(RNS) Did alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan lose control, at least in part, because he was sexually frustrated?
That’s one of the questions being asked in the investigation into the Nov. 5 rampage that left 13 people dead and dozens more injured.
According to reports, Hasan visited a nearby strip club in the weeks before the massacre and was frustrated by his inability to find a pious Muslim wife.
That’s sparked a recurring, but still unresolved, debate on whether strict Islamic sexual mores in Muslim communities are contributing to a sense of hopelessness some say drives many young men into religious fanaticism and violence.
“All these men are so sexually deprived so much so that the sperm has gone to their brain, and they implode,” wrote Ani Zonneveld, a female Muslim activist, on a Muslim online discussion forum which had taken up the issue.
Others are more skeptical about the claim, and say that if there’s a relationship between religious fundamentalism and sexual repression or frustration, it is not unique to Muslims.
“I’m skeptical,” said Kecia Ali, a religion professor at Boston University. People have tried to link Islamic extremism and sexual frustration for years, she said, but a causal relationship “was a bit of a stretch.”
For many, however, the most perplexing question is why men who see themselves as devout Muslims engage in such un-Islamic behavior. Hasan, 39, is reported have visited the Starz strip club at least three times in weeks leading up to the shooting, spending up to six or seven hours at a time.
“He said he was a medic and that he was being deployed soon, but mostly he wanted to ask us questions,” Jennifer Jenner, a stripper who Hasan paid $50 for a lap dance in the private room, told Foxnews.com.
“He was respectful.”
Mohamed Atta and several other 9/11 hijackers had also visited strip clubs not long before the 2001 terrorist attacks. In his will, however, Atta demanded that women not come to his funeral and not visit his grave, and that whoever washed his body should wear gloves when washing his genitals. Scholars stress that among mainstream Muslims in America, women regularly participate in funerals, and probably don’t consider the minutia that consumed Atta.
In his novel “Murder In Amsterdam,” based on the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, British journalist Ian Buruma suggests that sexual frustration played a part in driving Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born son of Moroccan immigrants, to murder Van Gogh in broad daylight in 2004.
As a teenager, Bouyeri smoked dope and chased Dutch women, but in his 20s, he faced bleak economic prospects, girl troubles, and his sister got a boyfriend. Bouyeri “felt dishonored, useless, and excluded,” Buruma writes, but says Bouyeri found his source of power in radical Islam.
And one of the leading philosophical fathers of radical Islam, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, was critical of the U.S. as an exchange student between 1948-50, especially of what he called the “animal-like mixing” of the sexes, even at church dances.
Many suicide bombers from Palestine and Iraq are said to be motivated by Islamic interpretations — albeit highly disputed — that 72 virgins await Muslim martyrs when they arrive in paradise.
The frustration that drives Muslim men to violence has at least as much to do with economic and social factors as it does with sexual troubles, observers say. High unemployment rates in many parts of the world complicate job prospects, where a steady income is a prerequisite to getting a wife, and where pre-marital sex can result in social ostracizing, jail, and whipping.
“If you can’t get a job,” Ali said, “you can’t get a girlfriend.”
Evidence, however, does not point to a link between sexual frustration and Islamic extremism, says Marc Sageman, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
“In fact, three-fourths of al-Qaida terrorists are married, and two-thirds of them have children (and many children at that),” he wrote in his 2004 essay, “Common Myths About al-Qaida Terrorism.” “This apparent paradox is explained by the fact that they want many children to pursue jihad, while they sacrifice themselves for their cause and their comrades.”
Another perplexing paradox is why men like Hasan and Atta, who see themselves as devout Muslims, go to strip clubs and engage in other un-Islamic behavior. “It’s so inconsistent with the portrayals of these guys as pious Muslims,” said Pamela Taylor, co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s a cultural double-standard,” said Ali. Many Muslim men view both Western women and Muslim women as mainly sexual objects, but hold different standards for Western culture that they view as lost to vanity and promiscuity. “They don’t expect their sisters to act like that.”
While Zonneveld said she sees a connection between sexual frustration and violence, she emphasizes it is not unique to Islamic cultures.
“I say the route to violence is through intolerance, and it doesn’t matter what religion or perspective you hold,” she said. “You see that in the anarchists against capitalism, Jewish settlers against Palestinians, and of course these so-called Muslims.”
By OMAR SACIRBEY
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
Beliefnet
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posted November 19, 2009 at 8:04 pm
That has got to be the most ridiculous reason I’ve heard. Let’s set this up: Haven’t had sex for ….days/months/years. Think I’ll go kill some folks to let off steam! Maybe the Mulsims tell their boys that masturbation will grow hair on their palms like the RCC told the boys! “Do not touch yourself…it is a sin”. Spilling seed and all that bunch of lies.
posted November 19, 2009 at 10:13 pm
This is a fascinating topic. I’d frame it as “How do frustrations interact with fundamentalism?”
From this article I’m assuming he was a fundamentalist. I don’t think it’s surprising he’d go to strip clubs and such. It’s America; he could. And remember all the jokes about how strict Baptists behave a town or two away.
I would assume a moderate or liberal facing frustrations would have more options within his world view and perhaps be more successful in meeting them, but I can’t document that.
I saw the PBS news show tonight and learned there were many warnings in the behavior of Hasan, which were talked by his superiors about but ultimately overlooked, perhaps because the military, facing scads of troops coming back but severely underfunded because Bush didn’t think about such things or perhaps didn’t care about them or just wanted to keep taxes low no matter the effects on the troops (my interpretation of why they were so underfunded) so they kept him as another body to throw in the breach. Also, the military being a bureaucracy, if they’d tried to fire him or something he could lawyer up and tie them up for some time. Possibly there was a touch of this in the RCC’s coddling of its child abusers.
posted November 20, 2009 at 12:43 am
OK – I’m hoping this is not actually what happened…
“According to reports, Hasan visited a nearby strip club in the weeks before the massacre and was frustrated by his inability to find a pious Muslim wife.”
If it did happen this way Hasan was not only frustrated, he was seriously confused.
I think – all in all – this story needs what the classic movie newspaper editor would shout in the newsroom – “REWRITE!”
posted November 20, 2009 at 1:12 am
“All these men are so sexually deprived so much so that the sperm has gone to their brain, and they implode,” wrote Ani Zonneveld”
Is saying ridiculous things contagious? nnmns are you and pagan in competition with just how ridiculous can you can get?
posted November 20, 2009 at 1:21 am
Uh, cknuck, that’s ridiculous. I didn’t say anything about sperm on the brain. But it is sort of a catchy metaphor. And as I presume we both know, cknuck, young men can be heavily influenced by their, uh, hormones.
But you’re used to saying silly things and insulting other posters; nothing new here.
posted November 20, 2009 at 10:41 am
Hmmm……ridiculous, but I think it’s worth mentioning that negative stigmas regarding sex does increase self-hatred in people and I believe that self-hatred is one of the major reasons people commit acts of violence on others. I believe that people like Hassan are filled with violent thoughts all the time and they are playing out their inner torment outside in an effort to have others acknowledge their inner anguish.
Most of us aren’t dealing with such things daily streaming through our thoughts. I think it’s important to remember that those that commit acts of evil are themselves tormented and tortured.
posted November 20, 2009 at 11:37 am
What is ridiculous, cknuck, it the warning signs that were glaring at the authorities who totally ignored them. That is what is ridiculous.
posted November 20, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Hasan was probably at war with what his concept of his religion taught him vs. what his physical body was telling him he must have. Who knows what was also in his mind intangeled with all his doubts, worries, and needs? Perhaps after committing to becoming a doctor he found he wasn’t happy in his career, after all. He also probably suffered from depression, and maybe he was prescribing drugs to himself and he was having side effects. People are complex, and he didn’t share his problems to anyone so he could be helped it sounds like. We don’t always pick up on symptoms, mental especially, as they spread them to different people who don’t even know each other, to compare the actions of these people.
posted November 20, 2009 at 1:50 pm
pagan he didn’t shoot all of those people because he was horny, come on if that is the case then we are in real trouble every horny person would be arming themselves. Men think of sex every few minutes and we are more horny than our bodies could possibly perform. We can’t physically keep up with our imaginations. This wasn’t about sex it was about distorted thinking concerning values.
confess there is no evidence that this act was carried out because negative stigmas regarding sex, or even self hate. the pattern of the kills suggests something else altogether. I think H22 is closer to accuracy taking into account his religious background his love and loyalty to his people and his job of listening to so many stories and points of views that conflicted with all that he valued.
posted November 20, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Perhaps he shot them because (as I’ve read) returning soldiers he counseled told of things they’d done over there that amounted to war crimes, which he interpreted, and perhaps the soldiers interpreted, as being against Muslims. Add that to being posted over there in the near future and you’ve got enough to push some folks over. Being unable to find what he (mistakenly, I’d say) thought was a suitable wife and perhaps that was enough to push him over the edge. But horniness can’t help a bad situation.
So our speculations may not be all that far apart, cknuck.
posted November 20, 2009 at 8:08 pm
cknuck, I don’t recall saying that he killed all those folks because he was horney. That was why my first statement was “that has got to be the most ridiculous reason I’ve heard.” Nov. 19, 8:04 PM. You must have missed that statement, huh? I belive it is also ridiculous that all the warning signs that are showing up and were apparently ignored was ridiculous. My second statement, Nov.20, 11:37 AM.
He was certainly messed up….and those that brought it up in letters etc. were ignored. How he got to be a major is beyond me.
posted November 22, 2009 at 12:08 am
I owe you yet another apology pagan, sorry for the misread. I do admit when I am wrong.
posted November 22, 2009 at 11:37 am
Ever notice how many “experts” on Islam are Jews? I find that somewhat disturbing.
posted November 22, 2009 at 11:41 am
How come everybody is fixated on his religion, and nobody is fixated on his mental illness? Hate never takes a holiday, does it?
posted November 22, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Apology accepted, cknuck. I figured you had read wrong.
posted November 23, 2009 at 10:33 am
cknuck,
Do me a favor and stop commenting on my posts unless you have actually taken the time to read them correctly. Misstating my opinions is quite irritating.
posted November 23, 2009 at 2:05 pm
confess what planet are you from, are you that needy. I owed pagan an apology not you.