Nidal Hasan: A pious Muslim

Latest from the NYTimes:

As military and law-enforcement investigators waited to interview Major Hasan, a contradictory portrait of him emerged. Neighbors described him as a man who dressed alternately in a military uniform and flowing white robes, and who gave a copy of the Koran to his next-door neighbor a day before the shooting.

Reports from the shooting suggested that soldiers may have heard him shout something like "Allahu Akbar" -- Arabic for "God is great!" -- just before he fired two automatic handguns. He was shown on a security video tape from a local convenience store wearing white robes just hours before the shooting. And family members said that he had complained about being harassed expressly because he was a Muslim, and that he had expressed deep concerns about deploying.

Acquaintances said Major Hasan was upset about his future deployment in a war zone, and heatedly opposed United States foreign policy in discussions with fellow soldiers. Earlier this year law-enforcement officers monitoring Islamic Web sites identified a man of the same name as a blogger who posted comments on suicide bombings in which he equated such acts to those by soldiers who use their own bodies to shield fellow soldiers from exploding shrapnel.

What I want to know is this: What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him? Col. Terry Lee said on Fox last night that he had been told that the Army was investigating Hasan. We'll need to know more about this. I have the same question that Jennifer Rubin does:

How is it possible that all this was overlooked or excused? The entire country will be asking this, first in stunned, hushed voices, then, as the shock subsides, with rising fury. Many today already have a nagging sense that we are still collectively sleepwalking through the imminent and ongoing danger of Islamic fundamentalism, unable or unwilling to focus on what is before our eyes for fear of recrimination or causing offense. And 13 are dead and 30 are injured. It defies comprehension.

By the way, I was mowing the grass this afternoon and stopped to talk to one of my neighbors. Her soldier son worked with Hasan on the base back East. She said he described Hasan as unfriendly, a loner. And she said, "He told me there's no way Hasan is crazy. He knew what he was doing." For what that's worth...

UPDATE: Also from the Times:

It was Major Hasan, though, who increasingly felt let down by the military, and deeply conflicted by his religion, said those who knew him through the mosque. Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.

"He said he should quit the Army," Mr. Reasoner said. "In the Koran, you're not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell." [Emphasis mine -- RD]

Mr. Benjamin, who worked as a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan after leaving the Army in 2000, said the military should have let Major Hassan resign. "They should take more consideration of the human beings in the uniform," he said, "rather than simply say, 'We invested our money in you and need to get our money's worth.' "

Still, Mr. Benjamin added, Major Hassan had overlooked an important, and peaceable, tenet of Islam. "We do have the right to retaliate," he said, "but he who does not is twice blessed."

Benjamin is referring to Hasan's supposed attempts for years to get out of the Army, with the Army refusing to let him go, saying it had paid for his education as a psychiatrist, and it needed psychiatrists, so he had to stay.

This is the thing I'm struggling to get a handle on in all this. Hasan was a pious Muslim who was opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He wanted out of the Army, but the Army understandably wouldn't let him go. Why should anybody who voluntarily enlisted, and who accepted the Army's paying for his education, have the right to be discharged because he disagrees with a particular war, on religious grounds? Anyway, it's clear that his religion had a very great deal to do with this attack ... but I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about that fact. Obviously thousands of Muslim soldiers serve with distinction in the US military, and it's probably the case that not all of them agree with the Iraq and Afghan wars. But they do their military service anyway. Are we to look at Muslim soldiers with suspicion, given the teachings of their holy book, and given the nature of the wars the US is engaged in? That doesn't seem fair, but it seems ill-informed and even naive to think of Islam as being just like all other religions, especially when it comes to matters of war between Muslims and non-Muslims. An important question to keep our mind on as we go forward in this investigation is whether or not Hasan's act, as rare as this sort of thing is, is within the bounds of normative Islam as it is practiced today. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is one of the most popular theologians in the Islamic world, in part because of his al-Jazeera TV show. Here's some of what he teaches:

Qaradawi has often expressed support for the insurgency in Iraq. According to MEMRI, in 2004, he endorsed the assassination of American civilians in Iraq in a fatwa issued at the Egyptian Journalists' Union convention in Cairo, saying, "All of the Americans in Iraq are combatants, there is no difference between civilians and soldiers, and one should fight them, since the American civilians came to Iraq in order to serve the occupation. The abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately." Qaradawi later countered MEMRI's claim on his Web site, Islam Online, where he explains that Islam respects other nations, although he still is in the view that, "...fighting the American invaders is a must endorsed by heavenly religions and international agreements."

And:

"The American aggression on the whole region wants to impose the total American hegemony on us, and such a procedure cannot be accepted at all. The one who launches attacks against the American presence is really carrying the spirit of true defenders. When one dies while carrying out such attacks, then he is a martyr, in sha' Allah if his intention was to do the act for Allah's Cause, even though some people consider him committing a wrong." -- March 24, 2003, fatwa on "seeking martyrdom by attacking US military bases in the Gulf" (IslamOnline)

Qaradawi is not a fringe figure, but thoroughly mainstream in Middle Eastern Islam. If a soldier like Hasan came to believe the teachings of a Qaradawi, then what he did at Fort Hood would make sense as a rational defense of Islam and Muslims from its enemies. I'm not saying, of course, that all Muslims accept the Qaradawi view of this conflict. That would be untrue. Still, it's important to know to what extent Qaradawi's view is normative within Islam -- specifically, to what extent it is clearly justified by Islamic scripture and legal tradition. To what extent is it possible to be both a loyal Muslim and a loyal American soldier? I don't know the answer to that question, and I have no doubt that one can be both. But what I'd like to know is to what extent a loyal Muslim US soldier has to overcome, deny, or interpret away doctrines of his religion to do his job as an American soldier, especially one who might be called on to fight against foreign Muslims.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a pious Muslim, a U.S. Navy veteran and an American patriot who risks his life fighting against political Islam, which he believes is a distortion of the Islamic faith. Yet his is an isolated voice in American Islam, according to information presented in the film "Islam vs. Islamists," in which Jasser participated. From a review:

Islam vs. Islamism [sic] exposes the facade for example of Imam Ahmad Shqeirat the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, Arizona, who claims to be a "moderate," participating in interfaith activities and so on. But on camera, Shqeirat invokes his desire for a global Islamic state, which he claims "is not a threat to anybody.... Establishing Islamic law was a positive experience." Translation, Islamic imperialism is a "positive experience" for non-Muslims forced to comply with fiercely discriminatory medieval religious laws.

In 2004, Shqeriat vociferously opposed efforts by Tempe Muslim doctor Zuhdi Jasser to organize a 2004 Muslim rally opposing terrorism. A practicing Muslim, Jasser believes, "The mixture of politics and religion is toxic to our faith." To Shqeriat, however, Jasser is the "extremist." Indeed, his mosque newsletter ran a cartoon that depicted Jasser as a rabid, cannibalistic dog, eating Muslims.

The film shows what is known to most people who follow this stuff know: that Islamists control most mosques and U.S. Muslim institutions, where they are in a position to educate American Muslims about the "correct" Muslim outlook. Dr. Jasser understands that this is intra-Muslim battle will be decisive, and he laments that the broader American community, aided and abetted by the news media, ignores what's really going on. He has written:

Many have said that the primary solution to this conflict lies within the Muslim consciousness. This is true. The only antidote to the cultivation and corruption of theocratic pre-modern Islam is a liberal post-modern Islam. How will today's students ever be able to address this challenge to our existence in the next few decades if they never even had an opportunity to understand it?

[snip]

Many of us have been suffocated by the political correctness of the mainstream media. They have shielded any genuine exposure or criticism of the ideology of Islamism. The American people are capable of making the distinction between the faith of Islam and the transnational goals of political Islam as long as they are presented the facts on the subject. Without that education, we will be incapable of winning the contest of ideas which we have yet to begin.

To sum up: we don't know yet to what extent Nidal Hasan was influenced by any particular cleric or theologian. But if Hasan conceived his mass murder as a jihad martyrdom operation, he could easily have found justification for it in a number of places within contemporary Islamic teaching. If I'm reading him correctly, Muslims like Jasser understand that Islamists aren't getting this stuff from nowhere, and that only a reformed Islam, such as he practices, will be capable of living with the modern world, and within America (incidentally, Jasser and a colleague yesterday said on TV that the US military ought to dispense with political correctness and give extra scrutiny to Muslim soldiers). The question, though, is how representative of the wider American Muslim community is Dr. Jasser and other liberal Muslims? This is a question you cannot expect to learn from our media. Just this morning I opened the New York Times, and found on the op-ed page an editorial telling us not to draw prejudicial conclusions about the Fort Hood attack, and two columns characterizing the attack as a wake-up call to mental stress faced by soldiers in wartime -- which is interesting, because Hasan had never been in combat. When it comes to covering Islam in America, the news media is all about managing the story, not telling it in all its complications.