A consensus seems to have formed here at The Atlantic that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: "A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes...I think this mostly hinges on what "means" means. If we grant that Hasan was motivated by religion, what does that actually tell us? What is there beyond the fact that people will, at times, interpret religion as a justification to commit heinous acts?
I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I've argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here's a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.
Jeff asks what we'd say if a devout Christian had attacked Planned Parenthood. Fair enough--we have a pretty good corollary in George Tiller. I could be wrong, but I don't recall a lot of "media elites" trying to divine what Tiller's death said about Christianity, itself. Again, beyond the fact that some wacko interpreted Christianity to mean he had the right to shoot people, what else would there be to say?
That's really my issue. What is the big "thing" that we should be seeing, in this case? What are those elite blinders preventing us from seeing?
UPDATE: This post was unclear--George Tiller was the victim, not the killer. Scott Roeder was the killer. Sorry about the confusion
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I think the big "thing" that we should be seeing is that radical muslims are not receiving the same sort of scrutiny that radical christians might recieve. If a radical Roman Catholic soldier had given a violent lecture on the bible to a psychiatric conference, including graphic calls to stone adulters and kill heretics, I think it would have raised some red flags. However, it has become politically incorrect to criticize or scrutinize Islam or muslims to such a degree that it has caused people to discount blatantly suspicious activity.
However, what could have been done in this case? Arrest and interrogate him at Gitmo? Remove him from the military? Remove all Muslims from the military? It's not like a random guy got on base, but a guy with a military ID who'd rarely if ever be stopped and searched at the gate.
Secondly, I don't think a radical Christian you mention would be arrested or interrogated by the FBI. It'd never even make the news unless violence was committed, or was done in the fashion of the Westboro Baptist Church. In fact, the Bible has some fairly violent connotations in the old testament (take a read through Psalms), but only if you take it out of context of the time it was written in. These passages could easily be used to label all Christians as crazy wackos bent on destroying non-believers but it never is.
However, it has become politically incorrect to criticize or scrutinize Islam or muslims to such a degree that it has caused people to discount blatantly suspicious activity.
Again you're wrong on this count, Muslims are criticized all the time in the US. However, it is wrong to take the actions of a few people and make generalizations about a religion that covers 1B people. I would hope that nobody makes generalizations about Christians in general based on the Westboro Baptist Church. I'd also like to hear suggestions on what could have been done better in this case, keeping in mind the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I think, at the least, he should have been discharged from the military. He had a clear pattern of extreme and inappropriate behavior, including justifying suicide bombing. He felt that it was immoral to fight fellow muslims, and that the war on terror was really a war on Islam. He made several statements that amounted to anti-american propaganda. I think that there was a real case for a discharge, but they ignored the red flags.
Regarding the criticism of Islam, while this criticism may be widespread in the US, it has rarely led to anti-muslim violence. This is in distinct contrast to radical islamist violence in the US.
Regarding the criticism of Islam, while this criticism may be widespread in the US, it has rarely led to anti-muslim violence. This is in distinct contrast to radical islamist violence in the US.
What are you referring to here? 9/11 was perpetrated by a bunch of non-American Muslim extremists. Other than that, and the Fort Hood shooting, I can't think of any other "radical islamist violence" in the US. What am I missing?
As for this "rare" anti-muslim violence in the U.S: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-09-25-muslim-discrimination_N.htm
I think, at the least, he should have been discharged from the military.
For what, speaking his mind? One of the great hallmarks of the American military is its refusal to formally police such speech.
Crazy fuckers is and crazy fuckers does. The thing about random violent acts by lone actors is that they are, by definition, difficult as hell to predict and stop. Sure, this guy was motivated in large part by his understanding of his religion and culture. But he was also a crazy fucker. That can't be said enough. Without the crazy fucker part, 13 people are still alive.
Thanks, Erik. That's the thing, right there: that leap to actually doing this crazy violent act. That just can't be explained, other than, "crazy fucker."
Amen, Erik. People are so desperate to find MEANING! and PREDICTABILITY! in tragedy that we often overlook the crazy-fucker factor. Worse yet, when we try to make laws or policies in response to such tragedies, they're almost always overbearing, ineffective, and over-inclusive. Crazy people lead to crazy laws.
If a radical Roman Catholic soldier had given a violent lecture on the bible to a psychiatric conference, including graphic calls to stone adulters and kill heretics, I think it would have raised some red flags.
Except that Rushdoony was a real person (though not Catholic) and his disciples still have plenty of political power. The Chalcedon Foundation and it's followers regularly fund anti-choice, anti-LGBT and anti-feminist rallies, political action efforts, and politicians.
. However, it has become politically incorrect to criticize or scrutinize Islam or muslims to such a degree that it has caused people to discount blatantly suspicious activity.
We have a congresswoman targeting the largest Muslim-American organization, which unequivocally condemned the shooting, as tied to it. Not good enough? What would an appropriate level of suspicion and criticizing look like? Because without telling us, you're just playing a game by castigating the media and politicians for not living up to an undefined standard.
I thought it did raise some flags - wasn't Hasan under FBI surveillance, or something? I know, a lot of good that did..
But I do believe those who show signs of radical Islamism here in the States are widely but quietly under scrutiny by the federal government. Isn't that how all of the recent cases against those planning terrorist acts (and the ones in past years, even the really weak cases) have been made?
The media coverage right after the attack was really weak, I heard (I didn't see it so take this with a grain of salt), all around - reporting hearsay and rumor and speculation almost as fact, snowballing the rumors in effect, all in a blind panic to say something, anything - and yet a lot of outlets seem to have held back from saying anything right away about the terrorist connection. But isn't that at least sort of a good thing, that of all the dumb things they said too soon before any evidence was out there, that wasn't one of them? We're discussing it now, aren't we? It seems like this guy went nuts and ALSO that he had certain political/religious Islamist-type motivations, which makes this a 'postal' type mass shooting (lone nutjob gunman snaps) and ALSO an Islamist terrorist act. Most people are now aware of this, and I don't think it is *only* due Mr. Goldberg, Michelle Malkin, and others who criticized the initial media reaction.
Although, I am glad they brought it up; it's a fair one for discussion. I just don't think the level of bias is as high as they allege.
Here is part of a long series of blog posts / replies which take up this media criticism and analysis with more nuance and background. Basically, ignore the first day or two of coverage on something this sensational, because it's likely to be bunk.
I don't think that's true at all. Radical Muslims are receiving a great deal of scrutiny, not only from the intelligence community (which, as you may remember, broke up an alleged terror cell of radical Muslims in Denver last month), but from large portions of the population, as well (as you might deduce from the multiple incidents of mosque defacement-- at virtually all NON-radical mosques-- in the last week).
As for the radical Muslim/Christian comparison, I agree with TNC: "What is there beyond the fact that people will, at times, interpret religion as a justification to commit heinous acts?" A bunch of Christians killed a bunch of other Christians in a series of horrible civilian bombings and political assasinations during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and no one was sitting down and scrutinizing the Catholic church. Same thing with the man who killed George Tiller. And, heck, both Timothy McVeigh and the guy who opened fire in the Pennsylvania gym a couple of months ago were radicals (anti-government, and anti-women, respectively), and no one is freaking out about militias and misogynistic websites, anymore. And rightly so: these were incredibly troubled men (as the Fort Hood shooter seems to be). Their pathologies seem to be the Big Red Flags, not their ideologies.
So, I guess I'm confused about what you're hoping for. You say that it's "politically incorrent to criticize or scrutinize Islam or muslims," but what would be the advtanges of doing so? Not all Muslims are radical, and not all radical Muslims are likely to resort to violence. So what gives? Do you really think that using "Muslim" and "Islam" as our big targets of scrutiny is likely to prevent these kinds of things from happening?
If Maj. Hasan actually DID give that lecture, how come nobody spoke up? Where were all these witnesses several years ago? How come they kept quiet?
I think that's something we seriously need to be asking right now.
If a radical Roman Catholic soldier had given a violent lecture on the bible to a psychiatric conference, including graphic calls to stone adulters and kill heretics, I think it would have raised some red flags.
After listening to Zwordling for an hour on NPR this morning (link not up but I talk about it more in the open thread) I'm not convinced this is the case. He was for 6 years rated as a lousy psychiatrist, but he was not fired and was even promoted on schedule. Doctors are very hard to remove from practice, and when it happens most laymen look and say "good lord, why wasn't he removed 5 or 10 years ago?" It's hard to get fired above a certain level in the government, including the military.
Not saying it's impossible that there was a PC desire to bend over backward not to create the impression of a purge of muslims from the military. But as it emerges that the "he talked scary stuff several times" reports were all true, I think it's reasonable to ask why that didn't raise red flags. And "because muslims have special priviledges" isn't looking deep enough. It could turn out to be the case, but defaulting to it seems dangerously naive.
I have doubts that special privileges for Muslims kept Hasan in the military. My opinion is that because the army is stretched so thin right now (and continues to dismiss gay soldiers and officers), they can't afford to lose anyone else. I personally know people (non-Muslims) who shouldn't be in the military and yet they are, for the very reason that they're needed, so my guess it is a similar situation with Hasan.
It's media responsibility more than anything. I think the media, rightly, sees that we live in a world where a good chunk of people still believe Saddam planned 9/11. We can't handle the truth with any nuance. So instead, we let the truth go spoken softly, while not ignoring the other factors, like that he was getting deployed soon.
No one was really worried about the safety of pro-life enthusiasts after Tiller. I think that makes a lot of sense.
This sounds like an apologist for the O'Reilly "War on CHRISTmas" set. Homicidal, crazy religious fundies are still homicidal, crazy religious fundies whether they are Christians or Muslims.
Pro Tip: The people who oppose the Ten Commandments in state run buildings are the same people who stridently oppose the Taliban instituting Sharia Law and forcing women to wear Burkhas and never be allowed to go to school.
You're splitting hairs AND doing it incorrectly.
I should add that my comment was directed at the OP amichel, not TNC or anyone else.
Good point. I'm not actually sure of why Goldberg is upset. Is there anyone following this story that doesn't realize he's a muslim and shouted "Allahu akbar"? Because the only other reason I'm seeing that it should be under more scrutiny was if he was part of some sort of cell. Which it doesn't look like he is. So what am I missing here?
i don't think he shouted that, according to an eyewitness.
Ok, I have heard conflicting reports. My point is, I don't really see how that matters. Again, people know the guy was a Muslim. People know that extremely religious people occasionally commit violent acts. Again, unless he was put up to this, I'm not sure what's really being censored from the story.
I think of this as a matter of labels. We're all pretty familiar with Christianity here in the West. If someone starts going on about killing all the Jews we'll call them crazy, we'll call them a cult, whatever. We won't usually call them Christian, even if they are waving crosses around and quoting the Bible. We know that killing all the Jews isn't Christian even if you talk about Jesus and stuff while you're doing it.
Islam is more of a minority religion, not well represented in popular culture, so we know a lot less about what it means to be Muslim. That makes it easier for us to see something as a "branch of Islam" as long as they're going on about Allah. We don't have a strong subconscious understanding to stop us from hearing "Muslim extremist" with emphasis on the M.
True, and worse: about 99% of the mainstream media exposure Islam does get is focused on (a) "otherizing" it, and (b) the very craziest of the Wahhabist Funamentalist Nutjobs.
I ended up specializing in the history of Islamic empires in college (thanks to one super-fantastic professor; I took every single class she offered) and it's remarkable how much time we had to spend kind of un-learning preconceived notions most of us hadn't even realized we had. In 2001 I'd spent the previous spring having to pore over excerpts of the Koran, and when September hit I was just shocked and appalled how much BS was being spewed all over the major media networks. Things that were provably and demonstrably false if any of them ever cracked a Koran open.
Then again, given what amazingly choicely-translated and out-of-context Biblical verses various pick-and-choose Christians in this country cite all the time, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, I'm really glad that I took Intro to Islam while I was in college. While not as in-depth as what you did, it was helpful to go through the history and see where some of the splits and differences in belief have come from. We also made a short side trip into the earlier forms of modern radicalized Islam (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood) and the conditions under which it was created. Also very helpful was that everyone in the class had to visit a Muslim place of worship in the community and conduct a short interview. I really enjoyed getting to talk to one of the local imams. Overall, it was a very useful way to spend a semester.
Again and again we see the invisibility of the majority making us stupid.
"When Albuquerque attorney and businessman Mikey Weinstein stopped in to see his son Curtis at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in late July of 2004, he could tell something was wrong. Normally upbeat and exuberant, the 20-year-old seemed downcast and troubled. Weinstein’s son drew him aside during a cocktail party mixer for Academy alumni and cadets.
“He came over to me and said, ‘Dad, can we leave here? I want to go off base,’” Weinstein said. At a nearby McDonald’s, the cadet explained what was troubling him. Recalls Weinstein, “Curtis said, ‘Could you tell Mom I’m going to be getting into trouble?’ I was floored and asked, ‘What did you do?’ He said, ‘It’s what I’m going to do’ and he explained to me that he had been called a [expletive] Jew, accused of killing Jesus by a number of cadets.”
More here. Also, in a weird twist, an entertainment reporter followed Dolph Lundgren at his visit to Fort Hood in the days before the shooting, which included a change-of-command ceremony. His characterization of the outgoing general's speech was as follows:
"I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the religious fervor, his speech feeling more like a sermon. Being the pinko commie (or whatever they call liberal these days) I am, I can’t help but get a puckered butthole when I hear a General sermonizing about being part of God’s army and doing God’s work. But it was his party after all… the dude can say what he likes."
How about when a Christian fundamentalist General in the United States army says that the Islamic God is an idol and portrays the current wars as a fight between Satan and Christian armies? Boykin served for years after uttering that nonsense. I'm glad the media and the armed forces by-and-large endeavor to distinguish between Islamic fanatics and the vast majority who practice the religion peacefully. Do you honestly think that "political correctness" is playing a larger role than the heightened levels of distrust and fear that people have towards Muslims in America, particularly on a US Army base? From Columbine to Virginia Tech this happens every time there's a rampage killing--people look back and see an obvious pattern that should have raised warning flags.
I hesitate to raise this because, just as I believe to look at the Ft. Hood killings from a scrutiny of Islam is to view the whole tragedy out of the wrong end of the telescope, I believe it is incorrect to look at our military and impute aberrant behavior endemic to military service: McVeigh and Muhammed were Iraq 1 vets.
I do believe that Hasan, as a Muslim, who must have listened to horrific stories of traumatized vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as a Muslim, who may have been harassed as a result in the military, as a Muslim, who found, quite reasonably perhaps, some anti-Islamic motives in our martial policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, felt pressures that were unique to his circumstance.
Nonetheless, none of that explains the over the top way he acted out. People all over the United States, then and now, felt many of the environmental misgivings and fears that the Unibomber felt, but those people didn't go sending bombs in the mail in order to maim and kill random people over the course of years.
I've been thinking what you said about George Tiller all weekend long (well, when I wasn't at my sister's wedding. Yay for happy people doing happy things! But I digress). Tiller's Christianity was mentioned, but it was not the crux of the reporting, and/or analysis (such as there was), as is the case with Hasan.
At some point on Friday or Saturday, the lead headline on NPR (of all places) was that Hasan had shouted "Allahu akbar" when he started shooting. I really wish someone would do a good piece on the many ways in which the phrase "God is great/greater" resonates for Muslims -- Iranians shouting it from their roofs in 79, for instance, as a protest against the Shah, and again this past June, as a protest against the system that replaced the Shah; Kuwaitis shouting it from their roofs in 1991 as a protest of the Iraq occupation; the place of the phrase in prayer; what it means to constantly remind oneself that "God is greater," etc, etc, and so on and so on.
But no. We're left with the impression that "Allahu akbar" means "kill whitey."
"God is great
There is no God but Allah
Witness that Muhammed is God's Prophet
Make haste to worship
Come to the truth
Prayer is better than sleep
God is great
There is no God but Allah"
Sounds beautiful in Arabic with the Muzzein calling it out.
"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution (of Muslims) is worse than slaughter (of non-believers)and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah"
Please tell me the point of this comment. Are you trying to get into a pissing match over verses of the Quran? Because the Old Testament is full of this, so we could go for a long time. Are you trying to claim that your verse is the true heart of the Quran and proves that Islam is an inherently violent religion? Tell that to the hundreds of millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims. All EllaEsther and Josh Jasper were trying to do was to note that Allahu Akhbar has multiple resonances. I have no idea what you're up to, other than "arguing" in bad faith. As always.
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."
This game is fun. By all means, keep going.
The Hebrew prophet Zechariah: "As for those peoples that warred against Jerusalem, their flesh shall rot away while they stand on their feet." Zechariah 14:12
Jesus, speaking to "the Jews": "You belong to your father, the devil .. The reason you do not hear [God] is because you do not belong to God." John 8:44
I'll tell you what amichel, if you want to find ugliness in Scripture, you can find it in any faith, in any book.
And here's something else you'll find in the Quran: 150 references to forgiveness, and these words, as well: "Allah will put friendship between you and those who have been your enemies. Allah is mighty, forgiving, and merciful."
Go take a look at Psalms as a whole and you'll find the same types of passages.
maya&EV, it's nice of you to try and reason with this christianist troll but his track record here is such that he isn't really interested in pursuing mutual understanding so pls don't feed into this, thanks
I apologize to all, as I've let my anger get the best of me. It just really gets under my skin that when some muslim fanatic murders soldiers, many people's first reaction is to disclaim Islam from any role in the attack. To explain how Islam is beautiful, and misunderstood, etc. Well, to me, all the beautiful verses in the Koran don't make up for the actual practice of a large and violent minority of muslims.
But amichael, you still haven't answered the question posed by many of us in these comments: if we DON'T disclaim the role of Islam in these attacks, and we acknowledge that Islam may have had a role in his actions, where does that get us? What are the conclusions that we draw from that and how are they helpful is dealing with this tragedy and preventing another one from happening? Do we look with a critical eye at the other billion people practicing Islam?
The man that assasinated George Tiller was a radical Christian, as were the members of the Real IRA that killed civilians in car bombings. What do we do with that information?
To me, radicalism is ANY form-- religious or non-religious, Muslim or non-Muslim-- is dangerous. Whatever's behind it seems to be somewhat of a red herring to me.
"O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us-he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
That is Psalm 137:8-9. Now a good Christian theological education will teach you that the Psalms were written as poetry, that this Psalm was written by an author enraged by the brutalization of his people at the hands of the Babylonians, and crying out to God for justice to be done. And that, as an expression of grief and anger, verses like this are vital to understanding that God is not some dispassionate observor of human suffering, but that our suffering has always been understood and acknowledged by Him--after all, he loves all humanity like his children, and He has from the beginning of time witnessed his children brutalize each other.
But an angry person looking to justify his his own evil behavior could easily seize on the reference to Babylon as a universal evil--after all Babylon is frequently a symbolic stand-in for evil, rebellious humanity--and start throwing babies off cliffs.
And then that evil person could say, "I was doing the work of the Lord." But mainstream Christian theology rejects that interpretation of Psalms, just like mainstream Islam rejects the murder of nonbelievers or violent jihad against infidels, despite verses to that effect in the Koran.
What I'm saying is, an individual adherent's behavior cannot be made into a referendum on the merits of his or her particular religion, because nearly all religions can be twisted to suit all sorts of horrible behavior. And nearly all religions have.
For the record, I am a Christian, and believe that Islam is wrong. I believe in salvation by faith through grace alone, not any pillars. But I know better than to argue against Islam by pointing at extremist Muslims.
@amichel
Why are you really apologizing? Posting a single line from the Koran, completely out of any possible context, it was not meant to change anyone’s mind. It was just a cheap shot. You almost certainly have never picked up a Koran in your entire life. You probably just cut and pasted that quote from some right-wing website.
You then apologize but include with your apology a statement that a large minority of Muslims in the world are violent. That’s as intellectually lazy and insincere as your quoting the Koran out of context.
There are about 1 billion Muslims in the world. What percentage is violent, according to your calculations? What ever number you come up with, please explain to us how you settled on that figure.
Ten percent is not a large minority of any figure. Ten percent of 1 billion people would be 100 million people. Do you think that there are 100 million violent Muslims in the world, violent in the context that you are clearly implying?
If you think that there really are 100 million violent Muslim aspiring terrorists out there, I have two more questions for you. Why is there so little violence, relatively speaking, against the non-Muslim west? And do you think that the non-Muslim west stands a chance against 100 million Muslims, all eager for Jihad?
@amichel
And so the folk shouting "God is Great" on the rooftops of Tehran deserve what they get?
It's a complicated world out there. And we need Muslims, Arabic-speakers, Farsi-Speakers, and Pushtun-speakers in the army if we hope our efforts in Afghanistan turn out to be anything more than colossal wastes of blood and treasure.
OTOH, we can go for wind-powered autarky...
Aaaand I actually wrote Tiller when I meant "Roeder." Sorry.
the problem is one of semantics, or more specifically reification. There is no such "thing", big or otherwise, as "Christianity" (or "Islam") apart from the ever evolving and context specific practices/beliefs of individuals. And there are no general implications/meanings to be found in the decisions/actions of individuals. As long as we are talking about reporting on events in the world, and not speculating on theology, than we will be properly restrained from importing "meanings" into such matters.
This.
It is true that when a George Tiller type emerges, the media freely and openly asks probing questions about the influence religion played. And it does seem, in the case Hasan, the media is being reluctant about exploring those same kinds of questions. I think that's Jeffrey's point. We've used episodes like the Tiller attack to once again discuss and sift out the narrative of the dangers of Christian religious fanaticism, yet we seem to shy away from the same kind of investigation of a Muslim religious fanatic. Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps we shouldn't use these tragedies to derive larger meaning or draw sweeping conclusions. But it seems human nature to do so. Which begs the question, what's different here?
Do you REALLY think the media has never spent any time investigating Muslim religious fanatics over the years? Honestly?
I think it's more of a dead horse issue than something the media is feeling nervous about.
All the news coverage I saw after the day it happened (before basic facts had been established) has questioned what role his religion played into the killings. It doesn't really seem all that different than the Tiller case. I will say that my parents were in town, so I ended up watching some Fox News. From Fox News they make it seem like they are the only ones report that he was a radical Muslim and that everyone else is covering it up because they are weak and politically incorrect.
I went to washingtonpost.com, its top story is an account of Hasan's religious links.
If this is being buried it is an odd kind of burying right there on the front page.
The article also notes that Lieberman plans to launch a Senate investigation into whether this constitutes a terrorist attack. I don't remember a similar investigation in the Tiller case.
There seems to be a quite a lot of discussion going on now about this topic. I think the bigger issue is whether the discussion will be responsible and designed to find the truth rather than fan anti-Islamic feeling. It is hard to imagine Lieberman's premature announcement as designed for the former rather than the latter.
I guess it's too much to ask to actually wait to figure out what happened and why before we start explaining what it means.
Oh you!
I actually saw this great post on Boing Boing about "Slow News" (like "Slow Food"?): "Slow News: designing reflection and contemplation into the news-cycle." Reflection and contemplation? We can dream.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/08/slow-news-designing.html
Thanks for that link, ellaesther.
I'm a little at a loss for the argument on both sides. We hear one side saying: "the mainstream media is COVERING UP the fact that Hasan is Muslim!" while the other side is saying "the media is playing up the fact that Hasan is Muslim (see Shepard Smith)". Well, maybe both are right. Someone should alert the Supreme Council of Media that their minions are sending mixed messages.
In all seriousness though, I personally think that the prudent thing to do is report the basic facts as known in this case. Everything else is, at this point, pure speculation. Maybe Hasan cracked psychologically, maybe he did it with some larger fundamentalist objective, maybe he actually contacted jihadists, at this point who knows? I say at this point let the Army investigators do their job, without oversensationalizing. I'm looking at you, Joe Lieberman...
In this particular case, if Hasan's religion does play into his actions, then that background needs to be applied to his case, period. The military should be asking itself how it let this man slip through so long as to become such a threat, and they probably should look at his motivations as to how to deal with his case (a military crime? act of terrorism? act of war? military turncoating? all of the above?). But I do agree that the broader "lessons" of his religion are not really that meaningful. Yes, on a certain level there is an Islamist terrorist threat, but specifically focusing on that angle instead of the nuts-with-guns angle will kind of miss the forest for the trees. I remember CNN reporting on the Westroads Mall Shooting in 2007, and the reporters audibly breathing sighs of relief that the nine killed were "not killed in an act of terrorism". As long as its just crazies, well, oh well.
I think there is some truth though to the fact that media sources are wary of going down that "the killer is a Muslim" or "the killer was an Islamic fundamentalist" road because there is a justifiable fear that this will lead to some kind of mass hysteria and conspiracy theories (foreign terrorist agents and the like). This is something that simply is not a worry when you're reporting on George Tiller or even Timothy McVeigh. Most Americans think that their people are "good people" while these other people are bad apples(see the earlier discussion on Rod Dreher and bigotry). A smaller, relatively new and/or foreign group in America does not have that luxury of public opinion.
It is not clear what Goldberg sees the meaning of this event to be. Coates has that exactly right.
Does Goldberg think that Fallows is saying that there were no factors in Whitman's life that were relevant to his going on a shooting spree?" That seems ridiculous. Rather he meant that it was not part of a growing social movement. It did not reflect the breakdown of society, etc. (So for example the Inquirer, somewhat unrealistically, suggested that a mass murderer named Unruh (who I had not heard of before) was somehow responsible (linked, a harbinger) of the downfall of Camden, NJ. The claim here, albeit likely wrong, is that this was a murder spree that was meaningful.
If Goldberg is claiming something similar it is not clear what it is.
He does point to two other base murders by muslims. Is this something that we should be changing our operating procedures over? General Casey doesn't seem to think so. And I am certainly willing to wait for more information to find out.
Goldberg sometimes writes interesting things. But he is too quick to look for things to justify the superiority of Israel over its adversaries which makes him an unfortunate person to carry this particular message. That Hasan is a muslim seems to be a well reported event. The idea that anything is being hidden hear seems odd. The killer of Dr Tiller did not exactly hide his motivation.
Goldberg's complaint seems to turn into a question of why there was no rush to judgement on the part of the press in this case concerning Hasan's religious motivation. That is a weird complaint since it seems to be just about the only thing the media did right in the early part of reporting this story.
goldberg is complaining that the media is actually taking time to consider their thoughts and let the facts shake out on the ground before jumping to speculation?
while i agree that this is an exception and not the rule, i'm not complaining. we should be promoting less idiocy, not more.
See my response to dwhite10701, above, about a post on Boing Boing entitled "Slow News: designing reflection and contemplation into the news-cycle" -- I'm with you, my brother.
Goldberg has lost it..."Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism." That's completely false. When an American Christian this summer DID shoot George Tiller, the neocons were quick to call him crazy. When an American Nazi shot up the Holocaust Museum, they were quick not to call it terrorism: "The act of one crazed man" I believe they said.
Comparing shooting up an abortion clinic with Maj. Hasan's crime is fruitless, as Maj. Hasan's crime could have, in fact, been committed by anyone of any faith; the crime itself is not faith specific.
Terrorism for Americans = Muslims, and only Muslims in this country are held responsible for the crimes of one person.
Folks who are unhappy with the socio-political status quo often resort to killing. In another, less stable country Hassan would have found buddies in the Army who felt the same way, taken over the base and demanded withdrawal from Afghanistan; some general would have then overthrown Obama to "restore order" and quell dissent in the ranks. Nothing like this, thank God, is going to happen here. Instead, political violence is in the hands of angry, hate-filled loners, sitting at home and stockpiling ammunition. That's what Hassan was, and the only way to keep folks like him out is to make sure every soldier supports current foreign and domestic government policy, which would undermine the independence and professionalism of the military.
What could be learned is that propaganda is one of the largest businesses in the United States, masking as truth in TV ads, newspaper headlines, and punditry.
There was something to that old saying "don't believe anything you hear or half of what you see" ...
so i assume goldberg would be perfectly happy for a mainstream goy journalist to write an article in an american newspaper fully delving into what role (if any) judaism & zionism played in motivating the recently arrested american terrorist Jack Teitel' string of assassinations & bombings?
You're right, but Goldberg is really singling out media elites who have weighed in on the subject. not FOX or even mainstream. I should have been more specific.
btw sorry for Tiller mix-up.
"Goldberg is really singling out media elites who have weighed in on the subject. not FOX or even mainstream"
This is the most important point to be remembered in this post and it seems to have been unnoticed by just about everyone, even amichel.
"so i assume goldberg would be perfectly happy for a mainstream goy journalist to write an article in an american newspaper fully delving into what role (if any) judaism & zionism played in motivating the recently arrested american terrorist Jack Teitel' string of assassinations & bombings?"
Lot of denial going on in this thread. If Jack Teitel's actions were driven by his Judaism, of course it would make sense to delve into it.
Are you unaware that a decent fraction of Muslims (I've seen surveys that say more than a sixth) think that terrorism against non-Muslims is meritorious according to their religion? Do you dispute that statistic?
If true, it is appropriate to take into account to what extent that makes the rest of us unsafe. Not from racism against Muslims, Muslims are fine. People who think that their religion tells them to attack us are not.
If a sizable fraction of Christians think that the Christian religion makes terrorism against abortion center meritorious, it would be appropriate to take that into account as well. Does someone have statistics on the subject? Is there a movement supporting it, as there seems to be with parts of Islam?
If not, then people who do it are crazy loners, and the comparison is false.
Surely this is obvious?
“Are you unaware that a decent fraction of Muslims (I've seen surveys that say more than a sixth) think that terrorism against non-Muslims is meritorious according to their religion? Do you dispute that statistic?”
Considering the fact that you put it forward with absolutely no citation whatsoever, yes, I might want to dispute it.
But…..let’s just say that the figure is correct, in what context is the question asked? Did it say “terrorism” or just “violence against non-Muslims”?
And are we talking about a sixth of Muslims worldwide thinking a terrorist act like September 11th is justified? Or are we talking about some crazy hypothetical situation? Because, if you want to go far enough out on a limb, I’m sure we can all think of a situation where you could justify specific acts of certain kinds of terrorism.
All fair questions, and I don't have the links in front of me. I recall one or more polls by Al-Jazeera a few years ago back, and I remember being distressed by the numbers.
I found this through Google:
http://politicalislam.org/Articles/PI%20528%20-%20%20Spotlight%20on%20Fundamentalism%20-%20The%20Exception%20or%20the%20Norm%20(1).pdf
but I don't think it's what I had in mind; maybe someone else has a better link.
Certainly the poll I saw did not mention terrorism, but was phrased in some way that would have sounded okay to a murdering evil terrorism-supporter.
But I'm reluctant to rely too much on my fallible memory. My main memory was that it was pretty depressing.
Let me tell a story to illustrate the point that I am trying to make. My grandfather, now long dead, was born in Ireland. He had an older brother named Michael. Everyone called him “Mike” because his father’s name was also Michael.
My uncle Mike was a member of the I.R.A. But this was in the early 1920’s, when the I.R.A. committed acts of “terrorism” that involved walking up to British intelligence and army officers and blowing their heads off. Sometimes this involved killing men in front of their families.
Did my uncle Mike kill anyone? I don’t know for sure. Was my family proud of him? Yes, my aunts even showed me a medal he got from Eamon De Valera, the first Prime Minister of Ireland. Was my family proud of the Provisional I.R.A., the ones who set off bombs in civilian crowds watching parades? Absolutely not!
Now, did the family members of those killed by the original I.R.A. in the 1920’s think of their killers as terrorists any less than those who had family members killed in the 1980’s?
@nuada:
Ever hear the Stan Rogers song "House of Orange?"
Worth looking at the lyrics.
@ Carrington
Thank you for the heads up.
I did some on-line searching and found the lyrics. They reminded me a bit of that song from the 1990’s, “Zombie”.
That’s not to say that the Cranberries will go down in history like Mr. Stan Rogers did, who apparent made quite the name for himself.
re you unaware that a decent fraction of Muslims (I've seen surveys that say more than a sixth) think that terrorism against non-Muslims is meritorious according to their religion?
Honestly, and with all intention to be constructive, "So what?" This is straight-up Conflict with Another Group thinking. The Tamil Tigers originated suicide bombings -- and it was okay because it was against non-Tamils. Sunni blow up Shia -- and it's okay because they're not Sunni. Shia blow up Sunni -- and it's okay because they're not Shia. The IRA blew up British buildings and killed British soldiers -- and it was okay because they weren't Irish. The IRA killed Protestants -- and it was okay because they weren't Catholic. The IDF killed hundreds of Palestinians -- and it was okay because they weren't Jews.
This is basic, atavistic stuff, man. It's a dynamic to any group in conflict with any other group. We have right-wing authoritarians cherry-picking the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to justify torture. This shit is the sine qua non of any group trying to excuse their actions -- they find justification in Scripture, in cultural taboo, or political platform.
Everything you said is right (I take strong exception to your including the IDF, but it's not relevant here), and (to quote you) "So what?" We can't allow that kind of attitude inside American society. We don't let Tamil Tigers or Sunni & Shia suicide bombers or the IRA operate here.
So I'm puzzled that you thought your comment was relevant.
We can't allow that kind of attitude inside American society.
My point, which I thought I made fairly clear (and therefore why it's relevant), is that the attitude I describe is "basic, atavistic stuff." It's intrinsic to human nature wherever groups gather. The idea that we can excise it from American society at some sort of fundamental level is pie-in-the-sky utopianism.
No one is proposing to excise anything from the American psyche. We can, however, make acting on it illegal, and we should.
We certainly aren't helping by pretending it's not there, or by pretending that everyone does it. Natural is not the same thing as acceptable.
Another source? "Violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam can be justified..."
http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/Statistics#Jihad
Again, I don't know if this was the one I saw years ago! But they all depress me. I would like to think of the world as full of decent people.
Also, let's ask what Goldberg thinks of Yaakov Teitel, the Israeli terrorist accused of killing 12, including Palestinians.
I have not a single doubt that he hates and despises him and all evil people. Where are you coming from with your slanderous suggestion and your willingness to assume the worst about your opponents?
I think that Hassan being a Muslim is relevant to the story. If a guy named Goldberg shot up a mosque, the fact that he had a Jewish last name would be relevant to the initial reporting of the story, wouldn't it? I also don't think it's fair to say that the crazies who are Christians and do this stuff do not have their religious beliefs examined. In the liberal media I read, they do.
IMO there is an element of political correctness in a refusal to see Hassan's religion as having any meaning in this tragic story. Possibly there is also an element of wanting to protect the many Muslims serving in the military with honor from unfair scrutiny, and I sympathize with this.
Obviously, Hassan's religious beliefs are not the whole story, but I think they are an important part of it. I'm interested in learning how someone raised in a typical American household turns to Islam and finds anti-Americanism and violence there, just like I was when it happened to that John Walker Lindh kid here in the Bay Area.
I expect the same examination when a crazy Christian, or a crazy Jew, or a crazy Mormon does his dirty work, too. "He's just crazy" just does not satisfy the human craving for meaning. I don't think we are going to find a lot of headlines like that any time soon. Of course people want to find out "why" something happened and I think it's kind of dismissive to expect them not to ... I know I would be even more deeply yearning for meaning if one of my relatives had been killed last week, or if I served in the military.
JennD having human cravings/deep-yearnings may be completely understandable but are not always rational, especially in the face of unspeakable tragedies. And as a non-secterian civil society we have a duty to protect each other from unreasonable impositions. As I said above one might be led to reach for metaphysical/supernatural explanations but this doesn't seem to be that kind of blog.
I guess I also don't think the point is a search for meaning. To me, the issue is, Should there be decisions and policy based on what happened? If Hassan's religion is incidental in what happened, of course not. If his religion was an important cause, maybe. We'd still have to decide if it represents a problem big enough to worry about.
But Goldberg's point is that he's seeing an automatic rejection of the issue. I'm seeing that in a lot of the responses in this thread, too.
MR, how would we decide if his "religion" is a "cause"? and how would we decide if other people are enough like him in this way to be of concern/danger? there is no test for such matters, nor could there be.
Should there be decisions and policy based on what happened?
And what if what was found was that he was harassed and intimidated due to his religion (not that there seems to be any evidence of this so far), confirming his view that America was at war with his religion and contributing to his rage? In that case, the policies and procedures wouldn't be "Oh noes, all our base are belong to teh Mooselmens!" It would be, "Knock off your shit, because it can help some people to go violently, irreversibly off their rocker."
Careful about your assumptions, man.
dmf, I don't know. If it's not a serious problem, I don't need to. If it's real, but not major, note it, decry it, and go on. If it looks like it's a major issue, then we'd have to decide what to do about it.
As an aside, I have seen nothing to convince me that this is at all a big problem for American Muslims. If I were in Paris, where "angry foreign youths" have been known to burn a thousand cars a night for weeks, I think the conclusion might be quite different. I don't agree with you that there could be no test; many groups of European Muslims and their leaders have been pretty open about their radical hatred for their host countries.
"Careful about your assumptions, man." I don't think I am making any assumptions.
MR how is this "many groups of European Muslims and their leaders have been pretty open about their radical hatred for their host countries" a test?
Hmm. Maybe I'm not understanding you properly, dmf. It seemed to me that if a large identifiable group (in Europe) supports violence, and many of their members are out doing it, that should pass any reasonable definition of your test.
Of course, as I said, it would only be relevant in Paris, where it's happening, and not here, where it isn't.
Erik V, There actually could be a kernel of a policy here. As someone else mentioned above, there are often overt references to Christianity in military communications. I for one would love to see a primer for the troops about the separation of church and state and encourage commanders not to mention any religion in their speeches. I know this is probably unrealistic, but maybe some basic religious sensitivity training could mitigate the hostilities on all sides. I'm not sure if the military has such training already or not.
“As an aside, I have seen nothing to convince me that this is at all a big problem for American Muslims. If I were in Paris, where "angry foreign youths" have been known to burn a thousand cars a night for weeks, I think the conclusion might be quite different.”
That is actually a very good point. But it begs the question; why are American-Muslims different?
I would argue it is because American society, in general, fully accepts Muslim-Americans to be as American as anyone else. Take the case of Keith Ellison; a Muslim-American gets sworn into our federal legislative body, using the holy book of his religion and uses a copy that just happened to once be owned by one of our nation’s founders. That says something about America than can’t be duplicated in a lot of other non-Muslim majority countries.
But…..considering that America does not have the kind of violence that certain European countries suffer through, perhaps we should be carefully before we start deciding on any kind of test. Least we inspire such violence by accusing anyone of divided loyalties or something. Note, I’m not saying that is what you are doing, only that I can see how things could go down that path.
"If his religion was an important cause..." For centuries, crazy fuckers have used religion to justify their heinous acts of violence: mass murder, slavery, subjugation of women and children. You name it, and crazy fuckers have used religion to justify it. I say this as confirmed agnostic: its never the religion, its the crazy.
Anna, I believe that certain ideologies lend themselves to evil crazies. And others do not. Don't know if you're going to include communism and fascism in your list of religions, but you might as well.
Anyhow, today in America, there are extremist religions that help crazy and/or evil people think about doing violence, and other varieties of religions that don't. I want people to follow the latter, and I want us to think about when the former might be causing trouble.
Goodness, is there anyone on the left who wasn't concerned that extremist anti-abortionists were lending themselves to violence? As they should be. What about the concern that the Tea Partiers were a danger. (There there was no evidence, near as I can see; violence at town meetings was largely by the SEIU - but that's outside our issue.)
What I don't understand is why any of this is controversial. We don't want people operating under belief systems, religious or not, that cause them to break the laws and hurt people. When violence happens, it's perfectly reasonable to investigate whether the person's belief system was involved.
IMO there is an element of political correctness in a refusal to see Hassan's religion as having any meaning in this tragic story.
The problem being is that I just haven't seen this argument made. It's a pet peeve of this blog to create an argument in your head that nobody is making and then shoot it down. I have seen the argument that we shouldn't jump to conclusions, I have seen the argument that his religion shouldn't bear the sole blame for Hassan's actions. If you remember in the first day nobody even knew if Hassan was alive or dead, so I'm glad when the news takes a little extra time to get the facts right.
I also don't think it's fair to say that the crazies who are Christians and do this stuff do not have their religious beliefs examined. In the liberal media I read, they do.
I don't agree, because I just don't see it. I see nearly every media outlet reporting that Hassan is Muslim and this has something to do with the attacks. It seems fairly similar to the coverage of Tiller's death. Again, what I do see on Fox News is them reporting that the above happens without sources or context. I did see some restraint on the first day when such basic facts as whether or not Hassan was alive or dead was not known. There was also restraint to label him a Muslim just because his name was different and he was dark skinned. I fully agree with that because dark skin and a funny name does not mean you are a radical Muslim.
This reply is actually to Nuada above, but it wouldn't let me...
Anyways.
That is actually a very good point. But it begs the question; why are American-Muslims different?
There are many differences in demographics and the situation on the ground in America and Europe that serve to make the communities somewhat different, and I don't think it is that America "accepts" its Muslims as fully American. For one thing, as a rule, America restricted for a while the types of people who could immigrate here from certain parts of the Muslim world, with the result that many educated immigrants from the Arab world and South Asia especially came here, there less educated brethren who wanted to get out went to Europe in larger numbers. Another factor to consider is that America, unlike most European countries, has a rather large number of indigenous Muslims. At least a third and perhaps higher, depending on whose stats you consult, of American Muslims are African American. This brings in a whole other dynamic of "being accepted as fully American".
I do think, however, that while as an (African) American Muslim I don't always feel like others view me and my co-religionists as fully American, (though in general, I personally don't really care...my right to be here is not anyone else's to determine), I think you are correct in that there is somewhat greater integration in the US vs Europe where Muslims are concerned. The Keith Ellison incident, while inspiring in how he handled it, we shouldn't forget that his decision to use that *particular* copy of the Qur'an was in fact a response to a bunch of fear mongering on the part of some very vocal bigots who thought the idea of a US congressman taking the oath of office on some book other than the Bible was quite un-American. So the "acceptance" is still not quite there.
As a Muslim, and a black person for that matter, the whole routine of being blamed and having to be responsible for what somebody does who looks/believes like you just gets weary. I, nor anyone else at this point, knows what motivated this man.
I suppose generally is an imprecise word by it's vary nature.
And I do not want to discount anything you said because, after all, it's your life
I have no doubt Muslim-Americans have to deal with a lot of unfair crap. I didn't mean to suggest that America generally accepting Muslims means that all Americans accept Muslims. Yes, there are bigots and someday, they might just receive their reward.
But Mr. Ellison is living his life as Congressman Ellison and I believe there is another Muslim-American Congressperson in Washington as well. You are living your life, doing whatever it is you do. My representative in the state house, of the state where I live, is a Muslim-American. He's an African-American Muslim-American actually.
You get to live your life in peace for the most part, don't you? You and people of your same religious faith get to work hard and hope for a better tomorrow, just like any other American?
If not, why don't we see more religious violence in this country?
@ Nuada...I really don't know what is up with the reply thing...anyway. This is in response to your message below.
Andre Carson is the other Muslim in Congress.
You get to live your life in peace for the most part, don't you? You and people of your same religious faith get to work hard and hope for a better tomorrow, just like any other American?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "living your life in peace."
Certainly, our situation could be much worse. But it could be much better too. If "living life in peace" and "working hard and hoping for a better tomorrow" is the yardstick, then there is not much difference in America and Europe (which was the original point I was replying to) and we don't have much of a reason to pat ourselves on the back on this side of the pond.
No, I don't have bombs raining down on my head. I am quite grateful for that. But since 9/11, members of the Muslim community have been subjected to all sorts of things, indefinite detentions, surveillance in our houses of worship as a matter of course, profiling at the airports, spikes in hate crimes and vandalism (one friend of mine has had at least four separate incidents where she was harassed verbally and/or in danger of being assaulted because she is visibly Muslim--I hardly call that "living in peace"). These types of incidents increase especially at times like this. We've had to listen to our (former) president talk about waging "crusades", being ejected from public places for wearing Islamic dress, etc. Muslims have had law enforcement called on them because other people observed them praying in public. I could go on and on. Some of these offenses have been committed by public officials--so it's not just the "bigots".
I guess if you don't have to live with it, it may not seem that bad. But from where I'm standing, we have a long way to go as a nation.
Please don't misunderstand me Jane.
If you want to make the argument that Muslim-Americans have a harder time of it today than I might think, I will not press any contradictory point. I'm not going to be pompous, you are a Muslim-American, you know better than me on this particular subject.
I just trying to understand. Why the lack of violence in America then? If the average Muslim living in New York City, USA is not better off than the same Muslim living in Paris, France, why don't we have the same kind of violence in the streets here?
There are many factors to consider regarding the lack of violence, as you put it.
I think that one thing we don't always consider is that the culture in Europe and America is not identical...I think in many European countries, France in particular, for example, it is much more common for large scale strikes to occur than is the case here anymore. There are many other factors. Demographics, history, presence or absence of a spark, shoot, maybe even weather on a given day plays a role.
Besides that...people respond differently to oppression and adversity. Some places in the world undergo violent revolution and some places do not. Is the determining factor whether one group "has it better" than the other? Nothing so simple or convenient will do as an explanation.
I mean, why does violence or rioting erupt at any point in history? There are a ton of factors that go into any given situation that make it hard to say without a really systematic investigation into each individual incident (or trend of related incidents). Why did riots erupt after the Rodney King verdict but not after the situation with Amadou Diallo? Was it because one was worse than the other (whatever that actually means)? Not from what I can tell. A bunch of factors go into these things, and it's fairly simplistic to boil it down to "these people have it better than these other people."
France is not the USA. The Muslim community in France is not the Muslim community in the USA. The Muslim community in the USA even has quite a bit of variation in norms depending on which region of the country you live in. My experiences living in a pretty diverse part of the country with a large number of Muslims varies fairly significantly from other people I know who live in other types of areas where the situation is different. So there is no magic bullet answer.
But what does it mean? Seriously. What's the meaning?? People keep saying it "means" something, but they either don't know, or won't say what.
that's because unless you think that the whole universe exists to teach you lessons, like Oprah and other evangelists, it can't "mean" anything. And frankly it's pretty repugnant for people, including, Goldblog to use this tragedy to push for their pet agendas. Some people have no shame, which is a shame.
TNC, I wasn't so much arguing that it's rational, just that it's human. When people die naturally, other people want to know why. What did they eat? How much did they exercise? Our culture is obsessed with this. When it happens violently, people want to know how. Sometimes looking for possible solutions, and sometimes looking for some measure of peace. Maybe they want to feel some assurance that things don't just happen randomly, so they can feel safer.
dmf, I respect your opinions, and I am not traditionally religious myself, but I also respect the needs and responses of those who are, and who do look to the universe or God to teach them lessons. There are an awful lot of them out there, so I try to understand where they are coming from.
Jenn D., I appreciate your being sensitive to the needs of other people, especially the suffering of people in crisis. Was just trying to point out the limits of such understandings for the kind of public/civic matters that we tend to discuss here, and to highlight some of the limits of 'causality' talk. What people need to do in their private lives to cope with such horrors, at home, church, in therapy, etc. is between them and the people that they feel responsible to, and I wish them the best.
For some folks at least, it means that they have license to indulge their prejudices.
It means the mother fucker was "Columbine Crazy," "Osama Bin Laden Crazy," "Unibomber Crazy," "Charlie Manson Crazy," "Going Postal Crazy," "Tim McVeigh Crazy." If you are crazy enough to want to kill a lot of innocent people, you're going to find a "reason" to do so.
Out of all these comments, yours seems to capture it the best for me. The external reason, religion, mission, agenda, whatever is just the trigger. "Teh krazy" is the bullet. Thanks to all who made comments, this is endlessly fascinating despite the tragedy at its core. It's always good to observe others thought processes and beliefs. Once again, thanks to TNC for these threads.
“Obviously, Hassan's religious beliefs are not the whole story, but I think they are an important part of it. I'm interested in learning how someone raised in a typical American household turns to Islam and finds anti-Americanism and violence there, just like I was when it happened to that John Walker Lindh kid here in the Bay Area.”
According to what I’ve heard, Hassan is totally different than Lindh.
Hassan is of Syrian descent but was born in America. Presumably, he was raised in a Muslim household without any traces of extremism. Typically, a radical, anti-American Muslim wouldn’t want to serve in the American armed forces. I mean, unless you want to think that he planned this entire scheme out years before, including the whole med school thing too.
So Hassan was not steeped in a climate of radical Islam or anti-Americanism. But he developed some mental problems. As his mental problems began to complicate his life, (most notably is job performance), he turned to radical Islam. He transformed his faults into some great persecution complex, where the evil West was waging war on Islam everywhere. He wasn’t responsible for his mistakes because there were no mistakes; it was just the effect of a personal Crusade against his life
This probable scenario fits very nicely into the “lone nut” theory. He was raised Muslim so it was radical Islam that he turned to. If he was raised Christian, he would have went down that road to its darkest extent possible.
The resistance some have shown to classify Hassan as some kind of “Jihadist” might be a result of the attempts to link this horrible butchery at Ft. Hood with some sort of sleeper organization…..and in the process, totally ignore the mental problems that pre-dated any interest in radical Islam.
Nuada, Just want to make it clear that it is exactly because I don't think that there was anything radical or subversive in his upbringing that makes me more interested in the story. I hope I did not come across as someone wanting to label Hassan a Jihadist.
No, and I wasn’t trying to accuse you of such.
My main point in that particular post, in your direction at least, was to draw a clear distinction between Hassan and Lindh.
I bring up the issue of the reluctance some might have in classifying Hassan as a Jihadist to play off the point I think you were making, that this case is possibly a bit more complex than it might seem.
To parody Shrek:
Seriously, I think that this point about people being complicated is a good one to keep in mind. We need to understand the difference between a causal factor in this instance and a contributing factor. The root cause of an act of terrorism is usually a person’s alienation from the society in which they find themselves. If I was to paint a picture of a terrorist he or she would probably be someone of above average intelligence capable of working hard, who felt, for whatever reason, incapable of achieving a desired goal. Alienation from the society in which a person finds himself or herself is usually the first step on the road to violence. We don’t necessarily know this about the Fort Hood shooting, but we know this was true of Tim McVeigh, Scott Roeder, and more than likely of the 9/11 hijackers as well. If we wish we can go back farther Nat Turner was a preacher and yet because of the unjust system of racial slavery he felt himself unable to advance in the old south. Nathan Bedford Forest and the rest of those bed-sheet wearing psychopaths were most definitely influenced by their beliefs in racial inferiority, but more importantly because of the civil war they what they saw as their “place” on the top of the southern hierarchy.
In almost every case of confirmed terrorism that I can think of the ideology is of secondary importance to the feeling of alienation. There were, at the very least, thousands of black preachers in the south during the time of Nat Turner none of them took up arms. There are millions of Pentecostal abortion-hating Christians in this country but only a handful ever decide to start murdering Abortion providers. The Klan in the south was, to my knowledge, at least until the 1920’s a significant minority but still a minority of people. As far as Islamic Terrorism is concerned the same rules apply. Worldwide the number of people willing to take up arms for Islam is and always will be a minority. However, saying so does not necessarily mean that one must automatically discount the role that ideology plays in motivating acts of terrorism, far from it, but one must always keep in mind that an act of violence such as the one that happened at Fort Hood has less to do with the ideology adopted than it does with the disaffection which caused the person to look for an ideological coping mechanism in the first place.
In a sense blaming the ideology of a terrorist is like blaming the death of an AIDS Patient on the common cold. It might definitely have been the cold that killed the patient, but the virus could not have killed the patient if the patient had had a functioning immune system. Ideology functions the same way in cases of terrorism. In the case of Fort Hood the gunman was, in all likelihood motivated by his Islamic faith, however, his faith could not have acted as a causal agent without an underlying sense of alienation and disaffection from society. In this respect, the AIDS metaphor is even more apt, for just as a patient in the last throes of the virus is killed by any one out of a number of opportunistic diseases, a person who is far enough alienated from the society in which they live may fall prey to any one of a number of ideologies which may result in violence. In the case of the Fort Hood Shooting the ideology was Islam, but it could have very well been a form of radical environmentalism or a belief in the necessity of class-struggle to overthrow the oppressor and bring an end to the historical dialectic. In the final analysis the Ideology is usually a symptom of a much deeper disease that has its roots in an individuals existential quest for identity once he or she has been cut loose from the moorings that allow us to find purpose in our daily lives.
Thank you sports fans. That is all. :)
I wish there was an edit button.
The end of the first paragraph should read:
Nathan Bedford Forest and the rest of those bed-sheet wearing psychopaths were most definitely influenced by their beliefs in racial inferiority, but more importantly because of the civil war they were dissafected by having lost what they saw as their “place” on the top of the southern hierarchy.
Very well put. Unfortunately, every tragedy must be exploited and no crisis should go to waste, which is why the symptoms get the headline instead of the disease. Gingrich once tried blaming a henious murder on the culture of abortion, and Olbermann tried tying Fox News into Tiller's murder. The census worker's death brought out calls for Beck and Bachmann to be indicted.
Seems kind of like how in the thirties, the best converts to fascism were from the ranks of former communists. The actual ideology wasn't always important
To be perfectly honest, as a left-leaning Democrat, I was uncomfortable that Olbermann went where he did with the census worker’s murder. It was far too soon to leap to those kinds of conclusions. Beck and Bachmann say reprehensible and rather unintelligible things; they needn’t be tied to a murder to be denounced. As much as I enjoy his ability to speak truth to power, that part of Mr. Olbermann’s personality can lead to rhetorical flourishes that are too caustically liberal for me.
But couldn’t it be said that the Tiller case is a bit hazier? From what I heard, Tiller’s killer was primarily motivated by radical right-wing anti-abortion websites and similar organizations, not Fox News. Still, don’t you think it might have shown a bit of humanity on the part of certain Fox News personalities to publically acknowledge the need for them to tone down their rhetoric…..on at least this specific issue?
Nuada,
If I may this isn't manichean. In fairness the climate is made worse when news organizations publically spew exremist garbage but most people are not going to be taken in and believe everything they watch. Yes it would have shown some humanity on the part of some Fox News anchors to tone down their rhetoric. It would also require some humanity for certain die hard partisans to look past the southern populism and ask themselves "what's causing the T-Partiers to go ape shit?"
This isn't an argument for moral equivalence of left vs. right, but rather an attempt to understand the underlying structural causes that would prompt someone to become committed to violence in an attempt to find meaning.
Sorn –
You’ll have to forgive me; you confused me just a bit with your reply above.
I was only trying to specifically address what DougEMI wrote in his post. I was only trying to say that the Tiller murder – Fox News connection was somewhat stronger than any Census worker – Right Wing Personalities connection, largely because absolutely no connection can honestly be made yet for the latter.
It was not my intention to attempt to construct some moral equivalency between right & left. The overall topic is terrorism; a subject so varied that I would not even attempt any general classifications of right and left.
You bring up the Tea Baggers. Maybe I’m just being too fair but I never would have made the connection between terrorism and a bunch of pudgy aging white people who can’t accept the fact that their guy didn’t win.
Since you opened up that can of worms, I’ll say that I never thought of southern populism as a chief motivation of the Tea-Baggers. Unless of course, you are using “southern populism” as a euphemism for something else. After all, how do we know what part of the country the Tea-Baggers are coming from?
No, if I was to be at my most humane and look upon the motivation of the Tea-Baggers, the best that I could possibly do is replace their hate-based motivations with stupidity or fear. Although I know that you weren’t originally referring to me, you can now call me a “die-hard partisan” if you want. I’ll just say in closing that over the 12 years that I have been eligible to vote, I have voted for Republicans for both a Governorship and a US Senate seat.
Still, don’t you think it might have shown a bit of humanity on the part of certain Fox News personalities to publically acknowledge the need for them to tone down their rhetoric…..on at least this specific issue?
I am a fairly irregular viewer of Fox News, so I don't really know how they talk about the abortion issue, but as it relates to people like O'Reilly and Hannity who have a more editorial position, I completely argee that they should come out in full force against what happened in this instance if they didn't do so.
“In almost every case of confirmed terrorism that I can think of the ideology is of secondary importance to the feeling of alienation.”
You seem like a well-educated person, so I’m guessing that you are familiar with many cases of confirmed terrorism, or else you wouldn’t have posted in the first place.
But do you think that you are stretching a bit to say that almost all terrorism is primarily motivated from feelings of alienation? I’m not saying it isn’t often present but you are saying that it’s the chief cause.
To me, terrorism has always been a form of warfare, a form you engage in when your enemy has tanks, bombs and planes and you do not. To the extent that terrorism can be justified, I think it depends on various factors; an origin in a legitimate ideological grievance, an attainable end goal that can be logically derived from the violence that you commit, the strict targeting of military forces and not civilian populations, etc.
Young men go to war for lots of different reasons, often times the motivations are political, albeit not very developed.
Let’s just stick to terrorist or “somewhat terroristic” conflicts. (Wow, that’s actually a word.) The three main groups that have indentified themselves as the I.R.A. over the last 80 years have had one clear political goal, get the Brits out. I’m sure that some of the 9/11 high-jackers were motivated by feelings of alienation but Bin Laden wasn’t, he had a very clear political goal as well.
I think that this Fort Hood case is a prime example of exactly what you are talking about. But I think Hassan, while not the exception, was certainly not the rule.
Are we talking about just those terrorists that plan to kill themselves as part of their terrorism? What about the ones that clearly want to live?
And you say;
“If I was to paint a picture of a terrorist he or she would probably be someone of above average intelligence capable of working hard, who felt, for whatever reason, incapable of achieving a desired goal.”
I know the picture you have in your mind; the 9/11 terrorists that had engineering degrees. But they weren’t all college grads, I don’t think.
Tim McVeigh was no genus, was he? And sure, the Klan big-wigs have always been educated, from Forrest, to Simmons, to Duke. But the garden-variety torch burners, the majority of them have been just plain dumb sons of bitches. They had a goal in mind, albeit not very developed and morally repugnant; no black equality. Did they feel alienated? The former plantation owners did, I’m sure but the poor Southern whites didn’t get any poorer after the Civil War. In reality, slavery probably hurt the poor white underclass by artificially suppressing wages.
I don't think so. In the main well-satisfied resonably well adjusted people with a stake in the status quo who feel that they are an integral part of society don't resort to violence.
Many apologies because I don't have time to reply to everything you wrote today but I shall get back to you.
Thanks for reading and taking time to reply. Always a pleasure.
Perhaps it depends on how you view terrorism. As I've said, I view terrorism as war through unconventional means. Like more conventional warfare, sometimes it's justified, most of the time it's not. But when I look at Northern Ireland, at Lebanon, at Sri Lanka.....I see conflict from politics, from religion to some extent. I have no doubt that the people who engaged in the terrorist acts were unhappy with their lives. But not the kind of alienation from society that motivated the 9/11 attackers.
I really think the 9/11 attackers were not your typical terrorists. Perhaps that's the source of our disagreement?
Your average terrorist, while not being that bright, can connect his unhappiness with his politics a little better than you give them credit for. They just don't wallow aimlessly in a sense of alienation, then find terrorism as a direction to help guide their lives.
Or maybe we just need to agree to disagree on this. We can agree on this though, neither one of us has the time to spend on here, not as much as we'd like anyway. But yes, always a pleasure.
One thing worth noting -- if he were really a sophisticated traitor and conspirator, he'd have done his bloody work in Afghanistan, and we'd be talking about military disaster rather than mass murder.
It's not easy to see what kind of lessons to take from this.
Certainly one reality: now is the absolute worst possible time to purge Muslims from the military.
That ain't stopping one of the best known "Christian" activist groups in America from calling for a permanent (until "Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates,") purge
Think we'll hear many Republicans denouncing the AFA for fomenting religious war?
Obviously there are as many bloody stories in the Bible as their are in the Quran. And obviously followers can pick which lessons they follow and which they overlook, for example overlooking the 10 Commandments, while quoting one line from Leviticus in order to justify a Constitutional amendment to limit gay rights. But, if moderate Muslims want to distinquish themselves from the radicals isn't it time that they renounce the concept of Jihad? It seems so obvious, but even as I write this, I think I understand why they have not done it: because Jihad is part of their doctrine, one of their responsibilies according to the Quran and they cannot say that they object to it even if they would not consider hurting another human being. The best they can do is say that they believe in the peaceful parts of the Quran. People do the same with the Bible, but there are differences in the order of magnitude. I have met many annoying, preachy Christian bigots, but not many that think waging a holy war is their responsibility as a Christian. I don't know any Christians who would think someone was a martyr for going onto a crowded bus in Iran and blowing up a bunch of civilians. I am in no way advocating discrimination or violence against Muslims, but I think we are ignoring the problem by just saying that Islam is about peace and that those who promote violence are distorting the message when there are so many that believe the opposite. If Islam is about peace, those that believe that need to renounce Jihad once and for all.
Perhaps you have been lucky in your acquaintance with Christians. I see many self-described Christians in the media equating the President with Hitler and calling for resistance to and perhaps the overthrow of the government of the United States. Does their behaviour show that Christianity is inherently violent? (My answer would be no.)
Does your request apply to all religions, or is it a requirement for Muslims only? Did you ask moderate Christians to denounce/renounce violence after Dr Tiller’s murder or hatefulness after any of the activities of Fred Phelps? Did you ask moderate Jews and Israelis to denounce/renounce violence after an American immigrant to Israel shot up a mosque in Hebron during a service? If you did not, why is a violent Muslim an exemplar of his faith and a violent Christian/Jew the sick exception?
Exactly. A devout Christian would not commit murder, nor might I add, would a devout Muslim. Neither religion justifies wanton killing in their teachings. Inflammartory rhetoric from extremist Christians is just as dangerous and misguided as any radical Imam (sp?).
You know, if anything the mainstream coverage has shied away from looking at his religion. It's hinted at, but not really asked overtly. I wonder if the Daily Show would ever make a montage about this?
I think extremist Christianity has been examined quite a bit, in relation to the anti abortion movement. Maybe not on ABC News, but you can find it on say, The Nation.