Terrorism, Religious Extremism, and the Fort Hood Massacre

Given how little we know, it is ridiculous, as Joe Lieberman did, to call the Fort Hood massacre a "terrorist attack." (It seems to have been an act of violence, not terror, as the point was not to terrorize, or necessarily to act to effect political change, which suggests the creation of abject fear beyond the act itself. Still, it's clear we don't really know yet what it was. At the very least, it is premature, and somewhat irresponsible, given how freely the word is thrown around post-9/11, to call it terrorism.) On the flip side, it is ridiculous to claim, as some have (such as James Fallows), that the attack was essentially meaningless.

Without rushing to prejudicial conclusions, after all, we do need to consider the possibility that Nidal Malik Hasan's Muslim faith played a major role, if not necessarily the dominant one, in what happened.

Here's Andrew Sullivan, responding to Jeffrey Goldberg, with a very sensible take:

I did not leap to that conclusion in this case as the primary reason for the attack because we didn't fully know the entire picture -- and still don't. But as the pieces fall into place, it seems increasingly clear that Nidal Hasan's faith -- and the conflicts it presented in the context of the war on Islamist terror -- was absolutely relevant in this horrifying massacre of servicemembers. It may well have been combined with individual stress, exposure to others with PTSD, fear of deployment, psychological disturbance, etc. But that it was a critical factor seems to me important to note.

But every case is unique.

If the man is not part of any wider conspiracy or terror group, it is silly to treat him the way we would a Qaeda cell, for example, as Lieberman seems to want to do. And the random murder spree was not designed to wound the US militarily in any strategic way. But religion is poisonous when it fuses with politics and deploys violence to control or punish others -- and Hasan's increasingly Wahabbist version of Islam is about as crude a conflation of religion, certainty and violence as one can imagine.

This applies to the extremes of Christianity and Judaism as well, of course. I do not think you can understand the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller without grasping the religious motivation of his killer, just as I think a brutal gay-bashing by a thug with Leviticus tattooed on his arm gives you a good idea of the religious motivation for the beat-down. Ditto, I might add, when we discover that it was a fanatical Jewish settler -- transposed from America -- who gunned down people at a gay walk-in center in Jerusalem. Religious fanaticism -- in Texas or the West Bank or in Gaza -- is a dangerous, dangerous impulse in an increasingly fundamentalist age. We should not balk at saying that as plainly as we can and demanding that religious leaders condemn the violent and extremist members of their respective flocks. And we should try much harder to find such extremists in the military and do a better job at monitoring them or throwing them out.

None of this justifies the bigoted, knee-jerk reaction of many on the right, of course, but I agree that these points need to be raised, just as they would in the event of a similar incident involving a Christian or Jewish extremist -- or any other religious extremist, for that matter.

Hasan's Muslim faith shouldn't shield him from such an investigation, and rejecting one extreme (right-wing bigotry) with another (avoidance, perhaps for political reasons) is dangerous insofar as it both perpetuates ignorance and allows the ignorance of the right to prevail. Denialism is no counter to bigotry, and, here, an effort to deny that Hasan's faith had anything to do with it simply comes across as an effort to cover up the truth. We need to know what really happened, what really was behind the massacre, even if that means an uncomfortable, and discomfiting, investigation into what role Hasan's faith played in the killing. (While also recognizing, of course, that other factors, related or not to his faith, were undoubtedly involved and that the motivations behind the attack were likely multiple and complicated.)

For while Hasan may or may not be connected to al Qaeda, and while the massacre may or may not have been a terrorist attack per se, it is important that the truth, however ugly, be known, not least as more about Hasan and his reprehensible beliefs comes out, so as to try to prevent such incidents from happening again and to counter efforts to spin the incident for partisan political purposes.

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)

 

Follow Michael J.W. Stickings on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjwstickings

Comments

[Carol Gee]

Michael, good post and right on point. I am so glad your post garnered so many comments. HuffPo is a good venue for your fine analytic and writing skills.

[FW]

Our enemy in the world today are religious fanatics.

[devadasi]

I wholeheartedly agree with this story. There were red flags all over the place; remarks and emails by the shooter demonstrated his support of jihad and suicide bombers over the last few years, but they were all ignored by the military and FBI.

[mrskorn]

I find it interesting that you suggest that we shouldn't jump to conclusions about this case, when in the Gate's case, most liberals immediately jumped to the conclusion of r-cism. Why is this different?

[amamomofsons]

I certainly did not jump to that conclusion. That case was a perfect storm for all involved to act badly.

[amamomofsons]

People throughout history have used religion to perpetrate the most horrendous crimes against humanity imaginable. Yes, mental illness is the short answer, but religion gives the cause and madness validity. "If you are killing for god it is a justified cause". Religion gives the permission to act on the madness.

[standforpeace]

What this man did was horrible. And his religion might have been part of what motivated him, but if you've ever spent any time with people who are mentally ill, you'll notice that many of them incorporate religion into the ways that their illnesses manifest. This killing spree may represent a horrific example of a guy who might have snapped, but unfortunately there are many other members of the military who have snapped in less spectacular but still horrific ways. For example, the high rate of suicide in the military and military members who have killed wives and girl friends. Right now we don't know much about the specifics underlying this attack, but we do know that the military has got to get much better at identifying folks who might be a danger to themselves or others.

I'm kind of confused by what the religious angle gives us here in terms of our ability to prevent this from happening again any more than knowing that the Virginia Tech killings were committed by a Korean American or that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian and the unabomber was a mathematician. The fact is that overwhelming numbers of Korean American students graduate from universities without killing their classmates, Christians don't tend to blow up federal buildings, mathematicians are unlikely to send bombs through the mail, and the vast majority of Muslim American soldiers serve honorably.

[Zanti]

Thanks for your refreshingly commonsensical response, though don't necessarily expect it to fly in the blame-religion-first environment hereabouts. Those who wish to blame religion will happily take the word of a disturbed individual like Hasan--if he says religion was his reason, then it must be. Never mind that we wouldn't take his word for anything else, that we would sensibly regard any other claim warily, given his unstable frame of mind. Ahhh, but when a disturbed person tells us that God told him to do it, then we're all ears.

Any claim that supports a received idea (such as, religion is bad) must be true, and never mind who makes it, or why, or whether or not other factors need to be considered. Faith played a MAJOR role. We know that because it was POSSIBLE that it did.

[amamomofsons]

The frightening thing to me is that we spend months and millions to train our troops to kill the enemy and to not look back or hedge. Then we send them to a country where they can not even understand the language and they watch and participate in the horrors of war. Then we expect them to come home without any prejudice against Muslims and to top it off we put a Muslim in a role to help these guys get reestablished in their homeland. Do you think we might be setting one or the other up to fail here? How many times did Hassan have to hear how much his Muslim brothers were hated by the very men and women he was placed there to help? How many of the right winged Christian indoctrinated army folks belittled and threatened him either by innuendo or outright? He did not belong with his American brothers and he was afraid because he did not belong in Iraq where they planned to send him. Any sane man anywhere could possibly crack under that kind of pressure? This is not to dismiss the deed, but to place much of the responsibility on the Army that set this horrible scenario up in the first place. They saw it coming and ignored it. I hate all religion and what it does to people.

[lippylaroux]

Come to think of it this attact is the first terrorist attact on American soil since 911... Could be considered an Obama failure? If it were still Bush it would.

[tengutoo]

Actually no. there was the D.C Sniper. Politically motivated random shootings, The anthrax letters to congress, the ineffective bombing of a Marine Recruiting station in New York( person dressed as a cyclist dropped a explosive out front). Then you also have a handful of other loonies whose crimes were at least parlty influenced by their religion or political bent....These are all acts of terrorism that happened under Bush.

[ProperGanda]

Wow, an article I agree with, thank you Mr. Stickings. I saw a lot of articles blaming everything BUT religion, most often not even talking about it, as almost to cover it up. I do not believe he was a terrorist, but to ignore the possibility that he may have had those motives is ridiculous

[Inquisitr]

Amazing and excellent post.

It's very true, we have no reason as Lieberman says to believe it's terrorism.

But to deny the faith motivations is simply nieve. We'd all be a lot safer if we critizised religion like this more.

[Pablo175]

Read the news. He's a terrorist.

[livesimply]

He obviously is reading the news, hence the thoughtful post instead of knee-jerk reaction. Question for you: Does the term "terrorist" only apply to Muslims or can there be Christian terrorists?

[CollinJE]

Great post.

If Columbine taught us anything it is that we should all just take a step back and all the facts to come to surface. I couldn't stand watching the news coverage on the day of the event. If somebody said "I heard...." one more time I was going to scream.

I just don't understand the cable news channels desire to rush to conclusions.

[JDM73]

Calling the Fort Hood incident "terrorism" is precisely what I would have expected of Joe Lieberman. Support for the eight-year-old "War on Terror" is flagging, and Lieberman is shamelessly exploiting the fears and doubts of Americans to cook up a little war fever again.

[wildedge]

"Without rushing to prejudicial conclusions, after all, we do need to consider the possibility that Nidal Malik Hasan's Muslim faith played a major role, if not necessarily the dominant one, in what happened." No, we don't. It is clear that Hasan was experiencing a schizoid personality crisis, and that some of this had to do with his identification with his reigion - but this happens to many of the mentally disturbed, regardless of their religions. The world is unfortunately filled wth people suffering with self-loathing as a response to a religious upbringing in a complex secular reality. We should rightfully punish the crime and hopefully treat the man unless a court finds him guilty of a capitol offense. But I am not going to fall for this "well, he's a Muslim, so that has to do with it somehow" excuse for quaking before right-wing nut jobs in this matter.
Hasan went crazy; he killed people; he will stand trial and receive judgment and sentence. End of story.

[Flobbo]

went crazy? everything I've read, a lot of which is in British newspapers (for some reason it isn't being reported in US papers, I wonder why, but that is another discussion), is eye witness reports of Hasan being cool and calculated when he went on his killing spree, not crazy.

[livesimply]

Crazy is a state of mind, not a demeanor.

[CJWebber]

So being cool and calculated means you haven't snapped?