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Mark Steyn:

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a "tragedy" (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "War on Terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy -- a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

And he's a U.S. Army major.

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.

More:

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.

Kamran Pasha, on a conversation he had with a Muslim convert soldier friend at Fort Hood, a fellow he pseudonymously calls "Richard":

Richard remembered one of his first conversations with Hasan. The newly-arrived army psychiatrist told Richard that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, and that perhaps Muslims should not be part of the US military.

Richard told Nidal that he disagreed. First, he did not believe as a Muslim that the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a grand conspiracy to destroy Islam. And second, even if a Muslim believed that a specific military action was wrong, he could not escape responsibility for it just by resigning from the military. The reality was that his or her taxes would still be used to fund the campaign, and so American Muslims were invested in the situation whether they liked it or not.

Richard's view as a Muslim was that he had a responsibility to do good in whatever situation he found himself in. He was a Muslim in the American military at a time when the United States was in conflict with areas of the Muslim world. Richard's role was to do his part as a Muslim by creating new friendships and partnerships between the American military and the Muslim community.

But Hasan clearly did not share Richard's point of view, and Richard decided not to get into an argument with a fellow solider he had just met. And so the two moved on from their dispute and established a friendship as fellow Muslims in the Fort Hood community.

As Richard got to know Hasan better over the next several months, he found the major to be a pious man who was at the mosque daily. But Richard also began to garner a sense of Hasan's political views that troubled him. A black-and-white outlook on Islam and life that had no room for nuance or debate. Hasan had apparently attended a mosque led by an imam named Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni scholar whose political views Richard disagrees with.

Awlaki is a controversial figure among Muslims, and has been accused by the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 of serving as a "spiritual advisor" to two of the September 11 hijackers. While Richard is careful to say that he respects much of Awlaki's historical scholarship, he rejects his political ideology, which posits a black-and-white, us versus them, view of America's relationship with the Islamic world.

Pasha, a liberal Muslim writing at HuffPo, says that Richard "sadly" agrees that religion was the prime motivator for Hasan's mass murder spree. If Richard didn't go to his superiors and warn them about Hasan as soon as Hasan started saying these things, why not? If he did, why did they not act against Hasan? These are some of the questions the investigation has to answer.

Like Mark Steyn, I find it incomprehensible that members of the Army knew about Hasan's views, but did nothing about him. The Awlaki connection is important; Awlaki is an American-born jihad-pusher who is popular among Muslims living in the West, and who taught at a Virginia mosque connected to the Muslim Brotherhood (presumably that's where Hasan made his love connection with the imam). Could it be that like much of the US government, the military is willfully ignorant (because by this point, it has to be willful) of the real nature of jihadism and its influence within American Islam? Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a military intelligence analyst, was sacked by the Pentagon over his thesis , which argued that the threat from Islamic radicalism persists in part because we don't take Islamic doctrine seriously enough. A Muslim aide to the undersecretary of defense undertook what would become a successful campaign to get Maj. Coughlin fired because he considered Coughlin to be an Islamophobe. After Fort Hood, will the Pentagon take Coughlin seriously now?

I've written before about how stupid the government is to legitimize the Muslim Brotherhood and its American expressions by buying their propaganda, e.g., the Justice Department recruiting at an ISNA conference while at the same time having declared ISNA a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial. We still don't take these people's ideas seriously. Because of that, Stephen Coughlin argued, we're deceiving ourselves about the true nature and the extent of the domestic Islamic extremism threat. To see what is right in front of your nose is surprisingly difficult.

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.

We now know that the Fort Hood shooter, Hasan, was a Muslim, and fancied himself a devout one. We know that he shouted "Allahu akbar!" as he executed American soldiers. We are informed by a retired Army colonel and co-worker of Hasan's that he had been talking about how America has no business in the Muslim world, and that Muslims should rise up against the military. And we know that on the day of the killings, Hasan went out in traditional Arab garb; you don't see that often in Killeen, Texas, suggesting that the Army major, who was raised in America, had developed a strong identification with his ethnic and religious background. One of his neighbors in Maryland, the last place he lived, remembered him fondly as calm, nice and, quote, "religious."

No matter how badly the media try to spin it another way, or to ignore the religion ghost in this story, Hasan's religion was to all appearances a key factor in the mass murder he committed. You don't have a Muslim shouting "Allahu akbar!" as he executes people one by one, and conclude that religion is incidental to his crime. You have to be a moral idiot to draw that conclusion, a politically correct nitwit.

So: how should we regard the role of Hasan's religion in this infamy? Read on below the jump for a discussion.

Yesterday the Dallas Morning News ran a long-ish front-page story detailing concerns Muslim leaders in the Dallas area have that they're going to be judged unfairly by the public in the wake of last month's terrorism arrest here. It really would be unfair if that were to happen -- this terrorism suspect is, to all appearances, an immigrant outlier unconnected with anybody in the local community -- but as I point out in this post at the DMN editorial blogsite, the story about sympathy for Islamic extremism among the North Texas Muslim community is a lot more substantive than you might think. To cite but one example, there was this event a few years ago at a suburban mosque, which drew top area Muslim leaders to speak. To wonder what the heck is the matter with these people is not to be a bigot; it's to be sane:

Glenn Greenwald is going to pieces over the call by some Republican Congressmen to investigate CAIR's role in placing Muslim interns in Congressional offices. Greenwald:

CAIR is a non-profit organization of American citizens who are Muslim and their "mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding." They stand accused of plotting to influence members of Congress and trying to help interns obtain positions in Congress in order to advance their political agenda. That's consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it's normally called activism and democracy. But because, in this case, it's a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation.

Well, hang on. I've read the entire Greenwald item, and I'm prepared to believe that this is an example of demagogic paranoia by these Republican Congressmen. I'm not saying that I do believe it, only that it is possible, based on the information he provides. That said, Greenwald is extremely naive in his stated understanding of CAIR and its motives. CAIR was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance case, which sent several Dallas-area Muslims to jail late last year After the initial 2007 mistrial in the case, I wrote this column. Excerpt:

Despite the absence of verdict, what emerged was highly valuable and deeply damaging evidence that the radical Muslim Brotherhood is the guiding light behind the U.S. Muslim community's leadership. It is impossible for any intellectually responsible person to regard as positive or even benign organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society or others who presume to speak on behalf of all American Muslims.

As Douglas Farah, the former Washington Post reporter who now works as a counterterrorism consultant for the nonprofit Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation, put it after the Holy Land verdict, the evidence shows "definitive proof that CAIR, ISNA, ICNA and all the Muslim Brotherhood groups in this country came here with a markedly different purpose from what they claim, and they have gone through decades of deceit to conceal their true identities and purposes."

(For an eye-opening look at government evidence from the Holy Land trial, including the infamous Muslim Brotherhood "general strategic memo" outlining the organization's strategy to use front groups to wage a "civilization-jihad" against the West.

You can read a lot more about the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, CAIR and connections between leading U.S. Muslim organizations here -- from evidence introducted by the government at the HLF trial. These are often internal documents from the organizations themselves.

The FBI earlier this year broke off its formal outreach relationship with CAIR, citing concern over its terrorist connections. This is entirely appropriate; CAIR are not the good guys. That's not to say every member of CAIR is ill-intentioned, but it is to say that CAIR ought not be trusted. You don't have to believe that every, or any, young Muslim placed in a Congressional office as a CAIR-sponsored intern is a secret jihad seditionist in order to find something wrong with CAIR having anything to do with placing interns in Congressional offices. I would fully favor having more Muslim young people working on Capitol Hill -- but not through CAIR, ISNA, or any of the other Muslim organizations tainted by ties to terrorism and/or Islamic radicalism. The Republicans pushing this investigation may arguably have bad motives, but CAIR is very far from an innocent victim here, and Greenwald has to ignore a lot to posture them as such.