Ft. Hood killer's Islam matters -- but how?

Victor Davis Hanson is onto something here. Excerpt:

In reaction officials and news people often opt for therapeutic exegeses--stress, often of the post-traumatic sort, ill-feeling and bias shown Muslims, family problems, or brainwashing by nefarious outside actors -- to explain the cold-blooded nature of the murdering. (I am watching on the news a family member eagerly explain past prejudice shown the killer and, despite his adept handling of firearms to shoot over 40 people, the murderer's being ill-at-ease with firearms.)

Far more rarely do they ever suggest that the Islamist notion abroad that America is to blame for mostly self-induced pathologies in the Islamic world mostly goes unquestioned here at home -- and as a result filters down to the lone angry and violent here as the belief that there is some sort of cosmic justification that can amplify their own outrage at a sense of personal failure or setback.

If it is shown that the present killer openly in the past expressed sympathies for or tolerance of Islamist violence abroad, one would have expected, in the current climate of fear of being seen as illiberal or judgmental, little repercussions or formal preemptory action to preclude the possibility of future violence.

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

Scott Payne at the League finds in poll results showing many Americans think Islam encourages violence more than other religions do evidence of bigotry. I find in that evidence that Americans are paying attention to the world as it is. As the late scholar Samuel Huntington famously pointed out in his 1993 Foreign Affairs "Clash of Civlizations" essay , contemporary Islam has famously bloody borders. Excerpt:

While groups from all religions have engaged in various forms of violence and terrorism, the figures make it clear that in the past decade Muslims have been involved in far more of these activities than people of other religions. One of the things that attracted a lot of attention in The Clash of Civilizations was my use of the phrase "the bloody borders of Islam." But if you look around the Muslim world you see that in the 1990s Muslims were fighting non-Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Middle East, Sudan, Nigeria, and other places. Muslims have been fighting one another also. The International Institute for Strategic Studies surveyed the armed conflicts going on in the world in 2000, and its figures show that twenty-three of the thirty-two conflicts under way involved Muslims. Why is this?

One rational answer: if you are a person inclined to violence, especially against non-Muslims, Islam will give you plain theological justification for it. Excerpt:

The attitude of Islam toward using violence against non-Muslims is clear. Regarding pagans, the Quran says, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful" (Surah 9:5). This amounts to giving pagans a convert-or-die choice.

Regarding violence against Jews and Christians, the Quran says, "Fight against those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the last day, who do not forbid what God and his messenger have forbidden, and who do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued" (Surah 9:29). In other words, violence is to be used against Jews and Christians unless they are willing to pay a special tax and live in subjection to Muslims as second-class citizens. For them the choice is convert, die, or live in subjection.

The Quran also has stern words for Muslims who would be slow and reluctant to attack unbelievers: "Believers, why is it that when you are told: 'March in the cause of God,' you linger slothfully in the land? Are you content with this life in preference to the life to come? . . . If you do not go to war, he [God] will punish you sternly, and will replace you by other men" (Surah 9:38-39).

And, of course, there is the promise of reward in the afterlife for waging jihad in this one: "Believers! Shall I point out to you a profitable course that will save you from a woeful scourge? Have faith in God and his messenger, and fight for God's cause with your wealth and with your persons. . . . He will forgive you your sins and admit you to gardens watered by running streams; he will lodge you in pleasant mansions in the gardens of Eden. This is the supreme triumph" (Surah 61:10-12).

It must be pointed out that there are people of peace and people of violence in all religions. There are violent Christians. There are peace-loving Muslims. Changing historical circumstances do much to bring out tendencies toward violence and peace among the followers of different religions. Yet, even when these qualifications are made, it is clear that Islam as a religion and an ideology has by far the greatest tendency to violence.

It is also important to read and to take seriously Reihan Salam's important point. Excerpt:

These numbers suggest that a large majority of Americans are open-minded about Muslims. And though there are pockets of distrust, far more Americans worry that Muslims face discrimination than hold negative views of Muslims. ...

The danger is that Hasan's despicable crime will subtly and slowly change these perceptions for the worse. Overnight, Twitter feeds and message boards pulsed with anti-Muslim rage. It is thus no surprise that groups like the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations have been so quick to condemn the violence. The vast majority of Americans recognize that Hasan doesn't represent all Muslims, just as the Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho didn't represent all Korean-Americans. Yet people who are on the fence about whether Muslims can be trusted could tip over into believing that they can't. ...

Hasan's most important victims are the families who've lost loved ones and the soldiers who've lost comrades. They deserve our deepest sympathies. Yet Hasan's other victims are the millions of Muslim Americans who've fully embraced American life, and who feel a profound sense of dread whenever innocent people are murdered in the name of Islam.

So, where does that leave us? If it were easy to draw a direct line between Islamic faith and yesterday's massacre, wouldn't you expect the 3,000 or so Muslims in the U.S. Armed Forces to be doing this sort of thing more often? Wouldn't you expect to see more of it in America than we do? I think decent, fair-minded Americans have to sympathize with Reihan's concerns, and to resist drawing firm conclusions based on overgeneralizations that don't fit the evidence.

On the other hand, it is also wrong to pretend that the Muslim religion had nothing to do with this massacre, that it is mere happenstance that this mass murderer's crime was incidental to his Islamic faith. The US is in a war against Islamist terrorism. What Hasan did yesterday, on the evidence, was an act of Islamist terror. Period. When a devout Christian commits an act of violence against an abortion clinic, and does so pretty clearly in the name of his religion, it would be an act of stupidity, and possibly moral cowardice, to declare an investigation of his religious motive off-limits. And, in fact, we don't do that, even as we are, or ought to be, aware that the overwhelming majority of Christians neither commit nor endorse such acts. Similarly, it is right and proper to have a critical discussion of the role Hasan's religion played in this evil act, if only so we can identify Muslims like him in the future before they're tempted to act on their convictions.

I'll give you a concrete example. Say a Planned Parenthood clinic had on staff a worker who became a militant Christian, and who was overheard by other workers to sympathize with abortion clinic bombers, and whose view that Planned Parenthood has no business performing abortions was well known. Wouldn't PP have an obligation to be all over that employee, inquiring about his religious beliefs, and whether or not his faith poses a danger to others on staff, in light of religion-based attacks on abortion clinics by militant Christians? Of course! It would be morally insane not to do that. Well, we are in a situation in which this country is fighting a war on Islamist terrorism, yet elites in the news media, academia and elsewhere would rather us not ask these questions. Working in the MSM, it seems to me that my media brethren are far more concerned that somebody, somewhere might think ill of a Muslim because of Islamist terrorism than that we conduct a sober, responsible inquiry into the role of the Islamic religion in inspiring terrorist acts in this place and time. If not ... well, here's VDH:

At some point, if both these organized plots (see the most recent in Boston) and isolated acts of lone gunmen and homicidal drivers continue, and if the prevailing theme continues to be fears of American intolerance and unfairness to Muslims after 9/11, I think the public will resent the disconnect between what they are told to think and what they believe, on the basis of some evidence.

From what I've observed and seen personally, I concluded long ago that the mainstream media is not interested in committing investigative and explanatory journalism on the question of jihadism and Islamic extremism in America. On this issue, they -- we -- are instead guided by an ethic that approaches telling the story of domestic Islamic extremism as a matter of social work and therapy, the point of which is to educate the unwashed redneck masses out of their prejudices, no matter how sound those prejudices may be, based on the evidence. To be clear, I don't deny that anti-Muslim prejudices exist, and, when they show themselves to be based on hatred and irrational fear, they must be confronted and condemned. The problem is that generally speaking, the MSM have decided that any concern over the religious roots of Muslim violence is evidence of bigotry on its face. I believe that the media are more interested in managing this story than telling it.

How do you think we should consider the role Hasan's religion played in the mass murder he committed? What's the responsible approach, in your view?