...sorry to disturb you so early. But you know the Hasan story is big, and I was wondering if you're willing to come for an interview and talk about how it feels being a Maahzlem (Muslim) and all," a television producer says to me on my cell, while I was driving to work.
"How did you feel being a Christian, with Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler being Christians?" I fired back.
Silence... I probably should not have said that, but there it is.
I'm sick and tired of these kinds of questions from media outlets whenever some kooky Muslim decides to commit a random act of violence...or in this case when a GI psychiatrist goes psycho. At the same time, I'm also sick and tired of self-appointed Muslim experts and spokespersons who jump at every miserable opportunity like this one to try to explain Islam.
"Islam is a religion of peace," they say.
No, it's not. Not anymore than Christianity is a religion of love. They're just religions, and what you do with them is all up to the believer. More people have died in the name of religion than in any other catastrophe or plague.
Here is what I know about Hasan:
He was a disgruntled GI who wanted to leave the military for whatever reason: his conscience, his religion, or for personal reasons. He could have left peacefully. He could have quit and paid the price without hurting others, just like Muhammad Ali, who refused the draft to serve in Vietnam but did not feel the need to go on a killing rampage. Instead, he was stripped of his heavyweight title and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Hasan is a coward...not only for committing this heinous act, but for counting on being killed or taking the gun on himself, leaving behind his family and the entire Muslim community to account for his despicable actions.
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Kamran Pasha: A Muslim Soldier's View from Fort Hood
I spoke today with a friend who is a Muslim soldier stationed at Fort Hood. He and Hasan prayed side-by-side at the mosque the morning of the massacre. He agreed to share his story with me if I granted him anonymity.
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Not at all.
Today, Judaism has remained fairly static, Christianity evolved significantly and Islam is going through a difficult period of decline.
However, we are discussing a particular instance in case--a henious murder partially ( or wholly) based on religious beliefs of ONE extremist. So let us stick to the subject at hand.
Any attempt to divert this discussion to any other subject is disingenuous.
How do you know what Hasan counted on? As it turned out, neither event transpired, which makes it hard to argue that this was his intention, absent some other evidence.
Silence... I probably should not have said that, but there it is.))))
why SHOULDN'T you have said it? i know the feeling: everytime someone in my ethnic group messes up, it gets put on the rest of us.
however, when you wrote this: "leaving behind his family and the entire Muslim community to account for his despicable actions", you explained why they are calling you.
why does the action of one person in a numerical minority group get put on the rest of that group?
if white christians are not accountablefor mc-veigh or erik rudoph, why were asians worried after virginia tech? why are blacks ticked off when the perpetrator of a heinous crime is also black?
Last night, my husband and I saw some of this sort of speculation on television. He never watches or reads anything about politics if he can help it (unthinkable to me, his wife!). Yet when he saw pundits asking questions about terrorism, Muslims, etc., etc., he looked at me in shock, and said, "Are they actually attributing this shooting to him being Muslim?"
As a more experienced observer of rightwing punditry, I looked at him like he was not so bright, and said, "Well, duh. That's what they always do."
He said, "I wouldn't think so, but I guess I should be proud of myself. It never occurred to me to consider him a terrorist or a Muslim extremist or a member of some sleeper cell. I was just thinking how horrible it was that a psychiatrist was the one who ended up going crazy."
Which was the same first thought I had when I heard the identity of the shooter. Why aren't we calling all the reps of the psychiatry profession? Or asking other military psychiatrists? Why, oh why is his Muslim faith the most prominent identifying characteristic of this guy?
We are talking about the high expectations pinned on soldiers, and the bitter reality that comes home. The incredible loss of individual humanity and the senseless fight with defending the people at home which has no substance whatsoever to it. If I were schizophrenic I might be able the chasm that separates soldier from family history and roots with the constant challenge of living up to ideals that contradict each other so much.
We constantly hear propaganda about supporting the troops even if you are against the war and pray for the fallen and the heroes who come back home and their experience just does not measure up to the speeches and adulation of politician, when they become the statue model. A psychiatrist Muslim does not coagulate well with devout or religion as much as Christian fundamentalist murdering a doctor. It is really not about religion as much as people that have a hard time living with so many contradictions.
So it's "we" & "they" instead of "us" Americans? I think your advice for the Muslim community is a thinly disguised attempt to disparage by (1) pretending American Muslims are somehow not part of the entire country (2) refuting double standard arguments about other criminals whose religions are not held up to the same level of examination (3) arguing that Muslims must not remain silent, meaning they must be guilty by association (4) dismissing McVeigh & Hitler as "long gone from many peoples living memory but 9-11 and terrorism" are not. Of course many would disagree with you about McVeigh & Hitler as being "long gone" from any such discussion, but you also appear to be using this incident to make every American Muslim accountable for these criminal acts. Not at all fair or reasonable, & it leads me to believe you have a very sharp axe to grind.
Amen
Mr. Hasan is another casualty of war, as far as I'm concerned. The kind casualties that go uncounted, the ones with PTSD, the ones that kill their families, the ones that kill others, the ones that commit suicide because their battlefield is the war being waged in their heads with their personal demons. War is pure evil. I'd like all the news media to stop trying to "fill in the blanks" on this guy until medical professionals can get into his head and find out what happened from him, not from his fellow American Palestinians.
Anyway, you are talking about ethnic origin. Islam is a religious ideology.