And his superior officers and other authorities
knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of
harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that “the Muslims
should stand up and fight against the aggressor” (i.e., his fellow
American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the “noble” “heroism”
of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

When
it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik
Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts
with the s...

read more»

And his superior officers and other authorities
knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of
harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that “the Muslims
should stand up and fight against the aggressor” (i.e., his fellow
American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the “noble” “heroism”
of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

When
it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik
Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts
with the striking formulation: “Please judge Major Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name.”

Concerned Tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that — and not just in the sense that the New York Times’s
first report on Major Hasan never mentioned the words “Muslim” or
“Islam,” or that ABC’s Martha Raddatz’s only observation on his name
was that “as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told
me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”

What a strange
reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we
could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed
the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the
heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the
essence of this man.

Since 9/11, we have, as the
Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions — flying planes
into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London
Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on
the whole we’re effective at responding with action of our own — taking
out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in
Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto
and Dearborn.

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the
ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on
the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We
use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a
wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never
make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam”
from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even
fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal
Malik Hasan incubate. An army psychiatrist, Major Hasan was an
American, born and raised, who graduated from Viriginia Tech and then
received his doctorate ...

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the
ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on
the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We
use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a
wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never
make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam”
from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even
fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal
Malik Hasan incubate. An army psychiatrist, Major Hasan was an
American, born and raised, who graduated from Viriginia Tech and then
received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the
Health Sciences in Bethesda, which works out to the best part of half a
million dollars’ worth of elite education. But he opposed America’s
actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and made approving remarks
about jihadists on American soil. “You need to lock it up, Major,”
cautioned his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee.

But
he didn’t really need to “lock it up” at all. He could pretty much say
anything he liked, and if any “red flags” were raised they were quickly
mothballed. Lots of people are “anti-war.” Some of them are objectively
on the other side — that’s to say, they encourage and support attacks
on American troops and civilians. But not many of those in that latter
category are U.S. Army majors. Or so one would hope. Yet why be
surprised? Azad Ali, a man who approvingly quotes such observations as
“If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside
Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation” is an adviser to
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (the equivalent of the U.S.
attorneys). In Toronto this week, the brave ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish
mentioned en passant that, on flying from the U.S. to Canada,
she was questioned at length about the purpose of her visit by an
ap

parently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: “We are not to question sharia.”

That’s the guy manning the airport-security desk.

In the New York Times,
Maria Newman touched on Hasan’s faith only obliquely: “He was single,
according to the records, and he listed no religious preference.” Thank
goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had “Allah”
and “another word” pinned up in Arabic on his door. “Akbar” maybe? On
Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to
his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don’t worry: As
the FBI...

read more»

parently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: “We are not to question sharia.”

That’s the guy manning the airport-security desk.

In the New York Times,
Maria Newman touched on Hasan’s faith only obliquely: “He was single,
according to the records, and he listed no religious preference.” Thank
goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had “Allah”
and “another word” pinned up in Arabic on his door. “Akbar” maybe? On
Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to
his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don’t worry: As
the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there’s no terrorism
angle.

That’s true, in a very narrow sense: Major Hasan
is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting
to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would
be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within
Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his
expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military
discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about
Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after
fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest
American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one
Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark
for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous
Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the
way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another
culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a
certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at
that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists
or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But
Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of
analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else
— even in the Army.

What happened to those men and women
at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained,
best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who
said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem:
America has the best troo...

read more»

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a
certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at
that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists
or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But
Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of
analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else
— even in the Army.

What happened to those men and women
at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained,
best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who
said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem:
America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for
throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in
Texas.